What to do about my shop.

[l_patterson]

Any advice and help on this would be greatly received. I am thinking very hard about lowering my long time featured shop down to a basic one for the time being due to the on going free for all putting a great strain on selling as a business. Then with the idea of going back up a level later on.
I have looked for these answers on Ebay help pages but can't really find any straight forward answer.
So: Do I just select the basic shop after stopping all my active listings? Then put them back on again (Though keeping to the lower 250 limit/100 auctions).
I guess my shop will stay the way it looks?
How long does it all take? (Again I guess the payment for a featured shop will come out first before it lowers to the basic shop charge).
When all the smoke clears (I live in hope) and I want to then go back up a shop level, Can I just click again to go up a level back to a featured shop?
And yes I will lose my £10 voucher for a while but I could always list all that tape for free (Forget that bit).
These might seem very simple questions for some but I just need a little bit of help.
Thank-you.

[*vyolla*]

I think that you just change your subscription, I don't believe that you don't need to close your shop and then re-open another.

Try this -  go to My eBay and click on Account, then Subscriptions. From the Subscriptions page, click “Change level” to downgrade your eBay Store. Your live listings will remain live on the site after changing your Store subscription level.

[magpiecorner1]

I think this is what happens:

If you go up or down a level, nothing happens.  Until the first day of the following month.  You might get messages - I did this a couple of months ago - but the shop changes on the 1st.  If you have live listings they stay until they end or auto-relist, but if you let them auto-relist and you use up your new lower allowance you will be charged for the relists.  So always a good idea to use up all your existing 'free' listings and a good idea to do this before you change you shop setting.  Going from a basic shop to no shop loses you all the shop categories and they don't automatically return when you go back to a shop - but I don't think any of that changes if you keep a shop.

You are charged the new shop fee at the beginning of the month.  Used to be really clunky to change levels when the invoicing was 1st and 15th but now straightforward.  If you end listings they will stay in unsold for 90 days, you can schedule well in advance, it will show the costs if you schedule over your limit, but if you are back up to the next level before the scheduled start time, there will be no charge up to your new higher limit.

[9150simon]

Thank you *vyolla* and magpiecorner1 for you answers to this question, I am in the same boat as the OP and have been thinking about downgrading my shop due to the dire sales with clothing.  I have never been sure how it affects the subscription payment when downgrading, but fairly clear now.

I have been reducing my stock, but still around the 800 items mark, so need to get lower.  I just feel like I am working to pay the shop fee and don't enjoy this anymore, despite having done it for years.  I still get a bit of a buzz when I sell something, but gone are the days of selling 10 or so items a day - lucky if its 1 every couple of days now and like the OP says all the free selling for private sellers has really put the kybosh on things.

[rjwilmsi]

Shops are a 1 month subscription so you can change shop level and it applies automatically from end of current month's subscription. No need to stop/redo any listings. Same whether going up or down shop level.

[l_patterson]

Thanks for that.

[the-nutwood-collection]

Going from a basic shop to no shop loses you all the shop categories

When I closed my basic shop I had an email from eBay to say that the shop structure (categories etc.) would be retained for a month in case I changed my mind.

This was a couple of years ago, so I've no idea whether it still applies now.