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I forgot about the adjustment – good to see they’re looking out for low-volume sellers after all.
As for peers: “Your peers are sellers who list on the same listing site as yours, sell items in the same category and have similar listing attributes such as item price, estimated delivery dates, item condition, and return policy.”
So a pretty good list of criteria, I’d say. This info is tucked away next to an “i” icon after “See how you compare to your peers”, by the way. Took me a while to find it.
The service metrics page is confusing and largely just appears to be a scare tactic. I only saw people getting the “your INAD return rate is too high” message from eBay when the page first rolled out. Since then, nothing.
Furthermore, the page only starts tracking your peer performance when you hit 100 transactions in that category. Good news for volume sellers, bad news for those of us who aren’t.
I listed an item on the US site just to give it a go. Very easy and I liked the UI/UX. Unfortunate to see this – competition breeds innovation.
Perhaps these other sites (Etsy, Poshmark, etc) are just bringing a new demographic to shopping online instead of stealing traffic away from eBay?
Heat gun designed for paper crafting! Or hair dryer. Keep heat applied when peeling.
No problem! I don’t check that page often either, but apparently having a higher return rate than your “peers” can cause your FVF to go up in that category. Fun stuff!
I plugged 4 items I have for sale into Google and landed on the new catalog pages for 2 of them and “Currently sold out” pages for the others. Neither allowed me to easily click off to a general eBay query, so my listings are effectively hidden if someone is coming straight from a Google search.
What worries me most is why my items aren’t available on the catalog pages. There’s a button for “See <x> other pre-owned items” that takes me to a search page that should have my item, there’s only 4 – none are mine. Manually typing in the name of the item into search returns over a dozen in the same condition that should be in the catalog. I could maybe see this being an issue with older items, but I listed one of these earlier this week.
It seems Google is only picking up catalog pages, which would be awesome if eBay actually put my items into the catalog.
I got a VERO earlier this year but didn’t get suspended. There were 20 or 30 active listings and plenty of solds at the time of removal – mine was seemingly randomly picked out of the bunch after sitting for a week or two.
It’s incredibly unfair if eBay is arbitrarily suspending accounts. Mind sharing more details about your selling habits? How many items? Do you have a store?
I thought eBay already did the referral thing if you listed on the app? I got the option a couple of times to copy down a link and have FVF either waived/discounted if a purchase was made from it. Kinda like a reverse promoted listing.
Interesting to hear how off I was about these other platforms. I swear I hear Etsy/Poshmark more than eBay, but it could be regional or just this time of the year when people are looking for gifts and “boutique” stuff. For non-metropolitan areas I think LetGo/OfferUp (and most of the marketplace subsections of social media apps) are probably useless, but they are very popular here. I’m considering moving some percentage of my inventory over to them.
@Inglewood – I have a lot of luck with tape decks and CD players, but I’m seeing the same thing you are with receivers. I’m hoping they’ll rebound in the new year since I’ve got a few still sitting around.eBay is without a doubt losing traffic to other platforms. Just look at how many other options people have now vs. what was around even a year or so ago; Poshmark, Etsy, etc all have name recognition and I frequently hear people bring them up when it comes to shopping online.
I don’t know what you sell, but if you’re not at the very least cross-listing to platforms that house what you’re selling on eBay right now, you’re probably losing out. These aren’t just small, niche sites anymore.
Think of it this way: What are the chances people lost interest in what you’re selling vs. the likelihood of them going elsewhere for it?
I had offers turned off for a $200+ item and got at least 4 to 5 messages a week from the same person, usually something along the lines of “This sells for $150 easily. I will also need free shipping. Change the price in 30 minutes – I will pay then”
After 3 weeks they apparently just looked at all the photos and replied with: “Wow, I just noticed those MAJOR defects. OK, it’s definitely only worth $120. Accept offer”
Low offers and 3 weeks of messages without even looking at the pictures/description. Truly exceptional.
Mine still show “ship within 24 hours”. I assume everyone has that?
With handling times being as broken as they are, I expect some percentage of sellers are going to need to call in and have the defects removed manually. Happened to me on some other postal holiday this year despite eBay recognizing it and extending my handling time automatically.
Forgive me if you’re already aware of this:
Your best bet is neutral, white lighting with a defuser, so just about any semi-pro lighting kit will work. The trickiest part of taking good photos is setting white balance. Most cameras do this automatically by finding the whitest part of the image and “tinting” the colors so the white part of the image is a true white. For example, if you held a red shirt up to a wall that was painted eggshell white, the camera would shift the colors so that the eggshell would be complete white, affecting the color of the shirt in the process. I’m on Android, but most phones have a “pro” mode that let you change the white balance manually so this doesn’t happen. White balance is measured in “temperature” and is usually represented with a number on a sliding scale. Once you find the right value, you can leave it there, then just switch back into pro mode when you go to shoot photos. This is essentially what a professional photographer would be doing with a DSLR camera.
The reason using a flash makes the colors look right is because it’s completely washing out the image so that the automatic white balancing has a true, 100% white reference to adjust itself to. The downside is that shadows will be extremely harsh and images come out looking “flat.”
In any case, it might be worth paying a photographer if you want to farm out that work to save time, or perhaps they could teach you. Modern camera phones extremely powerful, so it’s more about technique than having hardware nowadays.
Yes, agreed on the Dymo. FedEx and the weird international labels are the only reason I keep an inkjet printer around these days.
I’ll have to pay closer attention to the contrast of the prints. I believe a few other packages went via FedEx around the same time as this one, so I’m wondering if it was an issue with the color of the box or a miscalibrated FedEx scanner, as the problem with the label occurred about half-way to the destination.
Checking in with eBay is a good idea, although I always wonder if the reps are giving me accurate info when it comes to theoreticals. I wonder if they’d defer to FedEx?
Since it’s that quick, my bet is on repair shops/resellers botting search for certain terms and pulling the trigger if the price is right. The eBay developer API has everything you need to search for and buy items without lifting a finger and can be great in a case like this. I’ve done it before, but I didn’t hand the keys over to let the bot actually buy stuff (didn’t need a mysterious $1xx PayPal charge popping up.)
