Leicester Roadshow

[pg_kicks]

As I said I'd give an update on what happened I thought I'd start a thread and if anybody else went have has helpful tips or feedback from what they found out they could add too.

Parking was good as I got there early, some did have issues but thankfully none for myself. I had a 1 to 1 booked for 9am and was pleased it wasnt with the person I done the Pro Trader with which ended 2/3 weeks ago as I wanted a fresh set of eyes to look over my listings, as I was waiting somebody turned up without an appointment and I overheard them being sat with the person I was meant to be with, questioning if I got it wrong I asked but was told O we have switched them around so X would see you as I know they have been working on the Pro Trader with you, I tried explaining I appreciated it but I was hoping a fresh set of eyes. Anyway I just sat with the person who had only told me 3 weeeks ago that my new listings were good, just could add my item specifics. 

As that lasted 30 seconds conversation turned to any issues I had, obviously we know the top one businesses on private accounts, the mentor already knew this was coming but she did message somebody who deals with account changes and have promised me an email with anything she finds out, if I done hear anything by next week I will just send an email asking. 

The show started at 9:30 with the business speak coming from Sholto Mee (didnt catch his surname so googled that) started talking about how eBay are leading the way with preloved and reusing clothing, actually said its great for the environment how its now free to sell preloved clothing on eBay. Quickly then added and how is this great for business sellers, I was waiting for this ground breaking great news for business sellers, well it brings more buyers to the site, they claim buyers who sell are buying twice and much as buyers who dont sell. So the great news for business sellers is that they hope it brings in more buyers, it was far from the great news I was hoping.

Next session was a panel from successful sellers, 1 sold stamps and 2 sold preloved clothing, one had his own deals with eBay regarding returns and promos so unless you are huge his current story I felt was a bit pointless, granted might be helpful on how he grew it, but having 2 in the exact same category seemed a waste. Didnt really find much helpful in this segment but maybe some people did.

The session before lunch was on promoted listings, basically eBay as we all know want us to promote and pay more. Moved quickly over standard and spent 75% of the time on advanced, the 5 or 6 sellers I spoke to at lunch at advanced all agreed that if you have a very niche item it sounds great but if you are seller general items you will be wasting every single penny but the speaker sold Advanced promo as the great thing since slice bread. I spoke to a seller who was selling niche computer items and he was in then target audience but when i showed him one of my listings had 250 views in a week he agreed that having advanced on anything like that is business suicide.

Lunch was great, food much better than Manchester and got to speak to buyers about what they sell and the usual stuff.

One the afternoon is was about how to grow sales, and get better listings, all pretty basic stuff, item specifics are important and a good title and picture, was amazed they stretched this out for over an hour. Only thing that really stood out is they were talking about a listing and all 4 experts missed that the title and item description had a different shoe size mentioned so thats basically a 50% chance of it being returned as INAD.

I didnt stay for the last session which was about eBay seller capital or the drinks as I had work to do.

Throughout the day I spoke to 8 different ebay representative plus the  pro trader that I saw at 9am and only the Pro Trader team member who I had already spoke to knew about the issue of private accounts being used by a business, when I brought it up 2 actually asked if I had a private account I sell on using the free listings. One that I spoke to seemed to brush it off as not really a big issue and when I was talking to somebody else after they asked if I had any issues on eBay came over and said we already have spoken about this and I said I will pass it on, they had to be quickly shot down by the other staff member to be told they opened the conversation about issues and not myself.

To tie it all up, if you have been on ebay as a business for over 6 months I'd say the roadshow is a bit pointless especially if its not in your city, its a selling pitch for advertising and the information they give it pretty basic. I know everything is already on youtube but as its a demo to over 200 people they just speak to the group, whereas at the Open event in the smaller 'classroom' style talks it felt a lot more beneficial.

I did mention the EDD but Im having a chat to somebody in the shipping team hopefully next week, just trying to find a time which works so I didnt think there was any need to bring this up.

Also just a heads up the Open event in is September this year and in Birmingham, not sure if its been announced but it was on the screens in the 'networking' room. I found the open event much more helpful than the Roadshow for somebody who has been on eBay longer. Im hoping that I do hear back from the multiple people I talked to about the businesses on private accounts as they all said they would but what really amazed me is that even though we are told its passed back not a single staff member knew about it and the issues we are having, some of these staff arent just customer service agents.

Sorry its such a long post but hopefully others have found it more helpful and can chime in.

[john8150_0]

Thanks for taking the time to report back on the event in such a clear and concise manner.

I've done the pro-trader scheme and didn't get much from it other than item specifics, which ties in with what you were told again at the event.

Re. promoted listings, I'll close my shop and send my entire stock to auction before I pay ebay another penny in fees. Before they started all of that promoted scamming we used to have a fairly level playing field. Anchor stores received a bit more visibility but it was costing them a fair chunk of cash each month so they deserved it. All ebay have done is push medium level sellers down to low volume sellers. Eventually the race to the bottom will finish and the playing field will level out again.

Private seller accounts are the bane of my life. Every time I do an item search in my category you can gaurantee that at least half of the returned sold listings are on private accounts. One guy was bidding against me in local salerooms (either pushing my bid up to the point of zero margin or winning the lot) and immediately listing the items from the lots on ebay reduced selling fee for private sellers days. Impossible for me to compete when I factored in selling fees, tax, accountancy fees etc. 

I'll be surprised if ebay do anything about it at all.

[kempseykate]

Thanks for the updates. Shame you didn't mention the EDDs though!

I can't believe that at a meeting for business sellers they had the audacity to mention no fees for clothes selling!

TBH I  think most of the ebay staff have no idea about selling on ebay - they push item specifics and (obviously) the money grabber that is promotions. But I don't think they have much idea beyond that. When I used to be a business seller I found it totally frustrating that they had no real idea about selling, just the read-from-a-script company line, and suggestions that would bring ebay more money.

Do update us when you have your EDD chat!

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Thanks for your efforts with this, much appreciated.

All in all it seemed very uninspiring and the issue with business sellers trading on private accounts seems more likely to get worse than better.

There really does seem to be very little on the table for business sellers which continues to be extremely disappointing. 

[pg_kicks]

I could sense the EDD was pointless bringing it up, I mentioned to a few about issues I have with AGS and they never knew about those either, these are people who work in the AGS department so nothing gets reported back. End goal is to get a call regarding those and the businesses on private accounts and as I'm already getting the call regarding EDD I decided only complaining about 1 thing to each person was probably the best route, apart from the mentor who knows I only complain as the issues if fixed will bring eBay more funds in so already had the rapport with her.

If anyone is going to the Bristol (I think its there) or Ireland event I'd recommend bringing the issue up again as then they cant just fob it off as 1 person. I'd also add it did feel like when I was bringing up issues with the staff that I was an issue for not saying the sites great and everything works well to atleast half of the eBay staff, I did keep informing them that sellers are ebays customers not buyers so they should be crawling over broken glass to help satisfy us with a working site.

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I asked a staff member if they could tell me what advantage business accounts have over private and they said events like this, ebay coupon events and buyers trust us more. Once I pointed out the ebay coupon events are mostly seller funded and the event meant I had to travel 3 hours there as they decided the north of England and Scotland didnt deserve an event and buyers didnt care if I was a business or private there were very little left as an advantage.

[padanpcparts]

Thanks for the detailed udpate. I was going to go as I'm close by, but in the end figured it would just be bla bla bla 'advanced promoted listings, give us more of your cash, bla bla'. They have really lost their way as a business. 

[pg_kicks]

I'd recommend the Open event as it did go into more detail and you can book into certain workshops for things like GSP or specific things, whereas this was just 5 talks and thats it and each one was a sales pitch pretty much.

[ojewellery]

For me the best bit of these events is generally meeting other sellers and being reassured by their experiences.    Its a bit like catching up on here, with a bit more of a positive slant.  You never know when you'll get that golden nugget.  

Based on what you've said, I'm glad that I didn't go.  Logistically it was just too challenging as things haven't been that stable at home.

I do get the not wanting to give eBay more fees philosophy but promotions can increase sales and its a numbers game to work out the sales volume x decreased profit due to fees to see what stacks up.  Plus all the nuances of halo effect of increased sales increasing traffic to organic listings and generating extra higher profit sales.  I'm trying to be a little colder about it and let the numbers do the talking.   The offsite ads are costing me very little and have a high ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend) - On the other hand promoted display just didn't work for me.  Different things work for different sellers.

Birmingham in September sounds exciting - don't suppose there were any dates that slipped out?

[pg_kicks]

I agree with using promo, I use the standard on some of mine, it was more the hard sell on the advance as I sat there thinking yeah this sounds good but then when I was talking to the computer seller he explained how I'd be throwing money away due to the clicks I get, he gets a sale every 5 views or so, I get a sale every 100, they never mentioned anything like this just the good points and how they have great success with it. If you were a new seller I'm sure its a great way to lose money.

I need to explore the offsite ads a bit, that was something I needed to look more into. The different things for different sellers is a great point, would be even better if eBay pointed this out, but they never, they sold it as a fit for all.

September 12th at the NEC was what they told me, it wasnt on the screens though, it just had September Open event, so im 95% sure it is those dates and location but obviously eBay is eBay.

[theelench]

"....I was waiting for this ground breaking news for business sellers,..."

So was I !  Even as a private seller I can see that anything radical for business sellers is bound to have a ripple effect on privates.  Thanks for taking the time to go into such detail.

"... well it brings more buyers to the site, they claim buyers who sell are buying twice as much as buyers who don't sell."

Have they only just discovered this startling revelation?  As a private seller I've been saying as much for years, even with my erratic sales pattern it's obvious that after all major changes and some not so major ones private sellers have left and "Drop in sales / Sales off cliff" threads have proliferated.

So it's now fee free to list in clothing ?  New sellers might arrive, but how long will they stay when the reasons that fueled the exodus are unchanged?  They might slog through the listing process.  They might make a sale, but more likely they won't.  If they do they then have to use their Hub to complete it.  Inevitably their payment will be held and how many will find out about INR and the MBG ?  How many will go through that more than once ?

Frankly I'm amazed at the reps. reaction when you brought up the problem of businesses using private accounts.  Don't they talk to each other?  Haven't they got any self-interested curiosity that might lead them to read the boards to find out what's going on the front-line that pays their salaries?

I've always smiled when it's said that the people who run ebay have never sold on the site, thinking that at least one attempt would be part of some training course, I now doubt that assumption, they now appear almost totally detached from the 'real' ebay.

[pg_kicks]

I also forgot that they were very heavily into AI when listing, talked up the item descriptions that it was writing great descriptions and the background remover on pictures, I've tried the item description and laughed at how bad it was but never used the picture editor. 

[theelench]

I'm beginning to wonder where ebay is going with AI .  At first I was sometimes unsure whether a description was of AI or human origin.  Now it seems it's learnt to use "stunning" in the first sentence of every description it writes.  Where is that leading?  Some sort of identi-kit listing format ?

[theelench]

Just to add to my post at #11, which I don't think explains fully why I, as a private seller, think ebay has had to go fee free on clothes.

Since the introduction of MP and the loss of paypal most changes have made the site more inconvenient,  difficult to use and less likely to be rewarding for private sellers.  For me culminating in the wholesale removal of most Collectables categories in favour of IS. 

Business sellers undoubtedly produce most of ebays income these days but, IMO, only while they had the army of private sellers behind them, buying their products, ebay has said as much.  But ebay has spent the last few years seemingly doing everything in its power to rid the site of them. 

The promise of free listings and regular FVF offers might have slowed the exodus but the trend in numbers has been continuously downward, as have sales by business sellers. 

From my experience on ebid I think it's true to say that business sellers are what makes a site rich.  But it's private sellers that enable the site to exist at all, survive for any length of time and if there are sufficient numbers, enable businesses and the site to thrive and grow profits.

To me ebay has probably realised that the critical balance between the two is no longer there, is in a panic and trying to get back some of what it has thrown away.

[the_book_seekers]

Thanks for your efforts - much appreciated.

ebay clearly isn't listening to feedback, despite statements to the contrary, and to a greater extent is deliberately ignoring the issue of the business use of private accounts. 

[ojewellery]

I'd like to start a thread on promotions, don't want to derail this one, just need to find time.  I understand what you're saying about needing more than  sale every 100 views for PLA (Promoted Listings Advanced) to work but your 1 sale every 100 views, I assume is organic?  This is based on all search terms - broad search.  Essentially anything vaguely related.

If fully optimised, PLA terms are very targeted.  Optimally, those clicking through to view would be higher than the 1 in 100.  I don't know what ROAS (Return On Advertising Spend) stacks up for you but your sell through on targeted terms should be significantly better than broad search organic terms.  Just to play numbers say with targeted terms you were getting 1 sale every 50 clicks and choosing to pay £0.1/ click.  Those 50 clicks would be £5 for a sale.  I'm guessing most of your stock is £100+ as we've had conversations on eBay authentication.  I don't know how tight your profits are, neither am I asking, but to me I think for higher value item sellers there is some potential. 

Optimally though, I believe that PLA is most effective for sellers who have higher value items with multiple quantities in stock that they can replenish.

I don't pretend to have my head around it, but feel we can't get away from the fact this is the way all channels are going and we need to keep up, to work out what stacks up for our individual business models.

I've got a tiny campaign running - helped by eBay advertising.  Just a handful of listings and low daily spend to start to get my head around it.  So far its okay - not mindblowing or as good as PLS (Promoted Listings Standard) or Offsite Ads, but worth it on the ROAS.  I paused a few weeks in to take a week away so don't have a clear month of data.  

[pg_kicks]

I really should look into it more, just going off that talk it seemed like it wouldnt work for me. my current ROAS is 33.57:1. It was more that I'd have to bid on words that are so broad but maybe it would work, I have the current promo from eBay so I should probably use it whilst its there. If you ever do get a spare bit of time or so I'd happily read a thread on promos and hwo everyone else find them. Like you say they are here to stay so we might as well jump on board if they help.

[lincolnshiremarine]

Hi

I was also at the Leicester road show for the purpose of bringing up ebays estimated delivery dates.  The person you mentioned, Sholto Mee ( Chief Commercial Officer),  I spoke to them about ebays delivery dates, they knew nothing about the issues.

I gave them a folder full of evidence to take back and look at, and went through the folder whilst there.  I explained I am not the only seller having issues and to just look on past weekly chats etc.

I did a 1-1 to discuss the postage issues, the person just told us to update our business policy and this may help.  What a load of rubbish so felt fobbed off by this.

They have promised me they will look into it.   Since coming back I have been asked to have a call with the shipping team next week too.

I have signed up for the pro trader advice, we will see what happens.

With regards the EDD's we need to keep complaining about this guys, even on the weekly chat.  It is the only way we can try and get this resolved.    

Best wishes

[prelovedsentwithlove]

Thank you for this 😊

[theelench]

"With regards to the EDD's we need to keep complaining about this guys. even on the weekly chat.  It is the only way we can try to get this resolved."

I'm sure we'd all like to think that but the EDD problem has been going on for over a year(?).  The fake private seller issue has been around for years, yet ebay reps. from the relevant Teams, that CS and the Community Team tell us they pass on complaints and reports to, have twice on this thread either don't appear to understand the scale of the problem, or said they don't even know there is a problem.

If both are sincere and not just fobbing everyone off, ebay has some serious internal communication problem IMO.