NO LONGER SELLING DUE TO SIMPLE DELIVERY

[rugbyguy1960]

AS OF 15TH APRIL MY DAYS AS A PRIVATE EBAY SELLER WILL STOP AFTER 19 YEARS.

I AM FED UP OF THE GREED OF EBAY AND I HOPE OTHER EBAY SELLERS DECIDE TO NO LONGER LET THE EBAY CONTROL FREAKS HAVE THIS MUCH CONTROL OVER PRIVATE SELLERS.

[superchallenge]

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but...

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@moonlight-rhapsody wrote:

AFAIK there wasn't a demand that sellers fees be abolished and switched to the buyer.  Most reasonable people accepted the sellers fee, even if was beginning to look a bit greedy. 

You're right, there was no demand to switch fees to the buyer. BUT, you only have to look at these very boards to see the amount of people who were near-constantly demanding that eBay lower fees, that eBay was Feebay, that eBay was Greedbay. You're right that most reasonable people accepted the fees and that it was only a minority that complained. Now, a lot of that same minority are speaking up and definitely, 100%, for sure, "I know I've said it 50 times before, but this time it's true" leaving eBay forever.

Only now when they talk, we're being told that the people have spoken and that they're actually the majority, that the site is dead, nobody is buying, and eBay will be out of business by Christmas. So which is it? Are the majority silent or are the majority taking action? 

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@moonlight-rhapsody wrote:

And the backlash isn't just verbal - it's obvious from reading the many complaints by both private sellers and businesses about sales being decimated.  Ebay have sabotaged their own platform with manipulated search results, buyers premium, item specifics, mis-identified categories etc, and that's before the difficulties of SD.  It's a master lesson in bad management.

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Again, you're right about the bad management, but I find it hard to believe ANY user reports - private or otherwise - of sales falling on eBay. Why? Because I read the same thing literally every month. Every single month is "the worst that I've ever seen in 22 years on eBay", every weekend is terrible, and every bank holiday is the pits. They're only doing 25% of what they were doing last year. It must be the end of days. eBay are going out of business. They shouldn't have to change. eBay are hiding their items and have turned off their personal sales switch because...I don't know...China, somehow. If this continues they'll definitely be closing their account in 2028 because it. Just. Ain't. Worth. It.

So, at what point does it start to become believable that SD and BPF have made any difference at all to sales, and that this isn't just round 12,932 of "it's everything other than a lack of demand for my items"?

(Note, I'm definitely NOT saying that there has been no negative impact. I'm sure there has. I'm just wondering what makes this month different to last month in terms of thinking that the world is ending.)

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"Because I read the same thing literally every month. Every single month is "the worst that I've ever seen in 22 years on eBay", every weekend is terrible, and every bank holiday is the pits." etc

Before this debacle, I'd only visited the forums a handful of times to ask a specific question and didn't hang around.  So I'll have to take your word for how it is every month.  Although perhaps it's telling that this is the first time I've rebelled, because Simple Delivery is different from all the other changes that ebay has made, and I doubt if I'm the only one.

[akemp1]

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@superchallenge wrote:You're right, there was no demand to switch fees to the buyer. BUT, you only have to look at these very boards to see the amount of people who were near-constantly demanding that eBay lower fees, that eBay was Feebay, that eBay was Greedbay. You're right that most reasonable people accepted the fees and that it was only a minority that complained.

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Regardless of it it was the seller or now the buyer paying fees there is a persistent theme that ebay do tend to take high fees especially now they are trying to make money on the postage too. Other places seem happy to charge lower fees and not make any obvious profit from the postage.

Today I bought a couple of £1 items at the V place and the combined buyer fee was 80p and the postage was £2.29 so around a fiver. No bundle discount this time. To get those same 2 listings on ebay even if the seller was still offering them at the same price would probably be over a tenner due to the inability to combine buyer tax or simple delivery and the more expensive managed delivery.

[andrewh1616]

eBay’s New Shipping Policy — I’m Done

eBay,

Your new policy forcing private sellers to use “Simply Delivery” is nothing more than a blatant money grab, driven by corporate greed and a complete disregard for the people who actually built your platform.

You’re exploiting sellers for your own profit, stripping away our freedom to handle our own sales and shipping. This overreach is unacceptable, and I won’t stand for it.

I’m done selling here. Until you reverse this exploitative decision, you can consider my business gone. I won’t return unless sellers are given back the control you’re attempting to take from us.

Good luck running a marketplace when you’ve alienated everyone who helped make it successful.

[heglo_59]

You're still selling from what I can see...

[sumnites]

On the matter of sellers not complaining about paying seller fees to validate ditching the Buyer Protection Fee many of those sellers enjoyed discounted selling fees weekends almost fortnightly. Those sellers were effectively selling for free or on the cheap. However there was a large amount of sellers of all creeds who never got the fee offers called the February Club as it struck in February think 3 yrs ago now maybe 4...time flies.  A platform that was giving preferential treatment to certain sellers and not others was annoying. No proper explanation from ebay and forums full of 'where are the 80% off ' blah. At least sellers are now treated equally (or messed about equally) but at the expense of buyers. No such thing as a free lunch but how many of us remember having to pay a listing fee and it varied with item value? We have had 2 sales since SD and a 100% messed up rate!

[lamulady2]

A very interesting resume with many points.
I am not sure however of some, but my views of course are very personal. Most of my items are books,  95% are single copies. Some have been an adult life time of collecting (some children's' also) of 6 members of one very serious collecting family! Plus, for 42 years we were actually selling second hand...& new ones!!  
When I had to pack up 15 years ago, the ensuing owner did not know anything about the second hand ones & wasn't interested....so I had a large collection extra!! i am now sole owner of all the other members collections. Plus buying lots in local auctions but wanting only a few, left me with even extra!! Hence I have over 1.000 plus many more unlisted as yet. So I would certainly not be happy re the length of time idea, although when I have the inclination I sometimes delete & then re-enter.... The generous allowance for numbers of course would soon become difficult if......?
I started off in 2010 with Amazon but they take from 52% off low priced. (have to be about £15 before they start lowering this) down to about 22%  What worked out, with EBay, their fees being about 12%  overall,   was much better, I started shifting them over in about 2018. Being now rather ancient it took me quite a number of years to find myself about 75% easy,   selling with them. The lifting of fees in October was amazing & very suspicious although I had formed the opinion that as they kept the proceeds until requested, it meant that they had millions invested So a good return?
But their dystopian volte face has me reeling,  along with many others...I am presuming that they have done this worldwide?  The BPF was bad enough (morally I started reimbursing this fee to my customers,  counting it as anything from c45% (low priced goods) to a much lower one of about 6% for higher priced items as being a return to fees, & made up for this iniquitous disparagement, detrimental to us V the business sellers) 
But this new postal debacle???? I often used R.M. direct especially on the 250-500grm L.L.. I found that my older entries often had the incorrect price & I also liked to move to the relatively decently priced tracked 48 for higher priced items. I also found, very often, that I could not change the "Buyer chose" methods, so I was thus, then, ignoring EBay entirely. Now we cannot even do that...& what is this...x£ amount...or "what the buyer chooses?" I haven't sold anything since it came in so have not found out!!!!
Rant over!!!
Quite frankly I am shattered, not done anything but trawl through about 300 like messages on the community thng & look helplessly at my dozen or so "drafts"  I feel for anyone who does this in their "spare" time!!! My entire time is spent on "downsizing"

[lamulady2]

Correction.....I still have my items listed but have not sold anything funnily enough, since they started this new postage payment scheme!!

[manyjamjar]

28th of April is here and I can still see the advance shiping option when I do a trial "sell similar".

No word from ebay why its there.

Is that how its going to remain so when a seller tries to use a custom delivery, ebay AI can do its guesstimates and change to SD ??

[sparebitsbucket]

You wrote "I don't think eBay lost sight of this. Quite the contrary, I think they are acutely aware of the amount of resources and hard cash they have been putting in, relisting literally millions of listings every month, the vast majority of which (by now) stand next to no chance of ever selling. I believe that's one of the reasons why they are making things a little more awkward for small private sellers."

To me that implies you think ebay are making life awkward for all private sellers because some of them have stale listings. That would be a childish response to the problem by ebay since it will lose them sellers who don't do that, all without touching the same problem they'll have with business sellers. The logical response would be to do what you suggested.

If anything eBay have made the problem of stale listings worse for themselves with SD and the 'buyer protection scam' (when was the buyer not ever protected?). The cost of someone buying an item that was previously £1.99 + £1.70 p&p is now £5.53 with BPF and SD. That's a 50% price increase! My sales are down from 5-10 a day to 1-2 a day since these came into effect, and that's with me reducing prices across the board to absorb as much of the BPF as I can and sticking with advanced delivery when possible.

[akemp1]

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@manyjamjar wrote:

28th of April is here and I can still see the advance shiping option when I do a trial "sell similar".

No word from ebay why its there.

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I've been checking every day ready to pull most of my listings when SD is added but they don't seem to have touched any of mine yet. Maybe it's dawned on them how badly this is going to affect sales as buyers and sellers increasingly seem to be doing their transactions elsewhere?

They might be stuck between the ambitious promises they have made to their shareholders and Evri and the reality that these changes are enough to kill sales volumes and make people leave.

If SD does get deployed in its current form the only listings I am going to leave on ebay are the collection-only (although another marketplace might be better although I have never sold there) or where the categories are not supported on the place they are doing a bad copy of which I am quite enjoying now as a buyer and seller.

[parsley2003]

They are still working out what will be exempt from SD for example letters i have found a long list which means that stamps, postcards etc will still be custom by the looks of it if under £10 and 100g, and it has been said in chat that they will add more couriers. It seems that they are listening and changing things.  

• Antiques (e.g. Maps)
• Art (e.g. Photographs)
• Baby (e.g. Car Window Signs & Decals)
• Books, Comics & Magazines (e.g. Bookmarks)
• Business, Office & Industrial (e.g. Office Supplies & Stationary, Adhesive Tapes)
• Cameras & Photography (e.g. Memory Cards, Drone Accessories)
• Clothes, Shoes & Accessories (e.g. Hair Accessories, Wallets)
• Coins
• Collectables (e.g. Trading Cards, Card Games, Badges & Patches, Postcards)
• Computers/Tablets & Networking (e.g. Cables & Connectors, Components & Parts)
• Crafts (e.g. Scrapbooking, Beads)
• Dolls & Bears (e.g. Clothing & Accessories)
• Events Tickets
• Everything Else (e.g. Information Services, Grave Ornaments & Memorials)
• Films & TV (e.g. DVDs, Fridge Magnets)
• Garden & Patio (e.g. Seeds & Bulbs)
• Health & Beauty (e.g. Nail Art, Temporary Tattoos)
• Home, Furniture & DIY (e.g. Cards & Invitations, Ornaments)
• Jewellery & Watches (e.g. Bracelets & Charms)
• Mobile Phones & Communication (e.g. Cables, SIM Cards)
• Music (e.g. CDs, Memorabilia Stickers)
• Musical Instruments & DJ Equipment (e.g. Parts & Accessories)
• Pet Supplies (e.g. Tags & Charms, Collars)
• Sound & Vision (e.g. Batteries, Turntable Parts)
• Sporting Goods (e.g. Tennis Grips)
• Sports Memorabilia (e.g. Trading Cards, Pins, Magnets)
• Stamps
• Toys & Games (e.g. LEGO ® Building Toys, Card Games)
• Vehicle Parts & Accessories (e.g. Exterior Decals & Vinyls, Repair Manuals)
• Video Games
• Wholesale & Job Lots (e.g., Greeting Cards & Stationery)

This list doesn't include all sub-categories where Custom postage is an option. You can see if your item is eligible for Simple Delivery when you're creating your listing.

[vinylscot]

One of the main purposes of a forum such as this is to identify those posts which are either untrue (deliberately or otherwise), misleading, or greatly exaggerated.

Obviously, posters who often post such erroneous content will often suffer blowback, in ,most cases, deservedly so.

Failure to point out these misleading (at best) posts risks the truth being hidden from people submitting genuine queries. This thread, although far too long, has a great many good posts in it. Unfortunately, they are swamped by at least three times as many poor posts. Someone looking for help, or honest, sensible comment,  would stand next to no chance here.

[dantwocats]

customer services have not got a clue ,still said i should use custom post option ,its still not there just tryed putting cards in as postcard and each one was hit and miss if custom post came up or not , just hard work to do a simple thing and still should not be my job to sore out SD mistakes 

[parsley2003]

Yes it's still in my relists if i did them have you tried sell similar? I'm just not listing at all until this is sorted

[kath3735_wxmjn]

I have always been ready to give new changes a chance but SD is one change to far.  For my own curiousity i put a few items back on last week (delisted all of the on the 7th) and 3 that have been due for relist are now showing that they would be transferred to SD, so they are off again, i have 3 still active that are still showing my custom postage.  I thought they were changing all your listings at once but appears to be as they are relisted.

[theelench]

If ebay were all that worried about stale listings it would get rid of auto re-list.

Ebay introduced that feature and made it difficult to get out of despite many sellers saying they didn't want it at the time.

Also at that time I said it should not have been made compulsory on the "Simple Listing Form" designed for Private Sellers, as so many didn't want it and turned to the "Advanced" (business seller) Form to get away from it.  (Does this story begin to sound familiar?)   I commented that, from my experience on ebid, stale listings going round and round on a carousel might boost the listing numbers but made the search results appear stagnant when the same items appear month after month.

The most ridiculous thing about stale listings left to endlessly re-list is they're not just stale, they're actually 'abandoned'.  The owner having either forgotten they listed the item or just got bored waiting for it sell and chucked it away.

[judydoodles]

Has anyone had their existing listings switched from custom postage to Sinful Postage?  Friends who are still listing have only encountered an inconsistent roll out of some SD only and other new listings which still give the option to customize postage, with no obvious pattern.  If there's a planned roll-out why not outline it?

I get the feeling this Wednesday's Community Chat would need to be a couple of hours long for any meaningful feedback from ebay.  

It must be tough having to field a slew of ebay problems when ebay hasn't equipped them with answers.

[akemp1]

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@theelench wrote:

If ebay were all that worried about stale listings it would get rid of auto re-list.

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I've got plenty of stale ebay listings and occasionally they get a watcher who accepts an offer or randomly sell because they have eventually found their buyer. Sometimes I relist as 'sell similar' to give them a visibility bump but overall they just sit there stagnating. I have plenty of space so it's not a problem for me. 

However what I have learnt in the past month is that a stale listing at one platform might be hot at another. I've got an item that never achieved more than one or two watchers here in around 12 months that now has around 7 favourited within a few days of moving to another place. I've got another that spent 6 months getting barely any interest (despite several re-lists and reducing to a price below where I was happy) that quickly had 23 views then sold within hours for more money at the other place.

So if ebay wanted to get rid of stale listings maybe they could suggest users relist at a competitor to deliver on the expectation of eyeballs and sales. The items sometimes just need actual visibility with a buying audience 🙂

[wiganyankeeron]

I've just called into my local Post Office. I asked thee girl behind the counter, who is also the owner, if they had had any notification from R.M. or Ebay to accept undervalued packets or parcels. She said they hadn't..I n fact she showed me a packet someone had just dropped off a few minutes earlier , with an Ebay pre paid label which was under paid. and she had just added postage  stamps on to it, to bring it up to the correct postage value..