The "Good till Cancelled" fiasco has begun for me.

[shoppingbag*]

I am a non store owner. Yesterday I had 40 free listings. Today I have 39 yet I have not listed anything. One of my sales came to an end and now sits at the bottom of the listings with a "relist item" button, which informs me that "this item didn't automatically reslist".

Investigating and getting the item number for the so-called used free listing, brings up this very item, which tells me that the item is relisted with "good till cancelled" Doing a general search for it, and yes, it is indeed relisted, but does not show as such in my items for sale. I wonder what would happen if I went to relist this item from my sales list and if it would then show as another free listing used. I have not received any email from eBay regarding these changes, nothing at all.

Your thoughts please.

[mytreechange]

I didn't expect the auto-relists and weekend free listings to last forever either.

I did expect to be able to choose my listing duration.  Good til cancelled may be good for multi-quantity listings as it keeps the sales history for buyers to see, but for my (mostly) one-off collectables (stamps) they're just a pain.

More work for me as a seller just monitoring my listings in case I go over the limit.  Sellers with more expensive items may be able to absorb an insertion fee, but I'd lose on almost every one.

But, as I have no choice, I guess I'll get used to it and do what needs to be done.

End of whinge.

[casbit33]

My email from ebay "health check" was on 2 Feb:

All Fixed-Price Listings Moving to Good
‘Til Cancelled

We’re moving all fixed-price listings to Good ‘Til Cancelled. That means short-duration options won’t be available for new fixed-price listings from 19 February. This is to create a better shopping experience, retain sales history, and secure more of what your buyers love on-site.

We’ll automatically convert your current short-duration, fixed-price listings to Good ‘Til Cancelled, where you’ve scheduled them to relist. You won’t pay any insertion or renewal fees for these listings, and can choose to end them at any time.

Make sure to keep an eye on your total listings.

Find out more about listing duration and timings   ➔

I keep reading the bit where it says "you won't pay any insertion or renewal fees for these listings."

what a load of rubbish, the gtc listings have used up everyones 40 free listings and charged $1.65 each for the rest.

I am in the process of changing everything over to auction. I guess I will just keep it there until they destroy that one too.

[dfaery]

It defies logic unless immediately following the change, Ebay offers sellers unlimited listings insertion fee-free (I'm guessing all of you also just received this offer?). The hope would be that sellers list relentlessly for the next 8 days not realising the default duration in their template had been changed to "good til cancelled". Unwitting sellers would be caught out as hundreds and possibly thousands of listings automatically relist with an insertion fee in the following month. Call me an eBay conspiracy theorist, but I've seen too many unfortunate "coincidences" that just happen to net eBay (or PayPal) a tidy profit. Bunch of criminals if you ask me. Their time in the son will soon be done.    

[imastawka]

I really don't understand the chest beating and clutching of pearls on this issue.

Bottom line is.......if you stick to your listing allocations there is no fee.

Too many people have had free relists for too long.

They seemed to be viewed as a right.

I have never received any, so this GTC has no pain for me.

I've stayed within my allocation.

[lupercal]

"We’re moving all fixed-price listings to Good ‘Til Cancelled. That means short-duration options won’t be available for new fixed-price listings from 19 February. This is to create a better shopping experience, retain sales history, and secure more of what your buyers love on-site."

So their goal was to get rid of 'short duration' fixed price listings.  And 30 days is 'short duration'?

The phrase should read "That means any duration options won't be available', other than endlessly repeating 30 day listings.

And how exactly is that any different from manually relisting something every 30 days anyway, other than some sellers like us using leaving a gap of a few days sometimes between those 30-day cycles?

In fact, when I manually re-list a 30 day item, I generally lower the price somewhat if it hasn't sold. Considering ebay's relentless pressure on us to cut item prices to the bone (for instance by continuing to arbitrarily apply 'accept best offer' to listings) that sort of backfires on them - unless the next thing is them introducing mandatory incremental reduction of listing prices every x days.

- One day I'd like to meet whoever this 'creates a better shopping experience ' for.

[dazzledayz]

---

@imastawka wrote:

I really don't understand the chest beating and clutching of pearls on this issue.

Bottom line is.......if you stick to your listing allocations there is no fee.

Too many people have had free relists for too long.

They seemed to be viewed as a right.

I have never received any, so this GTC has no pain for me.

I've stayed within my allocation.

---

Same for me; I always stay under my allocation so no biggie.

I don't altogether admire the fact that there is no day count for the new GTC listing format.

I would have thought it useful to know how long a given listing had been up after it had rolled over a few times.

The speadsheet I keep for eBay has this detail but it would have also been useful to see the info in active view.

[bluebudgies]

It IS in active view if you customise it that way. Mine shows the original listing date and in another column it shows how many days and hours left in the current "cycle".

[curraone]

hmmm - I think the actual question is how many times has it rolled over.

[bluebudgies]

Surely that can't be too hard to figure out. If the original listing date is 17 Sept 2017 then it's done almost 18 cycles (12 cycles plus an extra 5 days per year).

[dell1312]

I am not sure if changing over to an auction will prevent the $1.65 insertion fee. I spoke with someone at eBay yesterday and she said there would be a charge. I would be very careful taking up any of their “promotions” where you get unlimited listings, as somewhere along they will relist and you will incur charges.. Because of eBay changing the selling platform, I have incurred a $76 bill.

eBay has slowly been Changing into a site that is very difficult to sell on. It might be time for me to look for somewhere else to sell.