Feels like someone just switched off the sales

[thetimetower]

Gone from £300-500 a week to nothing. I can see where i'm losing out and it's frustrating. Chinese sellers pretending to be in the UK offering same products as me with 75% off and ebay refuses to do anything

[*vyolla*]

Many of the Chinese sellers have fulfilment centres in the UK, the item location will be shown on the listing at the top.

I'm not sure what you're expecting eBay to do here?

[thetimetower]

The ones i'm on about its coming from china cuz u can see in the feedback that they need to wait weeks. Ach nothing tbh just feeling sorry for myself lol

[*vyolla*]

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@thetimetower wrote:

The ones i'm on about its coming from china cuz u can see in the feedback that they need to wait weeks. Ach nothing tbh just feeling sorry for myself lol

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I'm still not sure what the issue is here?

If the item is coming from China and the item location states China then buyers will see an estimated delivery date. If it goes past that date they can open an eBay item not received claim and leave appropriate feedback if they wish. However, some buyers don't bother to check the item location or the estimated delivery date, they just search for the cheapest item and buy it, then are surprised when it doesn't arrive in two days. 

A problem with the items you're buying to resell is that they seem to be products that loads of other sellers are also selling and some are selling them way cheaper. For example, if I click on your UV Ultraviolet Rechargeable Flashlight listing I see sponsored ads for the same product with the same photo for £5.89 and £4.20 with free postage and yours is £8.99 + £2.50 postage. 

[simplyessential_uk · Accepted solution]

Your FB at 97.7% wont be doing you any favours nor the 4.8 star rating for description, if you have high returns or open cases that will also go against you then again this will effect your rankings. You can also check on your dashboard if you are a TRS (top rated seller) or if you are falling below standards as this will effect you massively.

[thetimetower]

Thanks I am on track to be a top rated seller on the 20th. Some of the feedback has been so unfair but that's the game i guess. Just had another 2 returns cuz "didnt know what this was" sigh

[thetimetower]

On a side note, your shop is incredible. I tip my hat to you x

[simplyessential_uk]

This maybe the issue (or not) last week has been bad for me, but I get good weeks & bad, like you say... thats the game, just keep going

ps, thanks for the compliment.

[keeptheroof]

Supose you could look at what's changed, that we know of, in the last few weeks.

Postage? Have your items dropped on the search for "lowest price inc P&P" ? Perhaps.

I too noticed an odd difference but I'm a private seller. My most sold items have dried up but I seem to be selling more to overseas buyers and some items I had listed for ages have sold.

[thetimetower]

I always just offer free postage and increase price. I just find i seem to do worse with any kind of postage charge. I get its purely psychological but it is what it is. Atm ive gone from £300+ a week to £0. Totally demoralised me. None of new products will sell for even pennies so having a break from it all.

[theelench]

I sell glass on ebay and on another platform as a private seller.

I did try "Free" postage on ebay some years ago, as they always seem to say it will help sales, but found that (for me) it had the opposite effect, my sales stopped.  So I returned to offering RM 2nd Class at the over the counter rate, sales started again.

On the other site I've always offered the over the counter rate, but rounded the price down to the nearest pound or 50p.  Buyers there seem to like what appears to be the small saving.  I've recently increased my postage from £3 to £3.50 and since doing so, my sales there have stopped completely.

I can only suggest that a bit of experimentation might help.   Some people here seem to like seeing the Stamp price, others do like to see a 'saving'.  Having noticed that most sellers will have increased their postage a visible reduction might help ?

[keeptheroof]

I'm an old git, I've sold things everywhere for many years, as a business and private. I'm also a collector so I've always been trading something for something else. I have a theory on how "free post" works;

It depends on you main customer profile. Are they just surfing shoppers, are they actively looking for an items, are they collectors savvy with market prices? All these people use the search option (or not) in different ways.

If you are selling to people who understand eBay & the market they are buying is then "free post" is most likely to work better because these buyers will use the "cheapest price inc postage" option. This means your item is competing with all others for the top of the search. And if you get the top few pages your items will be seen.

Other people not used to eBay or for "some other" reason doesn't understand the are these search options and they'll just search on "price". In this case, if you include postage it's unlikely you item will be sorted on the top few pages so you'll not get clicks from these people. The problem is these people are the most likely to buy on a wim. 

When I return to ebay to sell of my stuff I used both methods because IMO it's two different markets.f

[thetimetower]

Thank you mate and it is amazing to hear from people whove been in this game a long time. Well funny story is I've been with ebay from the start and i made a fortune in the mid 90s but unfortunately selling pirate video cds. This was before torrents etc so yeh i got raided and it was groundbreaking case when i was 16 haha. In hindsight now it is hilarious as everyone and their dog is using iptv etc. But it stoped me being naive. Nowadays its a much tougher gig tho and i have no experience with ebay since it became like this huge cash grab. I remember the original creator (used to chat away to us, thats how much the net has changed) always said hed never want it to become like this....but then they flashed the cash and i guess he forgot haha tbh so would i

[keeptheroof]

You don't have tell me about how it used to be mate I still miss Mosaic 🙂

But you have change with the times I suppose.