international site visibility fee SCAM

[*violet.sky*]

Does anyone else pay this ?  I've been adding it for years and now an ebay agent tells me that an item will be visible on ebay.com anyway if I have an international postage option available for it! So why do they give it as an option? The agent couldnt really say............! Please has anyone else got a more technical answer?

[sianchris]

Not a technical answer im afraid but i tested this years ago, just using the postage option didnt work, a lot of my buyers are international & when i didnt pay for visibility i got zilch buyers from USA, as soon as i started to pay the extra they all came back ! A case of "just cause you read it on Ebay doesnt mean its true" lol

[*violet.sky*]

Thanks, I've had two separate ebay customer service agents tell me its an outdated fee so thats what caused my concern. The only technical info I could find on here was a ebay announcement from 2015 with a long list of categories that were automatically included on all searches so the extra fee was not an option (ie when listing jewellry). Ebay have been unable to point me to a up to date version of this list however!

[4_bathrooms]

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@*violet.sky* wrote:

Does anyone else pay this ?  I've been adding it for years and now an ebay agent tells me that an item will be visible on ebay.com anyway if I have an international postage option available for it! So why do they give it as an option? The agent couldnt really say............! Please has anyone else got a more technical answer?

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Again, not a technical answer but I suspect the clue is in the blurb:

"International site visibility is an optional upgrade that ensures your eBay.com listings are visible in top-level search results on other eBay sites. Currently, international site visibility is only supported by the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada sites, but we're working on further expansion."

Sometimes if you search for something obscure on eBay UK you will see the few UK results that exist followed by a "From international sellers" section. I suspect "top-level search results" means the listing appears in the regular results as long as the potential buyer hasn't used the item location filter.

[magpiecorner1]

We send about 40% of our items abroad, with many multiple items, we don't pay for visibility and we don't use global shipping.

I periodically check what is showing on eBay.com.  A few days ago it showed 1380 out of 1540 listings.  Part of this is new listings, which sometimes seems to take longer to appear on the .com site, but otherwise I have no explanation, but with my basic business shop, there are fewer listings of course, but generally they are all there.  Main difference is, apart from the number of listings, I faff with the feature account, bulk ending and resisting via 'sell similar ' every few days, and I tend to do a lot of new listings at once.

Interesting comment from @sianchris - tempted to try upgrading to see what happens, though reading @*violet.sky* 's comment it might just be I'm automatically in.

If they've been charging you for visibility, ask for a refund.   They can only say no.

[magpiecorner1]

Now, that makes sense, every one of my saved searches - all jewellery category - shows UK listings followed by international listings, even though I set up the search UK only.   I've searched for 'newly listed' 'ending soonest ' highest price' and others, all saved searches follow the format UK then International, and it's always US items, I know this because some of my searches are for Scandi items, most of which have EU sellers. 

At least there not all mixed up as with the standard default search.

[*violet.sky*]

Yes jewellry is mentioned along with many others in the 2015 briefing you can find on here Message for sellers: Changes to International Site Visibility Fees