I asked Ebay what new changes have damaged my sales...and they responded...

[Anonymous]

I just opened a chat with an Ebay representative and asked them "what changes have recently been made that has seen my sales drop by 95-100% this month?" I received the following response

Jean Su. "We have done nothing to destroy any seller's account. It is up to the buyers to buy items and some items are seasonal. Also, there are many sellers nowadays that the competition is very stiff."

....I then mentioned that the drop in sales happened instantly which is neither seasonal nor due to competition being "very stiff" and the response I received was ...dead silence... It appears that rather than tell the truth o a lie Ebay will just go silent and wait for you to go away. So after years of advertising and telling us all to build our own Ebay business and encouraging us to rely on it for our living this is the response we get when they decide we are no longer of any use. I would have some more to say but i have already received 4 warnings from the Ebay moderation team today for speaking out of line. I guess they will shortly send me another dozen or so.....because i know I have been speaking my mind a lot lately. Shame on me.

[fourandsixpants]

re.Re: Switched OFF again................... May 27, 2013 07:03 PM from UK thread

comment   (285 of 293).....

This still doesn't explain why I have 10 days of next to no sales (including about 4 days straight without a single sale), followed by a full 7 days of great, consistent sales, followed by 3 days (and counting of absolutely no sales). That's not a sales trend, that's a serious, obvious problem.

Up until about a month ago I'd maybe get 1 day in each week where I wouldn't make a single sale, other than that I'd always get at least 1 sale (absolute minimum) per day, often many more. I've been selling on here for about 8 years solid, through good times and bad, through recessions etc. and this has NEVER happened.

If it was consistent bad sales, then fine, I'd believe it's just people not buying. But it's not, it's like someone keeps flicking a switch off then on again for a few days then off again. It's night and day. Sales are normal, then suddely they stop dead. Going from selling normally to selling next to nothing for 10 days straight to consistently selling anything up to 10 items per day (for a whole week) to suddenly selling nothing at all for 3 days straight (and counting) to me proves something is very wrong and specific to this site.

comment (286 of 293) May 27, 2013 07:27 PM

It really is like a switch being turned on and off. When I do get sales they  mostly come in small flurries for about an hour or so and then nothing again with perhaps a day or more passing before another little furry of sales occur. There is no time pattern here it is completely random as to when it happens.

To confound the issue further sometimes all of the sales in these little flurries are international only.

I have weathered bad periods over the years like many others but this is completely different, and I have to reiterate that this all started at the time when many shops started losing their listings and when also images were not displaying on a lot of our listings. Both of these problems were acknowledged by eBay at the time, and some sellers compensated, all of which has been documented in various threads on these forums.

No, this is too much of a coincidence for it to be anything other than an eBay issue.

comment (287 of 293) May 27, 2013 08:21 PM .......I agree completely. Apart from anything else, this all started for too many sellers at exactly the same time - across all categories.

comment (288 of 293) May 27, 2013 09:15 PM

Just to add to it I entirely agree sales have been coming in batches of 3 or 4 then nothing for 2 or 3 days, then 3 or 4.  We certainly must be continually switched on and off there can be no other reason for it.  However I have done a  chart for the last 2 years and apart from the odd spike the trend is progressively down month on month. Personally I have already cut back the number of items for sale and reduced my shop to the basic cost.  At current rate I will have to pack up by the end of the year, everything points to that being the point at which I will be paying more out than bringing in.  But we shall see.

comment (289 of 293) May 27, 2013 09:58 PM Re: Switched OFF again...................

I don't understand why eBay hasn't made a comment yet on such large thread?

[fourandsixpants]

re http://community.ebay.co.uk/topic/Business-Seller-Board/Switched/18000498295?start=288 Re: Switched OFF again................... May 27, 2013 10:59 PM comment (291 of 293) If Ebay make a comment of any kind  -there shares will fall - perhaps we might read something in the national papers soon before telling all there Ebayers ... They are taking us all for idiots ..

May 28, 2013 02:56 AM comment -excerpt- of (292 of 293)....

Still wondering about the reasons for the perpetual problems of photos not loading properly?

Still wondering why nothing works the same way twice? Why there's no semblance of cohesion of side-wide functionality?

Still wondering if the system's sum total is being given adequate resources to even maintain BASIC FUNCTIONALITY?

It is brutally simple; the money saved from lower annual/monthly/weekly/daily/hourly energy expenditure is worth MORE than the power that is required to provide all current active listings with 100% visibility (or even 50%/25% by the sound of it).

And you better believe those Chinese MegaSellers with their multi-tens-of-millions contracts brokered by the CEO himself (look it up) won't be getting the same kind of server allocation that you are.

I have done searches in a category of interest in immediate succession on eBay UK and one of the other European sites (which has a larger pool of items). I discovered by pure accident that there were whole swathes of UK SELLERS listings showing on the Euro site that apparently don't exist when searching from the UK SITE.

But, you business Sellers are PAYING for each individual listing? Though surely no MegaCorp would ever dare charge for a serviced that it didn't provide?

[*new2vintage]

If you know what I mean

Don't ask about what NFI means...... B-)

[fourandsixpants]

re UK ebay discussion Re: Switched OFF again...................

http://community.ebay.co.uk/topic/Business-Seller-Board/Switched/18000498295?start=264 

comment (270 of 294) May 27, 2013 11:57 AM

Yes this is definitely eBay as the great majority of sellers with other platforms have only reported low sales on eBay and not the other platforms.

As I mentioned previously eBay have acknowledged to me there is a problem with the shop search - but it is not just confined to this as there are so many other issues.

Here is my list again:

Sharp Drop in Sales

Very Few Questions

Very Few Watchers

Hardly Any Views

Some Pictures Missing

Low shop traffic reported on Omniture

Item specifics disappear from some listings

Listings disappearing intermittently according to location

Shop occasionally showing no listings

Odd geographical sales patterns

Listing analytics showing my TRS listings below non TRS listings

Problems with the Matching shop link not showing me when I have relevant items in a search

Any sales now seem to come in small concentrated spells with huge gaps in between

[fourandsixpants]

http://community.ebay.co.uk/topic/Business-Seller-Board/Switched/18000498295

Re: Switched OFF again................... May 28, 2013 02:56 AM comment (292 of 295)

All you ever need to do is FOLLOW THE MONEY....

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2013/03/21/ebays-mpg-for-data-centers/

reference 'And you better believe those Chinese MegaSellers with their multi-tens-of-millions contracts brokered by the CEO himself (look it up) won't be getting the same kind of server allocation that you are.'

[arnl7178]

lol Deja, that one I know! ]:)

[fourandsixpants]

from UK ebay.........Re: Switched OFF again May 31, 2013 12:22 AM...................

http://community.ebay.co.uk/topic/Business-Seller-Board/Switched/18000498295?start=360 

comment 361 (from eurosmartdirect(3363)View Listings)

Hi.

I noticed the sales drop within 7-days from around the end of April into May.    By the second week of May I contacted ebay 's top rated seller support. team  The guy in Ireland was  very helpful but he could not see anything wrong even after talking to I.T.  

I tick all the right ebay boxes.

Don't try and look for excuses like my TRS may be slipping or I'm not selling because some one left me a negative feedback, or my stock won't shift because all the threads are full of Asian cheap goods. 

This problem is across the board, which includes the very best sellers on ebay full stop. 

You can spend hours and hours p*ssing about with your stock and it will make a dam difference to your sales.  I was the first person to notice analytics issue's and report on the boards a few weeks ago.  When I have a problem I deal with it.

I spoke to ebay again on last Saturday, the women in Ireland said she would phone me back  after the bank holiday.  Tuesday arrived and not one phone call and I'm still waiting for someone to call me and it is now Friday..

If ebay scored its self with the rules it gives the companies that trade on ebay; they would no longer be trading on this site.  Ebay's customer service and support is that bad.

Off topic:

I have traded the stock market for over 30 years, at one stage I traded  the market full time.  The root of the problems on ebay in my opinion go much further and the rabbit hole is going to get a lot deeper.  As a business model in my own opinion all is not well.

The severe reckless management over the last three years of operating what was once the best platform in the world, is now in my very honest opinion driving this once great company into the ground.

I have seen some of the biggest companies in the world go under over the last 10 years, don't for one minute think ebay is any different.  If the margins don't add up it will go under. 

In my opinion. start looking for new platforms to sell from and remember *YOU* are what makes ebay a great experience not the over way around!  I have over 3000 positive feed backs to support this.

If ebay management can get off their back sides and take a look at this thread, then may I suggest you get your arses in gear and start to working for the very companies that pay thousands a year in subs or risk going under in my honest opinion.

That's my rant over.

[emeraldtarpon]

yeah,I once was whatever should apologise.

[lyndal1838]

yeah,I once was whatever should apologise.

For what??

[rusty9292001]

Can I direct you to a post I just put up about US ebay.com Seller Protections, as I feel many of us sellers here in Australia are being neglected.

I am only a very small seller, in fact I buy ten times more items than I sell on ebay. Never the less I've had enough dealings as a seller to have a list of issues with both "Bad Buyers" and ebays customer support.

I have contacted ebay support by telephone but usually get someone who has a poor grasp of English and no familiarity with Australian phrasing/language, which makes comunicating details very difficult and frustrating. I have tried emailing, but apart from the automated email I never here anything else in response to my issues raised. So after getting no where via these two methods I usually just go straight to "live help", I have had some very good dealings with these representatives, however I have also had some very dissapointing non-outcomes due to un-skilled, ignorant or un-interested staff, and like someone else said often issues and handed from one representative to another and they don't know the whole story from the beginning.

What more can we do they don't have any local office to visit that I am aware of...

As for your drastic and sudden drop in sales, it seems most likely that "system changes" were the culprit.

Are you able to determine what area (location, demographic, products etc) have been most affected? so as to consider any other outside contributing factors like the comparitive cost of postage here in Australia, especially if your products are competing against China where postage is rediculously cheap?

On the cost of Chinese postage, how can they send something to my door here in SA for less than an Aussie seller can, when it is Australia Post who bring it to the house anyway, and this is after the longest part of its journey has already been covered... am I missing something??