Promoted Listings Changes - You Must Be Joking, eBay

[superchallenge]

Email from eBay this morning. 

If I read it correctly, from 24th June, if you use promoted listings and ANYBODY clicks on the ad one time...if the item then sells to ANYBODY ELSE within the next 30 days, you get charged as if the first guy bought it.

That means that if Bob in Scotland clicks an ad and doesn't buy, but Steve from Wales rolls in 29 days later and finds the item in search and buys it without clicking on a promoted listings ad, you get charged because Bob clicked it almost a month ago.

It's all well and good saying "You'll still only pay when your items sell" eBay, but that isn't the point. We pay for promoted listings in order to help find A BUYER, not a browser. If somebody comes in and buys an item organically, then the ad hasn't done its job and we're not paying for it.

We'll be removing all of our promoted listings campaigns later today, as this starts in 32 days, which is extremely underhanded. The reason being that there's a 30-day attribution window, so if Steve clicks on one of our ads this Sunday, on June 24th when Bob buys the item without clicking an advert, we'll get charged.

[lamppostelectrical]

We've ended all promoted listings.  I strongly urge everyone to do the same.

[greatgiftshampshire]

the seller support lady that I spoke with who was very nice and apologetic, she had to agree that this was unfair and designed to get maximum commissions from us, she was only just made aware of this this morning and was as shocked as us all !! , also confirmed meeting this week and said there will be a lot of fall out regarding this, all conversations are recorded and will be passed to management I was told 

[zed1015]

Has Ebay been taken over by an Italian "Family" and they've put Fat Tony in charge ???

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Fair enough if they did.

But if that conversation is passed on to management, I would be willing to bet that she will lose her job over it.

That's not the kind of thing that you should be agreeing with a customer, regardless of how you feel you actually feel about it.

Empathise yes, but agree.....

[zed1015]

Or maybe Tango Trump has bought all the shares.

[cobwebcottage]

A lot of your listings are rarer, harder to find books or unique ( job lots). My view is a buyer will find them if they want them and you have no competition so why promote? I don't promote ( yes sales are down but I think they are in general.)

If I were selling brand new mass produced items, then it would probably be necessary to promote them.

'Personally I wouldn't mind paying so much in fees and commission if Ebay shop fees were less and the listing allowances were higher in line with US shops. However, with such high fees, high shop subscription, low listing limits and declining sales I'm going to have to start migrating to more alternative websites.'

Absolutely spot on!

[ventexclutches]

I would advise anyone who is against this should invest the time in getting on the phone to eBay and letting them know this is a very bad decision. Also mention this thread. 

[greatgiftshampshire]

well if she losses her job because she agreed then that shows ebay don't like to be criticised and are not listening , sad but true  

[gunslingerx81]

It’s one money grab after another with eBay now. It really is disgraceful and whoever is advising them on these policies should be fired.

The last one was “Look at this new 200% promotion! Isn’t it great? (If you don’t use it we’ll arbitrarily hide your listings and if you do then the we’ll go far, far over the daily budget you set in order to drain any last chance of profit from your listings).” Now it’s this, which OP summarised in the way I read it in. I don’t know how it can be construed any other way, and it’s an example of a company who has had zero pushback on their previous money hungry policy changes that screw over the seller completely, seeing how far they can push it.

I don’t care if it’s cutting my nose off to spite my face, they won’t learn unless we actually do something, so I’ve taken every single one of my listings off of promotion. They will stay that way until something changes, and if nothing does, then eBay gets nothing.

i fully expect another policy change adding a fee to every listing if everyone DOES take their listings off promotion, and then they’ll lose enormous numbers. I’ll be gone for one.

i tried Vinted and it sucked; it was just people offering less than half the price you have your listing up for, and the way they do postage is confusing and impenetrable to an old git like me, but it’s going to be my new home if things carry on in this manner.

I just don’t know how they think continually rinsing the people who provide the company with their money is a good idea.

[valueaddedresource]

eBay made this same change in Germany in February and a week in, sellers were already reporting seeing 80%+ of their sales incurring ad fees vs almost no organic sales.

https://community.ebay.de/t5/eBay-Advertising/Anpassungen-bei-eBay-Anzeigen/m-p/4921093#M1646

One seller there provided this screenshot of their sales before and after the change.

Unfortunately, this is what UK, Australia, Italy, France and Spain will be seeing starting next month and I won't be surprised to see it come here to the US before end of year too.

[adders31]

I guess many will stop using it, another home goal by the delusional fools in Cali 

My priority budget always ends by a Friday so it stops over weekends, it's about as dynamic as a Keir Starmer speech

[gunslingerx81]

I’ve tested this with around 50 people on Reddit, who I got to look for my listings and username when I took off the 200% promotion, and in a lot of instances, my username didn’t even come up, some listings didn’t, and even when I provided them with a link, they could see the listing, but my username and feedback score were greyed out and unclickable.

The way they make sure people on the 200% campaign get their clicks is by disappearing the listings of those who aren’t, and I proved it.

i know this is basically a ‘trust me, bro’ situation, but it is true, and if they do that to make the 200% campaign work, then they obviously do something similar for the 100% one; that’s why you had such a huge drop off that’s dichotomous to your original sale rate. I bet your views dropped massively, too. Like, you got about a tenth of what you were getting before. It’s because people searching can’t see your stuff, because if they find your stuff through searching and buy it immediately, eBay gets no money.

Anyway, I hope that clears some of your confusion up. If you do need proof, it will probably be a bit

of an undertaking but I can try and find the posts on my Reddit account and do some screenshots for you.

[yourgostore]

How many items realistically have only 1 person click on them, who also finds it without it being through ads, and then chooses to purchase straight away. An item like that needs to be highly sought after so it sells almost instantly, which makes promoting it a bit redundant because it will sell without being boosted. 

A promoted item is going to get random clicks by people who have no intent to buy. I've often clicked on listings in order to check a detail about a similar product I intend to sell, or just to check the pictures. And its more likely that I would do that to a promoted listing given its at the top of the results. 

[pulseofthedead]

I’m the same. Will never resort to PL. I have many one off items and see no point. Sales aren’t  brilliant compared to stock levels but I plod along, some weeks good, some not…

Perhaps everyone who does use PL does need to take a stand and turn them off.  Enough is enough…

The cash cows have been fully milked….

[gunslingerx81]

Excellent points, eloquently put. Thanks for this post, I found it very interesting and informative.

[ukpaper]

That is the problem, they haven't got any long term plan, so there you go, just another short term money grab, doesn't matter that ebay will go down in the long run (to be honest is going down already), as long as it's looks good on the accounting spreadsheets for another couple of months it's fine. People in charge don't care, there will find a new jobs. The only solution to improve ebay and get some buyers from other platforms it's to simplify everything and lower the fees, not increase them, but I think it's already too late, the people in charge are too far gone. Amazon always treated sellers like dirt, but at least they have traffic and plenty of buyers, Ebay decided to do the same, but they forgot that 50% of the buyers already moved away to other platforms, which either like Amazon offers better service, or which are simply cheaper like Vinted, Temu, or Aliexpress just to mention a few. It's a very bad decision from Ebay and that's on top of all other terrible changes they made recently. Instead of going for more buyers and sellers, they decided to milk the current shrinking amount of users even further. I think it's terrible and very short sighted decision.

[gunslingerx81]

That’s a really good point - there’s no way to tell if it’s a click from a potential buyer that’s genuinely interested in the item, or like you said and like I’ve also done, people who are just researching. It can’t work, and your point basically completely invalidates the idea of the policy.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Sorry, but no!

Think about it, if you had someone representing you to a customer, would you be happy about them calling you a money grabber, or worse?

Worked in support for a long time and you never ever publicly criticise your own company.
Especially when talking to a customer.

You empathise with a customer for the problem they have and try to resolve it.

If you have a criticism, then you bring it up with your manager etc.

To do otherwise, alienates your customers and loses you, your own job.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

i tried Vinted and it sucked; it was just people offering less than half the price you have your listing up for, and the way they do postage is confusing and impenetrable to an old git like me, but it’s going to be my new home if things carry on in this manner.

It's actually quite easy.

The offers you get are no different to the low ball ones you get on Ebay.

And when you sit down and work out what your actually getting, you may be surprised, even when selling quite a lot cheaper.

As regards postage, all you need to do, is to classify which size of parcel it will be, then forget about it.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I don't use it myself, except for very limited use on specific listings.

But frankly that will stop now if this goes ahead.

This change however makes it very easy to hurt your competitors if they advertising.

All you need to do is literally click their listings and they and guaranteed to pay full advertising fees when they sell.  Can see it getting abused a lot this one.