This week eBay UK announced that from summer 2015 they are going to impose a 10p charge for listings that run 18 months without a sale. We’ve managed to get some more detail on how this is going to work.

Timings

First off this isn’t going to kick in until the Summer on a yet to be specified date. From then on listings which haven’t sold within 18 months will be charged an additional 10p fee on top of the usual insertion fee when renewing the item.

From the go live date eBay will look backwards and identify all listings that have been on site for 18 months, but haven’t had any sales. These are the listings which will be affected, plus any listings that reach 18 months in the future without a sale.

10p additional fee EVERY MONTH

This is the important bit… The additional 10p isn’t a one off fee, this will be a rolling charge. For every relist starting from the 19th relist you’ll be paying an additional 10p on top of the normal Good Til Cancelled fee.

Avoiding the fee

Get a sale!

Obviously this is easier said than done, but there are a number of things you can do to increase your chances of a sale.

Wherever possible use multi-variation listings or Motors fitment. This will have several desirable effects:

• If you sell one of any variation on a listing then you’ll avoid the 10p charge
• You’ll get increased Best Match exposure on all variations on the listing if you get sales on any variation
• If you don’t get a sale within 18 months you’ll only pay one 10p per month charge, not one of each variation which is what will happen if they’re all on individual listings
• If you have a one off product which hasn’t sold for 18 months consider simply sending it to auction to liquidate the stock and reinvest in more saleable stock

Relist!

Cancel you listings before they hit the 18th month and relist. This will also have several benefits, a fresh listing could very well appear higher in Best Match than an 18 month old listing that’s never sold!

• Reshoot photos, revise titles and descriptions, make sure your listing displays well on mobile. Use this as an opportunity to make your listing more attractive and saleable
• Double check the Category you’ve listed in and Item Specifics, eBay mess with (aka update!) these so often they’re bound to be out of date after 18 months

Monitor your eBay Invoice and use tools to identify aged listings!

These 10p fines will start to add up. Sadly the more outdated listings you have the more unmanageable your eBay invoice will be and the harder it will be to scan it each month to catch the listings attracting fines.

We’re hopeful that tools will be made available to identify old listings without sales so that you can manage them before you start getting fined.