Ebay Sales Completely Dead **November 2024** ‌

[theglo-68]

Hi

We have been selling on ebay for over 10 years. Sales have been down since start of 2024 but its completely dead. Like we look at our stats from July to September and sales figures are less that what we are paying ebay for Promoted listings etc.

Although we have moved our inventory to Amazon and tiktok but wondered what has actually happened to our Ebay. It used to be aweseome but we now cannot even afford to list.  Listings are sat there doing nothing even with promoted listings.

November has been our difficult month so far as with Zero sales i mean come on there got to be something causing this loss. Is it new so called AI.

Please share your findings.🤔🤔

🤔🤔🤔

[vintique*violet]

I am confused... I had a look to see if you were selling anything I would be interested in, but is shows a year old account with zero sales or listings? 

[wavesales]

Hi exponential,

Same here, it's now 64.3% down for this month, how are they going to get out of this?. Over half the sales that has ever happened in a month in 20 years. Someone somewhere has seriously messed up! 

[primeretail_9]

Interesting to hear from sellers who sell on other platforms like Amazon, TEMU, Tiktok, Vinted etc. Is this just an Ebay issue or are buyers just waiting for Black Friday deals? We are getting views but the conversion has dropped in the last couple of days. It has been up & down this month. 

Looked at TEMU  to see what it is about and they are doing some ridiculously cheap deals with free shipping and free Returns . It is hard to see how the sellers are making any money. They are selling shoes for like £8 with free shipping. As a seller after the shipping costs you would be left with £5 at best so I am not sure what's left after the cost of the item is deducted and any marketplace commission. I can see why a lot of buyers are moving over 

[vroomthere]

How is your sales on Amazon?

[vroomthere]

How are your sales on Amazon?

[typo_lee]

I really don’t see what people like about Temu as it appears to be all cheap Chinese tat but I guess if people are skint they will shop there. It’s all giving the Chinese more power and is actually quite concerning long term 

[typo_lee]

Our Amazon store is very busy

[typo_lee]

Another big problem is eBay sellers duplicate listings. We have a competitor who has listed the exact same item 7 times over. We have contacted eBay and they aren’t interested even though it’s supposed to be against eBay policy! So the first page of search results is literally just duplicates of the same item. Who wants to buy off eBay when it’s throwing up dodgy search results such as that? 

[iceblue_uk]

November sales down 75% of normal. Been complaining about the 'Research Products' page not working right for weeks, at the most crucial time of the year, but they clearly cannot fix it, just like all the other bugs and site glitches we are plagued with on a daily basis. Instead, the IT department spends time and money changing lots of little things sellers really could not care less about, like making buyer's postcodes visible on the manage orders page and adding a leave feedback button... AWESOME. Their response to my complaint about product research and terrible sales? Have an advertising manager call me. His advice? Put all my listings on an 'AI' controlled 'Smart' promo. Like all my listings aren't on a promo of one kind or another already, as they have to be these days if you want to sell anything here. So now we have a cost of selling on ebay which is coming close to 40% of sales, that's not only incredibly greedy but ultimately unsustainable. The promo bidding wars they started a few years ago by opening up the standard promotion rate from 20% up to 100%, then again by  introducing pay per click, has had the expected effect of driving up consumer prices to the point that ebay is now the most expensive site to buy things, so sales have slumped. The site now suggests promo rates of 18+% on nearly all our listings and suggested pay per click rates are now reaching £1+ per click. On top of everything else, the recent 'Halo promoted sales' idea means even many of our 'organic' sales are now counted as 'promoted' with zero benefit to sellers. When I asked about this on the weekly chat, incredibly, I was advised that this idea was actually for our benefit, so that we can more clearly see how our promotions are performing. Really? Nothing to do with an significant increase to ebay's promotion fees for doing absolutely nothing then? We are lucky if 2 out of 10 sales are organic these days, it's sometimes as low as 1 in 10. We are seeing dwindling traffic and ebay stealthily ramping up fees to compensate. I think we'll soon be done here.

[spence0175]

Another thing that is off putting to buyers  is certain categories inability to use filters. The dollshouse category if you search all you cannot filter to uk only. The same has happened to now vintage toys.

i haven’t got time to wade through 1000s of listings.

And a friend who is only a buyer said she does t look as often because she is totally fed up with it.

it was something that I posted about months ago, someone was looking into it but nothing was ever done.

We do not look for anything in particular, whatever we fancy at the time…

[divine0606]

Well said @iceblue_uk you hit the nail on the head i totally agree with everything you said ebay is no longer viable for sellers there is no margin in fact they’ve taken all the margin, some may say increase prices to cover costs but that has opposite effect buyers just not wanting to pay more they have really effed up the site where concentrating on Amazon at least they have good traffic 

[vintique*violet]

I did not know what Temu was so looked it up - apparently the " app" is hacked often and steals your private info , sells your data and takes money out of bank accounts in small increments over months  ( for no reason) before people notice? There is plenty of info on the net about it. 

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

For the vast majority of small full time businesses Ebay cannot be a viable platform these days.

It's very simple, Ebay takes way too much of the revenue businesses create, you cannot be paying 30 - 50% in fees when you also have to buy stock, pay for the postage, pay a wage / wages, pay for storage, insurance etc etc.

I am hardly seeing any newly created businesses on here these days, all I see is existing businesses holding on and private sellers.

As I say it's all very simple yet Ebay doesn't seem to get it.

Ebay must have a better plan of action in place, they must (surely) otherwise in 12 - 24 months time who is paying for Ebay UK to exist ?

[bojangled]

@typo_lee 

I have a private seller competitor doing the same, 6 listings multiple quantities,  changed the photo, category and title in each one.

They’ve driven the price so low it’s not worth me competing. 
Reported months ago, eBay not interested. 
Jo

[pg_kicks]

Temu is basically a app that can sell all your data as its Chinese (who are you going to complain to), create knock off products in slave conditions and take advantage of the archaic postage rules. I do my fair share for keeping the environment in a half decent condition but it seems a bit pointless having a bottle top attached to a bottle when people are buying some slave made cheap plastic toy for £3 from China and having it shipped half way around the world for it to break within 3 uses and then thrown in the bin.

[johnwash1]

This week I needed 8 shelf supports for some twin-slot uprights I already have.  Due to habit I looked here first.  Found I could get them for £1.89 each, because I was buying several.  Went to Amazon.  Same thing, £10.60 for a pack of 10.  No brainer.

Either the ebay search is rubbish these days (hint, it is) or sellers are being so gouged with fees they can't compete.  Or both.

Luckily ebay's CEO and directors are reading these forums and will act swiftly to turn this situation around.  Best wishes for Xmas and 2025.

[pg_kicks]

The thing that blows my mind is some pretty high up people in eBay do read the boards, its how they discover half the issues as there is a major issue with cs reporting issues back to the correct people (don't we all know) yet nothing ever gets fixed but they find time to change stuff that isnt broken.

[johnwash1]

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@pg_kicks wrote:

The thing that blows my mind is some pretty high up people in eBay do read the boards, its how they discover half the issues as there is a major issue with cs reporting issues back to the correct people (don't we all know) yet nothing ever gets fixed but they find time to change stuff that isnt broken.

---

Fascinating.  I'm not doubting you, but since things so rarely get fixed and tinkering counter-productively is rife, what's your evidence for the high ups reading here?

[ps: I, for one...  https://youtu.be/8lcUHQYhPTE?t=30 ]

[pg_kicks]

When I say higher ups I sadly don't mean Eve or Sholto level but genuine managers who should/could have some power. When at open events I've met staff who know me by my username (unless they really love trainers) but some have told me that this is the place they find out about issues as they rarely get told it from customer services when people report them until its gone on for way too long.

[bravergrace]

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@british-ceramics-and-paintings wrote:

For the vast majority of small full time businesses Ebay cannot be a viable platform these days.

It's very simple, Ebay takes way too much of the revenue businesses create, you cannot be paying 30 - 50% in fees when you also have to buy stock, pay for the postage, pay a wage / wages, pay for storage, insurance etc etc.

.....

Ebay must have a better plan of action in place, they must (surely) otherwise in 12 - 24 months time who is paying for Ebay UK to exist ?

---

But eBay are to be testing the waters for a massive fee reduction for business sellers, with the removal of fees for used "apparel" (they use the word, unfortunately, in the American sense of "clothing" rather than the British sense of "anything you can wear").   

They plan to charge fees to buyers.  Whether this will work, is yet to be determined.  

Obviously eBay want to avoid the humiliation of doing a U-turn like Poshmark if buyers won't stomach the fees.  

And there is also the regulatory hurdle - will the UK authorities accept the idea of a marketplace basically charging buyers a fee for the privilege of receiving their legal right of return?  If the government doesn't like it, it could be illegalised in one fell swoop.  If the government does like it, it might get extended to other websites or even physical shops.

"Buy this TV at BigSupermarkets for only £2.99 (+ £399.99 non-refundable buyer protection fee to give you peace of mind).  In the unlikely event that your TV doesn't work, we will of course refund your £2.99 FREE OF CHARGE as long as you return it still sealed in its original packaging, and with all security tags intact.  This protection is in addition to your statutory rights)."

It could turn into the biggest consumer scandal since the Extended Warranty or Mortgage Protection Policies.