I doubt very much that this was not considered by whoever had this bright idea at Ebay. It is nothing more than another money grab where they can dig deeper in the Sellers pockets and get more money from them without a sale having to occur. If and when Ebay sells Stub Hub and Ebay Classifieds the marketplace is going to be exposed for all of its weaknesses just as Ebay has been since they were forced to spin off their true money maker, Paypal.

This lack of thinking things through or Ebay personnel being able to understand and explain what the changes really mean has always been an Ebay trait because they always write all policies in Weasel Speak so they can manipulate each case to whatever is to their advantage. Considering how little management understands what reality is, can you blame the under trained CSRs for not being able to give anybody a correct answer? I don’t care how much training you give these offshore CSR’s, if management doesn’t understand their own policies how can you expect some low paid 3rd party employee to understand, let alone care about understanding them.

Will this cost eBay money?? Not really. There will likely be a small bump upward in listing population on the marketplace, so more revenue there. If they give us 31 days instead of 30 on a GTC listing, every 2.5 years eBay would absorb one listing billing cycle, 35 cents, just over a penny per month. Or you could look at it as buy 30 months, get one free. Wow, I’d jump at such a generous offer, NOT. That’s why I say it’s such a minimal concession. It’s a 3% donation at a time when new money is coming in, maybe in the 10%-15% “free money” range. And it would be a sign of good will, as a lot of sellers will lose time and money adjusting to this needless mandate. For some, they aren’t even using all their store “Free listings”, so for them it’s a non-factor. C’mon eBay – grow a backbone!!