Private sellers around the Christmas period

soolin · 28 November 2023 at 12:19PM

I wasn't sure what to title this one, it's a bit of a ramble through dates and time lines for Christmas selling. Businesses will almost certainly already be operating their Seasonal sale policy aware of people buying for Christmas, so I will concentrate on private sellers on ebay.

Apologies in advance for those who don't get the FVF offers- I realise how irritating this post will be - but the dates and timings still apply even if you are paying full fees.

If the usual FVF discounts that many of us get are available this coming weekend it may well be worth pushing to utilise them for anything you have that could potentially be bought as a Christmas gift, I'm thinking vintage toys, collectable nick nacks etc.. Realistically this is out last chance to get these items sold . A lot of these more collectable items likely to be sold by private sellers traditionally do well at an auction so if you list for 7 days from Sunday that finishes on the 10th December. If buyers pay immediately then all is fine, the issue will be if people pay late you could be looking at posting as late as the 14th or even 15th December which is getting close to the last posting dates from RM. If you risk a 10 day auction then you run into more issues for late payers.

Obviously the potential next FVF day will be the 15th-18th which will be too late for auctions. Although it is worth noting that Christmas day and Boxing day can often be busy on ebay with people looking to buy the items they thought they were getting for Christmas- but didn't.

Traditionally ebay seem to stop FVF offers for a period after Christmas- it is not unusual to go from Christmas itself right though to the end of January beginning of February without an offer- again this is generic, some people still get offers regardless. The usual reason people offer for this is that ebay expect a lot of new sellers to sign up to sell unwanted Christmas presents- so don't need a lot of existing sellers cluttering up the place with stuff that's been listed for months.

Just remember that sellers can't close an NPB case until day 4 and that pushes the time to get something relisted and sold in time for Christmas.

pfpf · 29 November 2023 at 5:09PM

something i was wondering last night....is it possible as a private seller to "pause" listings? so not close all the listings, just make it possible for no one to buy or maybe not even see them until ready to go again?

soolin · 29 November 2023 at 7:17PM

pfpf said:

something i was wondering last night....is it possible as a private seller to "pause" listings? so not close all the listings, just make it possible for no one to buy or maybe not even see them until ready to go again?

Yes- look at 'holiday settings' they are one of the most useful things ebay have brought in over the past few years.

You can start your holiday from about 1 hour in the future (it isn't instant) and if you go on to tick the 'block all sales (I can't remember the exact wording) it doesn't allow anyone to bid or buy your items. You can even add a message that is carried on your listings.

If you choose to allow sales then it uses the time you give to end your holiday settings to extend the despatch time and therefore the delivery estimates.

[Deleted User] · 2 December 2023 at 6:26AM

It's a very useful feature, as a buyer it's clear and plain to see 👍

pfpf · 13 December 2023 at 10:39AM

soolin said:

pfpf said:

something i was wondering last night....is it possible as a private seller to "pause" listings? so not close all the listings, just make it possible for no one to buy or maybe not even see them until ready to go again?

Yes- look at 'holiday settings' they are one of the most useful things ebay have brought in over the past few years.

You can start your holiday from about 1 hour in the future (it isn't instant) and if you go on to tick the 'block all sales (I can't remember the exact wording) it doesn't allow anyone to bid or buy your items. You can even add a message that is carried on your listings.

If you choose to allow sales then it uses the time you give to end your holiday settings to extend the despatch time and therefore the delivery estimates.

just to add, on my dashboard its under "site preferences" then "time away".

soolin · 29 December 2023 at 9:23AM

Just quoting this bit from my opening post

"Traditionally ebay seem to stop FVF offers for a period after Christmas- it is not unusual to go from Christmas itself right though to the end of January beginning of February without an offer- again this is generic, some people still get offers regardless. The usual reason people offer for this is that ebay expect a lot of new sellers to sign up to sell unwanted Christmas presents- so don't need a lot of existing sellers cluttering up the place with stuff that's been listed for months".

As expected, this is 2 weeks after the last FVF offer day so traditionally there is an anticipation that this weekend should also have offers- but I'm showing nothing on my dashboard yet, so I assume as I expected, there are no offers. A very quick look on other sites suggest I am not alone, so I would be interested if anyone else has offers this weekend or if ebay are following their usual pattern of stopping these for a few weeks after Christmas.