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.

[tryubik-useonlyasdirected]

It was NOT announced to every account. I know people personally who haven't recieved it; I myself only recieved it in one business account but not in a personal account.

[tryubik-useonlyasdirected]

@imastawka

This is not true. Months are 28-31 days each and GTC listings renew every 30-Days. To not incur double charges during certain months you have to stick to the maximum amount of listings as your max and only post listings between the 15-28 of the month.

This gives zero flexibility to target end times to higher selling times like weekends, evenings, or the end of the month making peak selling periods to incur potential extra costs (or at least an extra cost every so often.. very sneaky).

They are not free listings they are paid for listings. Zero-Rated Fixed listings are one-time-purchases with a fixed price and a fixed duration paid for in your monthly subscription.

[tryubik-useonlyasdirected]

@davewil1964

eBay will, however, charge an admin fee for 'stale' listings. (12 months old+, I think I recall).

This is the first I've heard of this, do you have a link?

UPDATE: Saw the link above *facepalm*

[curraone]

You do realise this is the Australian site?    Why aren't you posting on your own Canadian ebay?

[funkyflamingo*]

This "good till Cancelled" I think is going to be a nightmare for me.

I have a shop where I get 1500 free listings. Once I use up these listings, I then decide what items I want to list as I get charged per listing 22 cents unless it is books which is 6 cents.

I usually list my books after all my free listings have been used up,  as I don't want my books to be use  up in my free listings and would prefer to pay the 6 cents.

With this "good till cancelled", when the books get relisted it will probably use up the free listings.

Is the only way around this to "End my listings" just before the 30 days or any other item that I don't want to relist?

It will be very hard to keep track of what listings I want to end when I have 2500 listings!

I believe that it will cost me so much more in the long run, as listings will automatically be relisted, so ebay gets the monthly subscription, and then extra costs of listings once free listings has been used up. 

If anyone could give me any advice how to manage this, it would be greatly appreciated!

[chameleon54]

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@funkyflamingo* wrote:

This "good till Cancelled" I think is going to be a nightmare for me.

I have a shop where I get 1500 free listings. Once I use up these listings, I then decide what items I want to list as I get charged per listing 22 cents unless it is books which is 6 cents.

I usually list my books after all my free listings have been used up,  as I don't want my books to be use  up in my free listings and would prefer to pay the 6 cents.

With this "good till cancelled", when the books get relisted it will probably use up the free listings.

Is the only way around this to "End my listings" just before the 30 days or any other item that I don't want to relist?

It will be very hard to keep track of what listings I want to end when I have 2500 listings!

I believe that it will cost me so much more in the long run, as listings will automatically be relisted, so ebay gets the monthly subscription, and then extra costs of listings once free listings has been used up. 

If anyone could give me any advice how to manage this, it would be greatly appreciated!

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Love your items Funky flamingo............

Is it worth opening up a second basic or featured store. All of the books could go on that one, making it a funky book store, with your collectables staying on your existing store. That is essentually what I have done. I run three stores. Each with a slightly different theme. All up I can run 2000 + listings continually and it keeps stock more concentrated to the interests of particular buyers. The only draw back is the extra set of store fees, but you appear to be selling enough to justify the extra fees. ( assuming you have good mark ups )

We have also spread the ownership names of the stores between myself & my wife which is handy for income splitting for tax purposes. We use seperate paypal & bank accounts for each so it is all leagal. This tax saving more than offsets the extra store fees paid to ebay. 

[funkyflamingo*]

Hey Chameleon,

Thank you for your response.

I have thought of doing that for many years, but I am not too sure how I can transfer for example: books from one store to another.  I transfer all my listings from my website within two clicks, so I may have to look at, is there a way to transfer to different stores?. 

How do you manage all your emails from the different stores. The only reason I ask, is if I use google chrome, I can only look at one ebay account at a time, (log out, and then log into another ebay account) unless I have different search engines on my computer to look at different stores at one time. 

So many hours go into listing, and getting rid of active content last year nearly killed me, as I couldn't do it in bulk listings.  

Oh the dramas of being on ebay!

You always leave wonderful and insightful advice.

Thanks again

Funky Flamingo

[bluebudgies]

It's pretty easy if you just spend a few minutes writing it all down so you can see exactly how it works. All you have to do is sort your Active listing page by ending soonest and make sure there's nothing due to roll over after the books in a particular month. If there are other listings due to roll over after the books, end them and restart them before the books are due to roll over. Once you've done it in one month, you won't have to do it the next month if it's only got 30 days but you'll have to check it again if that next one's got 31 days. There are only 7 months a year with 31 days but at least one of those is cancelled out by Feb only having 28 or 29, so you'll only need to end a few listings six times a year.

If you keep a couple of days gap between the books and the other listings it'll be easier to keep track of.  Your listings will move forward five days in the month over a year (six days in a leap year) but it'll be easy enough to end and relist in bulk before anything rolls over if you need to.

[bluebudgies]

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@funkyflamingo* wrote:

Hey Chameleon,

Thank you for your response.

I have thought of doing that for many years, but I am not too sure how I can transfer for example: books from one store to another.  I transfer all my listings from my website within two clicks, so I may have to look at, is there a way to transfer to different stores?. 

How do you manage all your emails from the different stores. The only reason I ask, is if I use google chrome, I can only look at one ebay account at a time, (log out, and then log into another ebay account) unless I have different search engines on my computer to look at different stores at one time. 

So many hours go into listing, and getting rid of active content last year nearly killed me, as I couldn't do it in bulk listings.  

Oh the dramas of being on ebay!

You always leave wonderful and insightful advice.

Thanks again

Funky Flamingo

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If you ever need to edit a lot of descriptions, use bulk edit and then click on 'edit description' and then select "Edit listings individually" from the dropdown menu up the top.  That'll bring up each description one at a time so you can make your changes and then click on "Save and next" until they're all done.  You have to do them one at a time but it's a lot quicker than opening each listing.  

[bluebudgies]

In the months that have 31 days, make sure you haven't got listings rolling over on the 1st and the 31st. At the end of Feb (while I had plenty of spare listings on my store) I ended all the listings that were due to roll over from 1st to 3rd of March and relisted them using Feb's free listings so that I'd have nothing rolling over on the 1st of the month for the next several months. That means I'll have nothing rolling over at the end of the next few months either, which is probably how you need to do it.

If you have to end anything, don't be afraid to end it in the middle of its cycle to get it where you want it. The main thing is to end it before it rolls over and uses a listing in that particular month.