What changes lie in wait for sellers in Wednesday’s eBay Seller Update? eBay announced today that the Winter 2022 Seller Update will go live on February 9th, but sellers will only have one day to ask questions in special forums.
“The eBay team will take questions on Wednesday, February 9, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Pacific Time about the updates,” eBay stated in today’s announcement.
eBay’s last Seller Update took place on September 8, 2021, with eBay announcing changes to its User Agreement at the same time. Here’s a link to the special boards where sellers could “ask the eBay team questions” about the Fall 2021 announcement, but only on the day of the announcement.
The Fall Seller Update served as a reminder that sellers should look carefully not only at the headline-making news, but at the category changes announced as well. Don Heiden, an EcommerceBytes contributing columnist, noticed right away the impact the category rollup in Collectibles categories would have (one month later, the impact of the changes were felt).
Will eBay be tinkering with fees? Will it announce changes around seller performance metrics or make changes that impact search visibility? Will it announce new features to make sellers’ lives easier? eBay is focused on ad revenue (Promoted Listings) and payment-processing revenue (Managed Payments) – feel free to make your predictions, we’ll know for sure in about 12 hours or so.
Here’s a link to the announcement which, by the way, was not posted to the Seller Announcement board, but on the discussion boards instead.
Update 2/9/2022: You can read more and weigh in on this EcommerceBytes Blog post.
higher fees and even less seller protection would be my guess for the update