ebay reducing free listings for private sellers

soolin

From the 1st October the amount of free listings for private sellers is being reduced from 1000 per month to 300 per month.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/fees-private-sellers?id=4822

The main page still links to show the original 1000 that they currently get, there is now a highlighted box that shows Starting 1 October 2024, we’re updating some of our fees for private sellers:
- The free listings allocation will change to 300 each month.
- The international fee will change to 3% for all delivery addresses outside the UK.

I have no link to the announcement, this blasted new messaging system doesn't work on my account properly and is all over the place, but it states the same as the highlighted box.

Remember that for private sellers (NOT business sellers) automatically relisted listings do not come off of the free allowance. That means if on the 1st October you list 300 listings as BINs and 50 sell, then the 250 will auto renew and you still have your 300 new listings for November. 

soolin

This is from the help pages:

How it works

You won't be charged an insertion fee (also known as a listing fee) if you still have an allocation of free listings available in a given month. However, you'll still need to pay transaction fees when your item sells.

The following will count against your monthly allocation of free listings:

• New listings
• Manually relisted items
• Automatically relisted items if you're a business seller
• Good 'Til Cancelled listings (at the time of first listing). If you're a private seller, renewed Good til Cancelled listings will not be deducted from your allocation of free listings in subsequent months

Also worth remembering the payable upgrades, there's been a few mentions recently of people querying charges when they are private sellers, and it turns out they have listed as auction with a BIN option or with a reserve.

• You'll be charged fees for any optional listing upgrades and supplemental services you choose, for example:
  • Adding a reserve price to your auction listing
  • Adding a second category to your listing
  • Buying and printing postage labels through eBay
  • Listing for a short duration (1 or 3 days)
  • Promoting your listings using Promoted Listings

lookbook

Useful for us private sellers. Thanks. 

AuntNorris

 That means if on the 1st October you list 300 listings as BINs and 50 sell, then the 250 will auto renew and you still have your 300 new listings for November. 

Will I be charged 35p for each of the 250 listings that have auto renewed? I'm new to ebay but have lots of things to list that may not sell in the first month. Many thanks!

soolin

AuntNorris said:

 That means if on the 1st October you list 300 listings as BINs and 50 sell, then the 250 will auto renew and you still have your 300 new listings for November. 

Will I be charged 35p for each of the 250 listings that have auto renewed? I'm new to ebay but have lots of things to list that may not sell in the first month. Many thanks!

If you have a read above and assuming you are a private seller then it states the following

The following will count against your monthly allocation of free listings:

• New listings
• Manually relisted items
• Automatically relisted items if you're a business seller
• Good 'Til Cancelled listings (at the time of first listing). If you're a private seller, renewed Good til Cancelled listings will not be deducted from your allocation of free listings in subsequent months

so no, if you list 250 BIN items in October and they don't sell and auto renew in November, they won't come out of your allowance. So in November you get the 250 auto relisted items plus a further 300 free items.

This means that a private seller will actually be allowed to list 3600 free items a year (300 per month) rather than the current 12000 (12 x 1000).

AuntNorris

This is so helpful (and a relief). Thank you.

GadgetGuru

Hope they continue the discounted FVF offers every other weekend. If that stopped I'd be done with eBay. 

soolin

There's a lot of discussion about this on various forums and on the official discussion boards. The main bit that is confusing people is whether you can 'only' have 300 free listings showing at a time or whether you get a fresh lot of 300 each time.

I thought this line from the FAQs was clear:

• Good 'Til Cancelled listings (at the time of first listing). If you're a private seller, renewed Good til Cancelled listings will not be deducted from your allocation of free listings in subsequent months

But there is some worry that this relates to the current 1000 listings and will suddenly be updated on 1st October when the reduction to 300 per month comes in.

My personal view is that if there was going to be a change to the way auto relisted listings for private sellers is to be calculated then it would have been mentioned in the original update. However, there are some well respected business sellers arguing that it would make sense for ebay to bring them into line with the way business seller listings are treated and 1st October would be a good time for this to happen - and in fairness, ebay do often make some quite late announcements about changes. If there are any private sellers n here with 300+ listings, it might just be worth keeping an eye on announcements, just in case.

moseph

Can someone clarify for me what happens when a private seller auto-relist AUCTION items? Do these come out of the 300 allowance or not? I can see that BIN auto-relisted do, but what about auctions? It's not clear on that. Thank you!

soolin

moseph said:

Can someone clarify for me what happens when a private seller auto-relist AUCTION items? Do these come out of the 300 allowance or not? I can see that BIN auto-relisted do, but what about auctions? It's not clear on that. Thank you!

As you say this is unclear , the terminology is still ‘auto relisted’ even for an auction but the guidance then uses  the term GTC which is not usually applied to auctions. 

It has been pointed out on other forums that if automatically relisted auctions do come out of the allowance, then a 7 day auction could be relisted 4 times within a single month, reducing the numbers quite quickly if a seller uses auction format rather than BIN. 

soolin

I have had another thought on this as well, not one I've seen mentioned - the FVF offer weekends.

At the moment a large number of private sellers are getting 100 reduced fvf listings every other weekend, these 100 listings don't come out of the 1000 monthly allowance but are on top of them. If this continues, and there's no guarantee of course, then that means 300 new free listings every month plus potentially 200 additional ones (100x2) making 500 per month for many sellers.

If the FVF weekends remain in sync with what has been happening for the past few months then there is one due this weekend.

I think it's a case of watch this thread below
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