I recently took advantage of eBay's offer to tell them what I thought about their new beta format for sellers. To my surprise I got a quick reply and an invitation to participate in a conference call with several of their webmasters. Their interest in hearing what I as a small seller had to say was refreshing in an era when most calls to large corporations are answered in third world countries. One of my suggestions was that a listing keep its eBay listing or item number until it is sold or pulled from their site so I wouldn't have to spend so much time changing the item number on my coin and my spread sheet every time I relisted a coin. I suggested they add an alphabetical letter at the end of the item number that would be the only changing part of a listing number, so that the first time I listed a coin the item number would include an "A" at the end and the second time the original item number would be followed by a "B" and so on every time it was relisted. Alternatively the last number in the item number string could be a counting number that would change with each relisting while the core number remained the same. This would cut my time to relist a coin by 90%. What are your thoughts? If you agree this idea would reduce your relisting time let eBay know. This option would also benefit sellers as they could see how long a listing had been on eBay, and might give them more optimism about bargaining on "best offer" listings. What are your thoughts?
Wow. That is incredibly civilized of them... And your idea is a champion one! Now, they'll take your absolutely golden idea (that they would have had to pay someone for otherwise) and use it(!) I think it a simple, but very effective innovation that would make for a better experience for both seller and buyer.
@frech001 I'm not a seller on eBay, but I'm wondering if you've considered using a "-001" and higher numeric suffix (like the NGC cert #) rather than a letter at the end of the listing number. The reason I think this may be a better alternative is because there are only 26 letters in the alphabet. I have a friend who takes consignments on eBay, and one of his consignors had BIN's listed for more than one year, sometimes two years. By using the numeric suffix, you could instantly compute the number of weeks or months that a listing has run. Chris
I'm interested in your ideas about managing item numbers, but as a Web application developer, I don't think you'll have much luck getting eBay to implement them. Any time you start encoding information into an ID, you run into a couple of problems: What if someone doesn't want that information revealed to everyone who can see the ID? As a seller, I may not want my buyers to know that I've been trying to unload this dog for 24 months. What if the encoding field overflows? What happens when somebody has already relisted 999 times, and tries to do it again? If you have a uniform and opaque ID format, you don't have to worry about these questions. It also makes it a lot easier to generate new IDs, especially if you need to do that on multiple systems at once (and eBay, with its traffic levels, certainly needs to do that). You make an excellent case based on your workflow, but I wonder how many eBay sellers face the same issues you do. I'm not sure what you mean by "changing the item number on your coin" -- do you mean that you physically write the eBay number on a 2x2, or something? If you're trying to keep a spreadsheet updated, is that a task that could be automated? I'm guessing the really large sellers use automated tools to keep track of everything. Me, I've never had more than a few items listed at one time, so I've always been able to get away with doing everything by hand. So, as I was always taught in my usability courses, I Am Not The User -- or, at least, not every user. Your needs are different, and because you understand what you need and do a good job of explaining it, eBay won when they picked you to get surveyed.
You'll undoubtedly have others who say your idea won't work, but don't stop there . . . all ideas are worth at least being considered . . . keep'em flowing!
To answer some of the good questions: Yes, I write the eBay item number on each coin flip in pencil and I erase and write the new one each time I relist it. I also need to change my spread sheet record. This takes a lot of time. Ebay recently added an option to use a custom listing number but it isn't available in their basic listing fields which I prefer. I often list several of the same coin at the same time so I need to be able to distinguish them. When I list six coins as a group (because eBay limits free pictures to 12), I must erase and write the new listing number six times for that listing. I did suggest “Alternatively the last number in the item number string could be a counting number that would change with each relisting while the core number remained the same” but I like the suggestion of a -001 format as well. Sellers who don't want to reveal how many times they have relisted an item could select “sell similar” rather than “relist” and they will get a new listing number. Ebay will benefit by streamlining the relisting process because that means more listings per month. I'm in the process of selling a 6,000 world coin collection and I realize collectors prefer to buy just the coin they need and not a group of coins with the one they are looking for. So that means a lot of 99¢ listings and a lot of time. After a couple of times listing a coin I've started to group them to save time. However, I've found that groups of coins don't sell as well as individual ones. I tried just adding a new eBay item number into my spread sheet with the previous numbers remaining in the previous column, but that got very messy looking, and if I mess up my spreadsheet I'm lost. I'd be interested in any other suggestions from sellers
Sounds like you need what we computer folks call a "level of indirection". Don't write auction numbers on flips. Instead, keep your own list of serial numbers -- you can just number each coin sequentially as you list it for the first time. Then record your serial number for the coin in your spreadsheet, along with the eBay auction number. When you relist, you can just change the eBay number in the spreadsheet row; you never have to change the label on the coin. I think you'll find that's how most dealers do it. In fact, some of them put their inventory numbers right in the auction title. That makes it easy to search eBay for the current and completed listings (if you've listed the coin more than once). I wasn't aware that eBay had introduced a "custom listing number" feature. Maybe some of my assumptions are wrong. I'll try to remember to look into it. Thanks for the info!
I don't keep a spreadsheet like you do so that wouldn't affect me. What I would like to see them do is more free listing promotions or some sort of very low fee to list low-value items. Like you, I sell a lot of cheap world coins and there's no way I can pay a 35 cent insertion fee for hundreds of coins that sell for $1.25, especially when only 15-20 percent of them sell during any given listing period. I haven't seen a listing promotion in two months or more now and pretty soon my unsold listings are going to disappear and I'll have to start from scratch again.
I have an eBay's basic store. Starting this month, they've increased free listings to 250 free auction listings and 250 Fixed price listings. This month I received an additional 100 free listing offer, which I took advantage of. Back on the tracking number issue; since I often change the combination of low price coins I sell together, both a tracking sheet and way to mark each coin is needed. I store the listed coins in ring binders in 2x2 plastic page holder holding 20 coins per page. When I sell six coins in a group I put them together and mark them with the item number so I can find them easily when I'm ready to ship them. EBay has several screen options for sellers and two of them, Selling Manager and Seller Hub offer some customization including the ability to add a custom identification number to each item, but this isn't available in the basic selling screen that I prefer. However, I'm hoping they get enough comments from sellers to encourage them to make some changes to save us time. They definitely seemed anxious to hear from sellers. I've attended one of their local workshops for sellers and several of their live webinars. I've been very pleased (as a seller) with both e'Bay and PayPal when I contact them with a question or problem. I follow postings in this forum from other members about eBay, and it seems some don't like it. I guess it depends on what other options you have for selling and buying coins and probably depends on their value also. I've only sold one coin for more than $1,000 and it ended up in its country of origin through an intermediary relative recipient in the US since I don't ship outside the U.S.. A local reputable dealer wasn't interested and so eBay was my best option.
