Weve been consistent for years, have thousands of unique items, and sell hundreds of thousands a year. June started being horrible, then it comes back and then sales disappear again.
Weve offered free returns for months now and yet if you search by free returns we dont come up in the search. Weve reported it to ebay via phone call and email several times. I just searched yesterday as our sales have tanked and 3 of our items show up out of thousands.
For some reason right now, only the cheapest items in our store are selling, very few at that and some of those are customers we know, customers who always buy from us. I searched something a few days ago and was surprised that ours did not come up. All of our competitors did. So I copied our title word for word and we didnt come up. I contacted cs and just got some word salad. Sorry but if you put in a title word for word, it should be the most basic form of search. There is no logical reason we would not come up. Signed out, signed into another acct and even the neighbors ip.
I also clicked on an international sellers other items and nothing came back. Not even the item I clicked through. Well I know that looking at internationals takes more steps now for some reason. I have to click on the left hand menu (worldwide) Well this time there was no (worldwide). it was not on the other pulldowsn either. There was absolutely no way for me to see the sellers items at all, aside from the general search I did that came up one item. When I bring these issues up to ebay cs. I always get the run around, we see your item, thats how search works, etc. Almost never will they say "I see the problem, lets see how we can fix that". If they do, thats the last we hear of it and just add it to the list of issues. Issues do not get resolved when they are ignored.
Weve sold millions of dollars on ebay, so we have an idea how it works, we dont have to be experts, were not CS but, when your sales plummet and you cant find other sellers items, it gives clues. We have also been growing year over year, adding new items, and editing items.
One mroe thing to note. When we edit items, the edits dont take. So we have to edit, click on the edited item and sometimes edit again and check again. The way I found out about this was an item that was $180 sold for $18. Well below our cost and definately not a mistake on our part. Ive made keystroke errors but the edit program hasnt worked properly for weeks now. We have thousands of items and Ive been trying to edit for a couple weeks now to dial the store in while things arent working correctly and I just leave in frustration. We got bad feedback for that and I didnt even try to call ebay. that was even after contacting the buyer several times, yet the buyer claims no reason why we canceled. Um, I even pointed to others of its kind in the store with 10x price. Im not going to honor $100+ loss for ebays system error and I dont want to accept a defect for it either. Its absurd.
I edited a bunch of items a few nights ago, one $200 item came back as $2. I quickly edited again. So essentially I have to edit, check, edit again, check again each item. Relisted items are increased in price frequently and i found out that those relists were not taking the price change by selling items that I increased the $ on sold at a lower $ amount. I noticed its not just price that is not taking. Ive always tried dialing in the store and cleaning up descriptions and titles and its really frustrating to do a lot of work and click on the item to check and all of the edits did not take.
Im considering removing free returns today. Im also considering ending a few thousands items and going to a small store.
I am waiting to see what happens oct 1 about fee increases. If our fees get that extra fvf. Im ending all of our listings immediately. We certanly dont deserve that much of a fee increase, I cant tell by looking at the metrics yet, but, it would be 20k a year in increase for us at our average sales. Our sales have gone down considerably after being consistent until June (actually growing for years) We dont sell common items and there is no lack of interest in our area, our photos are killer, our whole model has been copied by others but they dont have the inventory so they can try. Some competitor is using our pics right now and I dont even bother reporting anymore as nothing was ever done. A picture weve been using for years.
I just sold 2 items while writing this and everything weve sold, which is very few items is $30 or so for the last few days. Our asp is over $100 and has been for years. Cheap items are a very small part of our daily sales. Its all of out sales for the last 3 days.
My question is: If I end all of our listings, then downgrade our store. Will my listings stay in unsold and be relistable for 60 days? Would I be able to just take time off and see if anything changes and if it does, upgrade my store back to anchor and relist our items? We are month to month, paying that extra amount because we really think things are going bad here and want to be able to close if we choose without thousands in fees froma contract. If I end up downgrading and then our listigs disappear, we wont be relisting them. We have years and years of listings for rare goods that get relisted over and over.
I just want searches to not be so manipulated, that we cant find our own items. I do check signed out, signed in another account, on different computers , etc. I had another seller say he couldnt find us too.
Were 4 times the size we were years ago, pay almost 50k a year in fees and until June, were hitting all time highs, that ended overnight literally. Our listings have offered free returns for months and at CS advise, we changed our listings and made them free returns several times to see if they would take. They acknowledged the problem on the phone, no follow up, no fix, we are offering that service but not getting the benefits of being found in that search should anyone select it. Our listings show it, if you are already there. Its pretty much not worth contacting CS anymore.
Since weve offered free returns, our sales have never come back to pre june. A few bumps but these consistent 30% of normal now and the items are all cheaper. Those who want to say, its our store, its not and even if it were, I cant edit our listings without taking 2-3 times as long due to edits not taking and in some cases coming back with single digit price for 3 didgit item.
Its feeling like its not worth dealing with the usps pickups and all the other chaos of things being returned to sender and returns for not reading. They are different things and when ebay works ok, we deal with the usps issues but when sales are lower returns are hgher, CS is non almost non-existent, problems are compounding. It may be time to close or at least go on a staycation.
It has to be problems that they wont acknowledge as ebay makes less when we make less and long term, we put our work elsewhere. Thats not a threat, thats what you do when your sales plummet and you see tons of issues that are not acknowledged or fixed. It seems mre issues but, not enough people to fix them, so perhaps layoffs was a very short term solution to revenue. I dont think I would lay off so many people at one of the biggest transition periods of our company. It has to be weighing on employees that people are so upset all of the time. Speculation I suppose.