Quote:Actually the real reason is that
ebay is loosing sellers at a fast rate.
People notice how many of a particular item are for sale. By making each item list for a longer time, it pumps up the numbers.
Let us say that in a given week there are 1000 biscuits for sale. If all of them are on 3 day auctions then they average out to 420 biscuits a day...roughly. When you make your sellers have 5 day sales, then on an average day you have 600 biscuits for sale. If your sellers are forced to sale at 7 days then you have 1000 biscuits each day to look at.
Now, if you were hunting biscuits would you go to a site where they were selling 420 biscuits or 1000?
Even though it is really the same total number per year.
I definitely understand the logic of it, but at least for coins I think it is back firing on auctions. Three days always seemed to be the sweet spot for auction time, it was enough time for people to find it but not long enough that people lose interest waiting for or find it somewhere else first. Those drawn out times seem to have most people that find it in the first day or two lose interest waiting for most things.
Using your example I would rather go to the place with the 420 biscuits where I could get any of them in a couple days instead of the 1k where half of them I would have to wait a week to be able to buy.
If their intention is really just to pump up active listings they could easily just end the restrictions on how sellers with a store can use their free listings. Instead of giving the 250 BIN and 250 auctions just give the 500 to use in either format and their active listings will grow a lot.
Of course the other way to pump up listings is to attract more sellers and actually try and retain the ones they have by treating them better. Stop nickel and dimming discounts, stop imposing more restrictive listing rules, stop trying to impose
like shipping and return rules when the entire burden is on the seller, and of course have more sensible rules and realize that coins shouldn't have the same rules as 99 cent used DVDs.
Posted 08/09/2017 10:46 pm
