Good ‘Til Cancelled Is Here

As announced in the eBay 2019 Early Seller Update on February 26th, as of March 18th eBay is now forcing all fixed price listings to be “Good ‘Til Cancelled” instead of the previous options of a certain amount of days of which 30-days was a popular choice.

When you list now you’ll be greeted with the following notice:

To help you sell your item, fixed price listings can only be listed with a Good ‘Til Cancelled duration. Listings renew automatically every 30 days, based on the listing terms at that time, until all quantities sell or the listing ends. Each time a listing renews and when an item sells, you’ll be charged applicable fees.

Sellers Confused by Good ‘Til Cancelled

A quick stroll through the various eBay groups and forums makes it apparent that many eBay sellers do not read the seller updates that eBay puts out. Post after post I saw numerous complaints and people wondering if this was yet another “Glitch Bay” issue and if anyone else was seeing this. If the groups & forums are like this I can only imagine that the eBay phone bank was off the hook making it difficult for those with real concerns to get through.

This is a major communication breakdown on both sides. And if we sellers won’t read the details how can we expect our buyers to?

Sellers Up In Arms over Good ‘Til Cancelled

Many seasoned eBay sellers have been up in arms over this change.

For various reasons, many sellers like to run items for only 5, 7 or 10 days at a time. Personally, I opted for 30-day listings so I can be forced to tweak items the longer they sit. Regardless of your choice, the argument is that eBay is dictating how you run your business. The truth of the matter is that it’s eBay’s playground and eBay’s rules. Adapt or move on.

But the biggest concern seems to be getting slammed with extra listing fees once your items renew and push you over the threshold of your “free” listings each month. That was actually my first thought as well. And eBay could fix this quite easily by extending the duration of listings to 31-days. If you’re over your allocated number of listings you should be able to see that fairly easily. By keeping it at 30-day renewals it comes across as eBay just grabbing for additional cash from the sellers.

How to Avoid Additional Fees For Automatic Renewals

The current solution being reported by eBay to avoid additional listing fees within a calendar month is simple. At day 28 of a listing, end it.

That was my initial thought as well, but I can see where that might be troubling for some. Say you’re in a premium store with 1,000 listings that auto-renew after your 1,000 monthly listings are depleted, then you’re hit with an extra $100 in listing fees. While I think that example might be extreme for most, that is concerning.

Why Are They Forcing Good ‘Til Cancelled?

While I cannot say for certain why eBay is making this change, my hunch is that it’s related to the Terapeek data which should start to be accessible soon, if not already. (We received our email about it yesterday.) But I don’t believe the statement of “to help you sell your item” at all. I’ve listed both 30-days & Good ‘Til Cancelled for years and don’t see Good ‘Til Cancelled selling more than 30-day listings.

Comp Research Implications

When searching comps on eBay one thing I like to look at are the completed items that did not sell. We need to get an idea of what sits and how long it sits. If everything is Good ‘Til Cancelled that info will go away. TBD what kind of information Terapeek gives, but maybe they give you an idea of days listed. TBD.

Good ‘Til Cancelled Prediction

My prediction is that this will be reverted, much like the experiment that eBay ran last year with forcing items to be unchanged for weeks before being able to run sales. If people flood them the people will be heard.