That’s a good point. I’m sure eBay would have a lot of ticked off customers if they give these free promotions and then don’t warn people they will be charged to relist. Not that eBay seems to care much about upsetting their sellers, but that would be a big one.
On the other hand, if they continue to offer GTC promotions but don’t charge for relistings, people could potentially have hundreds of items listed over time and never have to pay listing fees or pay for a Store. Guess we’ll have to see how it all shakes out once the change is made.
The FAQ link I posted is from the 2019 Early Seller Update which announces the change. I’m pretty sure they are planning to continue to charge on every relist/renew. At least in the U.S., could be different in other countries. I also read a post from a VP at eBay that they are looking into the 30 day cycle since you could potentially get hit twice in one month (ie. list on the 1st and 31st). We’ll see. I just wish GS had an “end listing” command in applescript, I could just code my way through this lol.
I was hoping to have a script end my listings at 29 days but there is no applescript command in GS to end a listing programmatically. I could for sure do it manually.
I would be fine if GS would just add a timer to warn at, say, 28 days. I imagine that the knowledge would be used different ways but would probably be helpful to a lot of people who could then decide whether to pull it down or allow it to keep going.
I don’t understand why you want to cancel the listing and loose all the people that are watching your items. I have been using GTC listings for 10 years or more. The best thing you have going for you are the watchers who a considering a purchase and save your listing and aren’t ready to purchase whether it is money or just not ready to buy and you pull your item before they buy. I have listings saved for years that I go back and purchase and not have to do all the searching all over again to get what I am looking for.
Currently the forced GTC policy goes into effect “sometime” on Monday, March 18th. Personally I do not like GTC since I rotate 2,000 listings in a Premium Store that provides 1,000 listings monthly. Obviously, you can cancel the GTC listing before it rolls over, but you lose out on searches using the value “ending soon.”
Also, to be clear, each time eBay rolls over a listing (every 30 days), you will pay a listing fee - it is most definitely not a free listing. I’ve talked with eBay staffers who clearly have not been properly briefed on the policy, it’s been a reckless roll-out sure to cause problems for a large number of sellers who do not keep up with day to day eBay changes.
Hi,
I add another reason against the “benefit” of GTC listings.
When you use 30-days-listings and relist them after ending, new listings are much more visible in the top of search results and most of all they are marked as “new listing” into categories or searches that buyers follow. This is extremely useful, let’s do a little example. I follow a search for tag “XYZ”. If I put on sale a good that matches this tag, buyers see this as new and might send an offer or buy it now. That’s fine if you repeat it often (30-days-listings with relist). Now let’s consider if the listing is GTC. First of all, it means that this listing will appear as “new” only one time, so there is only one chance for the correct buyer who follows that tag search to meet your listing. Moreover, if the “XYZ” tag is very common and buyers do not check ebay tag search soon, they will find a ton of new listings before yours or, worst again, if they do not check ebay for some days, they will loose that new listing at all and the only solution to find your good is to do a specific search using that tag and look into thousand pages… and maybe your good is at the 17th page…
In the past, when I had 30-days listings with relist, I was used to sell much more than now that I use only GTC. My listings go buried in millions of similar-tag-listings and this is a big problem if my listing does not scale search engine (lots of watchers or clicks) or if a buyer does not do a specific search and look into thousands similar goods. This is a problem that mainly depends on your kind of goods. GTC is good ONLY if you have multiple quantity listings (= not collectables).
It’s quite clear that eBay day after day is going towards amazon policy, I really can’t explain where we are going to…
I share you sentiment here. The “NEW” listing feature is why I always post them as new listings and not “ebay relists”.
I suspect that there is not much we are going to be able to do about it except end the listing before GTL kicks in … but not a good station for buyers who might be watching the item
Are you already on forced GTC? Ebay Australia isn’t yet but will soon be there. Can you confirm that Ebay do not charge a listing fee for the GTL items under this p[oilcy?
Hello David,
not yet also here, but soon it will be mandatory also in my ebay site. I gave up with 30-days listings about 1 year ago because with 7000 active listings it started to be quite complicated to use the GS relist feature (I also had some issues with disappearing listings, if you recall…). So I lost hopes and decided to put my goods for sale only “one time” and avoid to waste time relisting them and paying attention to not do mistakes (like relisting manually ended listings). This really reduced the visibility of my listings, but that was the only possible solution (time saved = more time to list new items), and hearing this last ebay news, it seems it was partially a good choice.
Well, it is quite complicated and depends on your plan. Let’s do a little example. I have a premium shop subscription that until last year let me list infinite 30-days/GTC listings without any fee. Since some time, they changed my plan and reduced the number of free listings/month to 10.000 (cost about 50€/month). This means: if I use GTC listings, all active listings implicitly renew after 30-days and so they count into the limit of 10.000 listing. If I end them before, it doesn’t matter because the count of listed listings starts when you insert a new listing, independently if you end it or not before. If I start 10.000 + 1 listings in a month, I will pay that “+ 1” also if I end it before. The count considers whole new listings ì. If it is GTC and you don’t stop, after 30-days it implicitly renew and count a fee. If it is GTC and you stop it before, anyway you pay that fee, if it exceed your monthly amount of listings. I hope it makes sense.
Solution? Easy, just increase the shop level to Premium Plus! Illimitate listings without fee. Costs: about 180€/month…
There is a famous Australian Band called Australian Crawl. Think they knew about the spinning beachball in GS well before their time. Pulling my hair out.
David
New rule has gone into effect; obviously designed to have items roll-over and squeeze small sellers like myself to greater fees. How? I usually have 100+ items listed, many are books, that sell slowly but do sell. This will easily drive me over the 50 free every month. I am going to start a new thread to see if GS devs can eventually offer an in-app solution. AND OH BY THE WAY they WILL COUNT as new listing every 30 days; the chat quoted above was misinformation.
As far as I know, the count starts when you insert a listing, so it does not affect the monthly amount if you end it before. But I would be very happy if anyone here will contradict me with good proofs, ebay support is (as always) extremely useless… the only proof might be give a try, but it also means probably waste some money…
In eBay.it it will start in 1st of April, I checked it. It seems it starts earlier in other websites…
All my 1000s of listing were changed overnight, by Ebay, from 30 Days to GTC without any notification. I tend to view my active listings, leave feedback via Ebay rather than via GS because it is much faster. One thing I just noticed today is the slight difference between selecting “All Selling” as opposed to “Active”.
One shows the auction time remaining and the other just says GTC.
!!!
