Time for a Level Playing Field...

[collectablecats]

Let's call a spade a spade. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of 'private' sellers  on ebay who are trading. And the number of their listings is ballooning as they get rolled over for free every month.

I often check other listings before deciding whether to list a card I have, and its not unusual to discover 'private' sellers with many thousands, even tens of thousands of sales, and hundreds or thousands of free listings that roll over for free every month, meaning their 'shops' get bigger and bigger, slowly making business listings harder to find. Just yesterday I discovered a 'private' seller in my category with 26,000 sales and 2000+ listings - all sitting there free of change and paying no commission when they sell.

There is no way to address this effectively without LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD  and giving all sellers the same deal when listing and paying commission. This is what happens in the USA an in Australia, where you also get a huge number of 'free' listings when you pay for a shop compared to here in the UK.

Sure, give private sellers 20 or 30 free listings a month - who, listing things they want to get rid of, would honestly need more -  but include the monthly roll-overs in that total so they have to decide whether to keep those items running, just like businesses do.  And charge them commission on sales. 

Ebsy likes to call itslef a 'community' - but when the community leaders make businesses pay through the nose to allow their competitors to have everything free, it doesn't feel like a community for many legitimate businesses on here. Especially when they are then invited to pay even more to 'promote' items, so they have a better chance of being seen among the vast sea of 'private' listings they have been subsidising.

One hopes eBay will one day place 'community' values at the heart of their 'community' and treat businesses fairly by reintroducing a level playing field. 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I would love to know what the "magical listing" experience is?

[collectablecats]

I understand it

[cobwebcottage]

It's 300 listings per month x 12.

If a PS already had 4,000 listings before the changes, they can have 7,600 now.

There is a regular PS who comments on the boards with around this amount of listings.

[collectablecats]

As I understand it, it’s something to do with taking a photo of your item and AI then tells you what it is and describes it. I’m not sure whether it suggests a price as well. 

I haven’t heard anything about it here, so perhaps it’s just an idea for the future or being offered elsewhere.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

It's an actual real thing then.  I thought it was just the AI making stuff up!  :

Found this, which is interesting, though whether or not it's usefull as a tool is something else .

https://innovation.ebayinc.com/stories/magical-listing-tool-harnesses-the-power-of-ai-to-make-sellin...

According to that, 95% of those using it, used the AI description.
Which I would be more likely to call lazy....  

From the various AI descriptions that I've seen, they are useless and cannot be relied on at all.

Can they not see, that all they need to do to make listing quicker and simpler, is to remove all of the various extras that require us to use?  Everywhere else seems to manage without them, why on earth can't ebay?

[the_brick_lodge]

Hope it works better than the image search, usually it brings up random stuff that sort of looks like what you've taken a photo of so then you go to Google Lens which finds the exact correct thing, usually with the first result being an eBay listing. 

[maarsy]

actually it is legal , ebay themselves state that you can have a private and business account . and i still have a level of personal items that i should not have to pay fee's on when i want to sell them