An eBay policy change will hurt both sellers and buyers. The free auto relist 3x option reverted to a 1x relist and will be phased out.

By eliminating free auto relist, eBay makes it harder for sellers to provide quality service to customers. It means extra work, extra expense and fewer auctions. The biggest impact will be struggling small businesses and people trying to make ends meet. The only logical reason is that eBay wants to push people into options with higher fees, which small businesses cannot afford. It creates more manual work for sellers, time that they could spend creating new auctions or communicating with customers.

Adding insult to injury, they retroactively changed auctions without informing sellers. Sellers were blindsided when their auctions failed to auto-relist after the time and effort setting up the option. Some auctions never relisted once. Some sellers saw auctions relist in the middle of the night, hours after schedule, so the auctions will end when most people are sleeping and few people will be on the computers bidding. In doing so, eBay breached a contract they entered into with sellers, offering the option and retracting it from existing auctions.

Sellers are eBay’s lifeblood. Tell eBay to stop making seller’s lives more difficult. Reinstate the 3x free-auto relist program. Let sellers spend more time focused on customers, and less time on administrative work. The free auto relist allows us to offer cheaper products to our customers, unhindered by excessive relisting fees which deter us from putting up some of our auctions in the first place. This policy change can only result in angry sellers, dissatisfied customers, and fewer available goods on eBay.