They also quietly a couple of months ago changed how the relist credit works.
While the help file always said you got the credit for relisting within 60 days, its always worked as long as the original listing was on the site. No more, they only work for 60 days now, changed just before the demise of 5 and 10 cent days in favour of half price days so we couldn’t use relists from the last 5 day during the xmas season.

It would appear that they are daft when it comes to thinking through the implications on more than one category set, as Antiques, which are precisely the same type of market are included in this promotion.

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As for the suggestion that this is not a precursor to fee changes to “encourage” shorter auction times, it may be worth noting that Ebay.com, had a one day half price sale for 1,3 and 5 day auctions on December 10th (collectables were included in that one, but machinery, which also functions better on 7 day auctions, were not). This is reminiscent of the precursor to free gallery, first on Ebay.com, then on Ebay.uk – start with a short promotion to feel it out, then have a longer promotion with a duration of a month or more to see how it affects the site overall in the longer term. If EBAY sees this as successful, watch for a change in 1 and 3 day auction fees in about April or so, and likely a related promotion that buyers now want shorter auctions.

My own view about online auctions, is that 7 days is about the optimum length. It allows competition to gather pace, and suitable exposure. I know a number of people who search Ebay (generally for collectables) on one specific evening a week. The shorter the auction, the less likely those searchers are to even see it, let alone bid. The ten day auction, on the other hand, just drags on too long, and bidders can lose interest and decide not to bid (I say this in spite of the fact that I stagger ten day auctions over the Christmas / New Year holidays, in order to effectively get the equivalent of 7 days of exposure).

Finally as I said on another forum: “While this will not help sell through rates (clearance percentages), it should be remembered that someone dumb enough to try listing a single day auction three times without sales, has paid fifty percent MORE in listing fees than if they listed the same item for a full 7 day auction. Can Ebay find anyone dumb enough to boost their bottom line in such a way?”

Ebay has lost interest in clearance rates, in my opinion. However if they can encourage more sellers to list for shorter durations though, they can look at getting a quicker turnover of fees. This is likely to clog up some searches with items ending today, if they are going to save the sales of genuine sellers with longer listings, one change that NEEDS to be made is to add page numbers for search (a) above the listings, and (b) place the page numbers at the bottom of the page above the “sponsored links”. Too many casual users do not realise/remember that there is more than one page of search or category results, and are encouraged to click an off-site link before they finish browsing their search results. This is a serious flaw in page design, that must affect some sales adversely.

Kevin

keep it simple and uncluttered
bollocks to the flash templates , shooting stars, powersellers, and all that tripe,
we are in it for dosh, not the glory,

a) just below the price we expect to get (auction)
if that doesn’t sell
b) Fixed Price (higher than price we expect to get with Best Offer)
if that doesn’t sell
c) auction at a low start.

If none of these work, then we rest for a bit, or stick back into another land auction to shift it off the shelves. Obviously the last is not really desirable as we often only get what we paid for it (wholesale price equivalent), but it releases cash to buy something else that might make more money.

Not an exact science antiques and collectables more an art form..:) .it depends very much on who is looking on the day, more so than other spheres I believe.

at one time we never ever considered listing anything other than at a 99p start

but we have had to reconsider our ways after taking quite a hit a time or two.
ebay is not the same these days, we blame it on search

Norf, exactly, eBay no damm well that collectables sellers will pay full whack because BIN’s just don’t work effectively.

plus ebay are not so daft as they look,

starting an item at a high price for a collectable is the kiss of death ,
so encouraging a higher start price by fee discounting
is counter productive

I reckon eBay.com just want to boost sales as much as possible in what’s often a slow month and auctions are the only way left to do that. By making them short auctions there’ll be that much more product ending soonest for buyers to bid on.

The most obvious looser in this promotion are the sellers of collectables (not mentioned above) who’s products are probably best suited to auctions. I wonder why that might be.