Multiple items

[rlkalltheway]

I haven't sold on ebay for a while and the last time I sold u weren't allowed to have more than one item exactly the same listed is that still the case? I sell handmade jewellery and collectible a mainly. If I were to list a necklace buy it now for say $30 would I be able to have the exact same necklace also running as an auction? Is it different if I open a store? I'm planning on opening a basic store in the next few days . I have a couple things listed atm , I just had a buyer as if I had more items the same and yes I do but I'm not game enough to list as I don't want to get in trouble. Can someone please clarify if this is still the case. Thanks 🙂

[harley_babes_hoard]

No you are not allowed to list duplicates, although it does seem to depend on who you are. I think you might need to change the title a little so the bots don't pick it up.

[digital*ghost]

You can't have duplicate BIN listings, but you are allowed to list an item as BIN and auction at the same time. You could - if the item was popular enough - have a BIN listing plus a few different auctions all running at the same time, but you have to be careful as the duplicate auction policy is a bit... erratic, as it were.

If you list several auctions for the same item and they end without selling, eBay can consider it a policy violation, whereas if the auctions sell consistently, it's not a policy violation. 

I'd probably just do the BIN with one auction.

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/listing-multi.html

[clarry100]

We have 2x stores.

We normally don't list auctions as the loss of the insertion fee when they don't sell is too much for us to recover.

When they hand out FREE listings we list lots of same items as auctions.

But all with different run times. e.g. 1, 3, 5 days etc. Maybe this makes them non-duplicates.

We have only ever been pinged once for a duplicate listing and that was a BIN listing where we had inadvertently doubled up. They removed it and notified us. We said oops! and moved on.

But every time we get the FREEs we do this and they have never once pinged us, no matter if/not the items sell. We've been doing this now for best part of a year.

So we are quite unsure of just exactly what the rule is here, seems a bit unclear, but so far so good.

[flyingcolours2009]

That's interesting, so what is the point of having Second Chance Offer option after bidding has finished?  Is that because it HAS sold perhaps??

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@digital*ghost wrote:

You can't have duplicate BIN listings, but you are allowed to list an item as BIN and auction at the same time. You could - if the item was popular enough - have a BIN listing plus a few different auctions all running at the same time, but you have to be careful as the duplicate auction policy is a bit... erratic, as it were.

If you list several auctions for the same item and they end without selling, eBay can consider it a policy violation, whereas if the auctions sell consistently, it's not a policy violation. 

I'd probably just do the BIN with one auction.

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/listing-multi.html

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@digital*ghost wrote:

You can't have duplicate BIN listings, but you are allowed to list an item as BIN and auction at the same time. You could - if the item was popular enough - have a BIN listing plus a few different auctions all running at the same time, but you have to be careful as the duplicate auction policy is a bit... erratic, as it were.

If you list several auctions for the same item and they end without selling, eBay can consider it a policy violation, whereas if the auctions sell consistently, it's not a policy violation. 

I'd probably just do the BIN with one auction.

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/listing-multi.html

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That's interesting, no duplicate listings, when one looks at the Second Chance Offer which appears after a sale, which I gather must be exactly the same as the original.  Is that because it did sell in fact??

There must be some merit in not only duplicate listings, but the SAME listing being regurgitated week after week.  I can only speak for clothes, but sometimes when I'm looking at completed listings for research purposes, I see the same item being unsold week after week ... admittedly sometimes they do reduce the price, which would help offset this.  I suppose it's not much different to sellers of, say, books who just recycle their listings over and over.  

But I wonder if buyers would consider such a regurgitation a bit frustrating, to the point where they may not bother?

Any thoughts from sellers/buyers?

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[davewil1964]

I often sell books that have been listed for months. The people who buy them don't seem to have an issue with how long they've been listed. I doubt they even know.

[digital*ghost]

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@flyingcolours2009 wrote:

That's interesting, no duplicate listings, when one looks at the Second Chance Offer which appears after a sale, which I gather must be exactly the same as the original.  Is that because it did sell in fact??

There must be some merit in not only duplicate listings, but the SAME listing being regurgitated week after week.  I can only speak for clothes, but sometimes when I'm looking at completed listings for research purposes, I see the same item being unsold week after week ... admittedly sometimes they do reduce the price, which would help offset this.  I suppose it's not much different to sellers of, say, books who just recycle their listings over and over.  

But I wonder if buyers would consider such a regurgitation a bit frustrating, to the point where they may not bother?

Any thoughts from sellers/buyers?

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The duplicate listing policy applies specifically to multiple listings for the same item at the same time, which is considered spamming and is mostly unnecessary. Relisting an item many times over is a bit different and wouldn't be counted as a duplicate listing for the purposes of the policy - which is basically trying to reduce auctions that are flooding categories without generating sales (eg 20 auctions for the same item at the same time, running weekly may receive a policy violation if only a small percentage ever sell). 

Second chance offer technically reduces listings, comparable in some ways to a BIN with best offer when you're talking about a seller who has multiples of the same item available in a single listing, and a seller can make as many SCOs as there were bidders if they wanted to. They're not searchable and are available only to the member who received the offer.