Why oh, oh why? Are you still selling on this platform?

[max-power-models]

Sad reading through all these seller posts, low sales, manged payment systems. ZERO support from ebay. I stopped selling on this joke  years ago.  No fees,  no frauds. No goal post getting changed all the time, no jumping through hoops. No Stress. Enjoy.

[minimum_56]

You may want to 'refresh' (end & relist) your listings every couple of months as ebay may 'delete' any underperforming listings...I can't remember how long a listing can 'roll over' without a sale - but I think there is a time limit (or there used to be).

[imastawka]

I remember reading it may be 12 months before they're deleted.

Could be wrong

[twyngwyn]

Inactive listings policy | eBay

[jellybirddesigns]

Thanks for that info!

I will definitely keep an eye on the listings.

Sometimes Ebay randomly puts listings into a tab called "Unsold", even though the listing may have had a sale in the previous 12 months. I will keep a lookout for anything that ends up in there.

[digital*ghost]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I have my own website, plus the eBay store, and one more store on another site. 

I favour my website above the other two for obvious reasons, and I put the bulk of my effort into building it, which is working and I've started to get overwhelmed on occasion from the volume of sales that come through all three - consequently, I've started to think about culling one of the other stores (i.e. eBay or the other one, which is also a 4-letter word starting with E and ending in Y). 

Not that long ago, eBay would have been culled without second thought. The other site is more expensive, but the buyer base suits me better and weekly sales are currently a lot higher than eBay's, and I guess if turnover alone was the only thing that mattered to me, that choice would still be clear (with awareness to the fact that because I have favoured the other platform over eBay, I've actually neglected my eBay store quite a bit the last year or so, which has - I'm sure - contributed to the waning sales). 

The thing is... I dislike them them both. Quite vehemently at times, but I've come to realise eBay actually doesn't have the same contempt for sellers that the other one does. 

If you need to talk to CS on the other site... good luck with that. You might - if you're very, very lucky, get onto chat, but most of the time you will have to send an email and cross your fingers you get a reply that's helpful, which generally takes 2+ weeks. Meanwhile I can hop onto eBay chat and get a resolution to a problem within about 20 minutes most of the time. 

Protections and other help for sellers during covid? ebay has suprised me with some of the initiatives they implemented and they continue to place visible alerts as well as extend ETAs in line with current delays. The other one? Still has 1-3 business days listed as the average delivery time for international express, and absolutely no PSAs surrounding delivery times, let alone anything like fee relief that eBay did. 

Someone left you a bad review for something you mention explicitly in the description, show in photos etc? eBay will remove it within minutes, the other one? Lol, nah. They'll only remove a neg review if you're a "star seller" (and to be a star seller, you have to have a very high rate of full 5-star reviews, thus getting one dodgy review can exclude you from being able to get it removed 😆), and the review itself has to be about the postal service rather than your item. Occasionally they might remove one if feedback extortion was involved. 

Need to block a problematic buyer? Here, you can prevent them from purchasing entirely. Over there, the best you can do is prevent them from following you and getting notifications about new items you list. 

Don't want to pay for third party advertising? It's optional on ebay, as is on-site promotions with the other site, but not everything is, since you are permanently opted into paying for Google ads on sales at a rate of 12% of the sale total (including any VAT, GST or sales tax the site has to collect themselves) in addition to all of their other fees - this applies if you have ever turned over more than $10k USD in a 12 month period, so not only do they hurt sellers that may have had one good year several years ago, but it actively encourages sellers to stifle their own growth. 

Charging parcel rates for an item? Try to ignore all the little passive-aggressive notifications that pop up on the other site, like "you are charging too much for postage, buyers sure won't like that" kind of stuff. Oh, and they seem to think US buyers are the only demographic that need catering to - so much so that they've introduced initiatives catering exclusively to US buyers that will hurt your search ranking (to US buyers) if you don't implement them, like providing free shipping to them on any item / order that is US$35+ 🙄

eBay is not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, I criticise them continually and will likely do so for as long as I'm here (request system needs a serious overhaul, and the protections that they introduced only for plus sellers, then expanded to TRS sellers, need to be made available to all). But - and it pains me to say this, to be honest - they are a lot better than I once thought they were, at least in comparison to other third-party platforms. 

[davewil1964]

Well said, d*g.

Merry Christmas.

[digital*ghost]

Thank you - and to you 🙂 

[springyzone]

That's a wonderful review. I don't sell on either site so it was so interesting to read of the comparisons by someone with real experience.

[glenbankloel]

Thanks for your comments Digi, we too sell on both platforms. 

And yes we also struggle with the other E site, with their preferential US centred strategies, but buyers are more interested in Hand made items there- which works for some of our pieces. 

We tried a website some years ago and struggled, many changes now in that space perhaps it's time to have another look, but won't be able to cope with 3 sites.

Would push us over the edge, (I would go a bit nutty), I am impressed that you can do it.  

We all have to make our own decisions, and always good to hear some thoughts from an actual user of both sites, it is interesting.

Good Luck for 2022, Happy New Year.

[chameleon54]

Some interesting observations there digi. Undoubtably there has been a shift in eBays attitude towards its sellers recently. The site used to be very buyer- centric in everything it did, often at the expense of sellers but this has changed. I suspect this is in direct response to experienced sellers leaving the site in droves over the past twelve months. 

If you study the published data on registered ebay buyer and seller numbers it is clear that ebays buyer base increased over the pandemic, but seller numbers where static. Recently eBay has also actually experienced a decline in gross sales volume. When one considers that eBay would have gained very large numbers of new sellers as people where sitting around the house for months, often without reliable income sources, the conclusion is obvious that a corresponding number of experienced, high value / higher volume sellers have left the site.

This observation is backed up in the way my different selling id's are treated by ebay. For my two lower sales volume id's it was basically business as usual with no obvious changes other than those publicly discussed. At the same time, my higher volume selling id was receiving messages and inducements aimed at encouraging me to stay on the platform including practical assistance to counter some of the major concerns regularly discussed on the boards. 

I suspect the shift to managed payments has had unintended effects for eBay and the numbers have been enough to get the attention of the suits in offices, resulting in a greater awareness of the need to value its sellers.