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Unbelievable ..eBay now calculates "potential" 2nd chance offers selling limits..
 

Yep. As the title says. I have an account that has a 40 item selling limit. I listed about 20 items and sold almost all of them. Because bidding started at $0.99, I got a large amount of bidders, about 5-6 different ones per item.

Today, I wanted to list more and it said that I couldn't list any more items. I went into live help and asked why I couldn't list any more items. After a few minutes on hold, the woman said that I had reached my selling limit due to the possibility that I could still send 2nd chance offers to other bidders, so the limits kicked in because I could otherwise "potentially" go above the selling limit.

Well, it's true ..I could, but I'm not going to send 2nd chance offers for 99 cents for bidders of a $50 item. So imagine someone listing an item with a 10 selling limit and getting 11 bidders. You could sell just 1 item per month because of all the "potential" sales.

Another insane eBay move. :mad:

Actually it makes a lot of sense. I was sort of expecting eBay to implement this feature. Was wondering when they will get a bit wiser. Because after second chance does allow you to circumvent your selling limit.

This sounds ridiculous even for ebay. But I'm not yet sure this is true. I believe that you were told that, but keep in mind that it is not uncommon for ebay reps to make up some off-the-wall reason why something is happening to get you off the phone.

But if anyone would enact such a crazy policy it would be ebay.

I think most ebay chat comments are scripted and thought i had heard all of them .
So this is a new one on me..
Maybe we have a renegade chat advisor who is not reading the scripts or as future states they will tell you anything to get rid off you .
Either way .. A bloody stupid move from ebay .
I do a lot of 99p auctions to build accounts and never had this one thrown at me .. YET

Well, it seems to be true at least in my case. I used to sell BuyItNow items and was always able to list the full 40 items limit available. Only when I started listing auctions a few days ago, I was capped below the 40 items.

And guess what? I counted all the "possible" 2nd chance offers I could sell, together with the already sold items of the past 30 days and the active listings, and the number is exactly 40. When I try to list number 41, I get the selling limit message. So it all adds up.

I never liked the idea of starting at $0.99 but why not just start your auctions higher...? Problem solved

^ because depending on what your item is.. it will result in less views, less watchers, and less bids.


This is auction... so there is some risk, the less risk you take off the table, the less you'll make... well from what I see most of the time.

Really... you cant make this stuff up. The execs at ebay are either warped deviants or just flat out have too much free time on their hands.

Less bids is the whole point

True, but you can never tell how many bids you're going to get. And it doesn't solve the problem completely. The problem is that every unique bid appears to eat up 1 quantity of the selling limit. For small sellers, or sellers with lots of products listed, this may become an even bigger problem.

Imagine having a selling limit of 10. You list 3 items and each of them gets only 3 bids from 3 different bidders. You can then only list 1 more item, as you've already reached 9 (3x3). So you could end up only being able to sell 4 items instead of 10 that month.

And for big sellers ...if I see a new competitor now starting up with a small account, I could just use 10 different accounts to bid on 1 of his items and he won't be able to list anything else that month. Since he won't sell anything that way, his selling limits also don't get raised, as he doesn't get any feedback. So he's stuck at 10 in a loop forever. Easy way to prevent the competition from even rising.

Where is the account in question based imjust ?

not if its like.... 1, and your item sells for under or at cost.

The account is based in Asia :) Though if it's only here right now, doesn't mean eBay won't implement it globally later. We had the 10 items selling limit since over a year now and it was just recently introduced to the US as well now.

If you're selling a $200 item and you start it at $99, you'll save a lot more than just 1 bid. Probably 5 at least, depending on the increments it goes up by.

I am in the US and I haven't seen this happened to my account.

Heh, even some listings with an auction starting at $0.99 and a BuyItNow option still has buyers bidding OVER the BuyItNow price, you know, since nowadays, after a bid is placed, the BuyItNow option in a listing is gone. That goes to show you that bidders on ebay usually find low-starting-amount auctions more appealing.

I have not seen this either. Actual Second chance offers counting yes, Potential offers No.