eBay shooting own foot again? Uproar over BIN changes

[johnwash1]

Perhaps there'll be a sudden influx of sellers here soon. Ebay has decided that BIN listings have to be "Good till cancelled", which really means they run for 30 days and then get auto-relisted. But all sorts of conflicting info has been handed out over whether the relists will incur a charge. Announcements are ambiguous, and, as so often's the case, ebay customer support reps are telling different stories.

Interesting times.

[bluebedouin]

Perhaps there'll be a sudden influx of sellers here soon. .....

[moonwitch]

Totally agree lol

[rocks2dust]

Not sure where they'll show up, but there does seem to be yet another outflow of long-time, credible sellers. Each time this happens, their places are taken by yet more of the sellers of cheap knock-offs and outright fraudulent goods. Less and less reason to buy there, let alone sell.

[theElench]

I've thought that every other time Obey shot its own feet since I joined up here. That was back when they introduced FVF on P&P. The increased number of sellers who list more than a couple of items in the glass category I use since then? Zero.

[johnwash1]

OK, I admit it was an unusual outburst of optimism on my part!

But the aspect that particularly surprises me is that the community forums over there used to be strongly policed, any mention of ebid was obliterated. Whereas now people get away with mentioning us, along with faecesbook, tw*tter, etsy, spock, d'camp and many more. Seems like they no longer care whether small sellers stay with them or not, the focus is on chinese tat.

[theElench]

That's true but they can see that the boards are in decline over there with fewer contributors so comments are less likely to be read by many people either. The Community Team down to just poor old Sarah, who can hardly be bothered to answer questions or check her facts if she does. One of the execs. compared small sellers to "background noise".

Their management doesn't bother to keep small sellers up-to-date with changes and don't really care if they stay or go, sell or not. IMO the only reason they are tolerated is to be advertised at and hopefully buy from the tat sellers. I think that even the pretence of interest in small sellers has gone.

[littledelving]

Firstly I can confirm that meanbay have changed all BIN to GTC 30 day autorenew, but only for private sellers. Another policy that discriminates unfavourably against private, small sellers. It is certainly possible that meanbay could start charging for GTC BIN listings. However one would hope they would send out a notification first to give folks the chance to close their BIN listings before they auto-renew. Were such a change made, it would be the end of the line for most private sellers I should think.
Another more immediate issue is that meanbay have changed the algorithm on searches which as a buyer is rather annoying. As far as I can tell it works as follows. If you search lowest price incl P&P which most people do, private seller auctions dont appear at the top (business seller auction dont seem to be affected). Instead, private seller auctions appear after all the other listings where you might have found 'items which only part match your description'. So, taken together with the changes to BIN listings, its a double whammy against small sellers

[tony41]

Firstly I can confirm that meanbay have changed all BIN to GTC 30 day autorenew, but only for private sellers. Another policy that discriminates unfavourably against private, small sellers. It is certainly possible that meanbay could start charging for GTC BIN listings. However one would hope they would send out a notification first to give folks the chance to close their BIN listings before they auto-renew. Were such a change made, it would be the end of the line for most private sellers I should think.
Another more immediate issue is that meanbay have changed the algorithm on searches which as a buyer is rather annoying. As far as I can tell it works as follows. If you search lowest price incl P&P which most people do, private seller auctions dont appear at the top (business seller auction dont seem to be affected). Instead, private seller auctions appear after all the other listings where you might have found 'items which only part match your description'. So, taken together with the changes to BIN listings, its a double whammy against small sellers

This is eBid not Ebay so why are we discussing Ebay in such detail. The OP only referred to the Ebay changes in the context of the possibility that there would be a number of sellers who might move onto eBid.

[theElench]

If you search lowest price incl P&P which most people do, private seller auctions dont appear at the top (business seller auction dont seem to be affected). Instead, private seller auctions appear after all the other listings where you might have found 'items which only part match your description'. So, taken together with the changes to BIN listings, its a double whammy against small sellers

I think that explains why, when I was researching a selling price yesterday, I found the most relevant items at the bottom of the pile in "Results with fewer words" or similar. As it was only a quick search I didn't bother with my usual filters, I suppose I was searching Best Match, which is a complete misnomer.

I have to disagree with you about lowest price + p&p. For Collectables IMO most buyers would use Newly Listed or Ending Soonest. The big problem for sellers is that GTC only shows up as Newly Listed once, the re-lists don't appear. Plus, as collectables are overwhelmingly one-offs there is no point to keeping the sales history. So this compulsory GTC move has big consequences for sellers of collectables by turning most listings into ones designated as "Underperforming" and pushed down the visibility scale.