Private listings, what are +/-'s

[EmptyPockets]

I am debating making all my listings private solely to stop competitors from checking my feedback to see how much of any item I'm selling and at what price and basically what I'm selling successfully.

Is this frowned upon or should I be worried what buyers view this as? Do buyers really care if all the feedback is good and they are still able to read the feedback?

Will this cause flags with ebay and they will watch me more?

Any thoughts appreciated...

[oompaloompa]

ebay collude with you to hide feedback from rights owners, otherwise they wouldnt allow it, right? its meant to be for sensitive items, like - well take a guess, but its used alot for vero....

yes it is a good idea if you sell vero, it stops rights owners seeing how much youve sold, plus it stops them contacting the buyer to get your details or ask for info on product, or tell them they think its f**e.

there are drawbacks, it does look somewhat dodgy and sometimes, believe it or not ebay do a MC takedown, and actually state a private lisitng as one of the reasons it got took down, two-faced or what!

[jbluntz]

I think it's better to not go private if you're selling vero, from the buyers point of view. I sell 1 item per account so the buyer can see nothing but positive feedback for the item they're interested in which builds buyer trust and sales.

I know because when I look to buy something on ebay I always look for the feedback for that item and if I can't find it I move to another listing until I find it and finding 1 feedback would be kind of sketchy but a whole page full of positive feedback for the same item would make me not even think twice about purchasing.

[oompaloompa]

^^ yes good point, private feedback makes your fb difficult to weigh up from buyer viewpoint

[EmptyPockets]

I'm not looking to make feedback private, as I understand it if feedback is private - then you cannot list on ebay?

I'm also not asking to hide for vero purposes, only to stop competitors from sifting through my feedback to see what items are HOT sellers and at what pricing point.

With just that in mind, will ebay flag me as dodgy looking for this alon even though they offer the option? Would it be a wise move to do this?

[oompaloompa]

yes thats what I meant private listing, doesnt show the item that sold.

My personal opinion is that its an option alot of vero sellers use, it has a few drawbacks but so does other way round

[EmptyPockets]

thanks...

Is there a way to set ALL listings to private by default accross the board and all future listings or do I have to make private only when I list a new item & per item listed?

[NZT]

I have got in the habit of using private for all of my listings. This was mainly to stop a silly buyer from contacting all my winning bidders and spreading crap.

I dont think that they can do this anymore as all bidder identitys are protected now, am I right? Where anyone could see the winning bidder that has now gone.

[NZT]

If you use AUctiva you can set up a template and check the box "private listing" and every time you use the template the listing will upload to ebay and be private.

[captainjack1980]

yes that is correct.... the winning bidder remains known only to the seller until they leave feedback.

CaptainJack.

[aking]

All you have to do is have 3-4 accounts in rotation selling an item every month. The feedback automatically goes private after 90 days. If you have 3 accounts and sell a particular item on one 1 account per month. Buy the time you do a full account rotation back to the first account, the items will be gone automatically so no one sees what you've sold. VWALA!! You now have a clean slate again! It's not suspicious to buyers or vero members b/c this is done automatically by eBay.

Plus you must always have other items to fill your feedback pages. Along with my Vero items, I have a small fast selling item and I sell about 70-100 of them a week. My feedback fills up with this so fast that its spreads the Vero feedback out. Most people only look on the 1st or 2nd page or a sellers feedback, so the more items you can sell you can push Vero items to the 2nd and 3rd page and no one sees them.

[EmptyPockets]

thanks for the replies and great ideas!

I use the free auctiva now just so I can get the listings scroller and auto-feedback tools but the freebie doesnt allow listing - may be time to fork out some $$$ for this option.

[NZT]

Capt Jack. So when the buyer leaves feedback their ID is shown, so all know who the winning bidder is?

Private feedback stops this I think. The only disadvantage is private feedback puts people off.

[captainjack1980]

Yes that is correct... the only way to stop it is to have private feedback where only the overall score is seen.

CaptainJack

[NZT]

Sorry Capt Jack, I didnt mean that. Having private feedback means you can no longer list anything for sale.

I meant private listings. (the check box to keep private)

Even If you have a private listing the winning bidder was always shown, is it still like that?

I dont think I am going to bother with private listings anymore. I only used them to stop people being a pain if something went wrong. Like they contact other users and say "hey i got a handbag and its not real, how about you?"

[captainjack1980]

Private listing or not once feedback is left the winning bidder is viewable to all on your feedback pages. Just no one can see what they won or how much they won it for.

CaptainJack