eBay Tests Auto Price Reduction Allowing Sellers To Automate Lowering Item Prices Over Time
eBay appears to be testing a new Auto Price Reduction feature which allows sellers to set dollar amount and schedule to automate lowering prices over time.
The new option on the listing form was recently spotted by eBay sellers/YouTubers Lonnie and Candace at ShedFlips.
In the version Lonnie is seeing, which is meant for business sellers, eBay allows the option to set a flat dollar amount to reduce the price by; time intervals of every 3, 5, 7, 14, or 30 days; and a minimum price cap at which to stop the reductions.
If that sounds familiar, back in 2018, eBay introduced a similar feature called Easy Pricing which would kick in 10 days after a listing went live and lower the price 5% every 5 days thereafter until pricing hit the minimum.
But Easy Pricing was not available to all sellers. According to eBay for Business podcast host Jim "Griff" Griffith in 2022, it was only shown in the app and only for some undetermined amount of time to new or occasional sellers to help them learn about setting pricing - but after the seller gained some experience selling on the platform, the option would go away.
Liz Morton
This new Auto Price Reduction feature is also currently not being shown to all sellers, suggesting it may be either in beta testing or a phased rollout.
Out of 3 accounts I was able to personally check, 2 did not have it at all and 1 that would definitely be classified as a new/occasional personal selling account had a simplified version compared to what is shown for business sellers.
This simplified version only allows the seller to set the flat dollar amount to reduce the price by and a minimum price cap, but eBay defaults to an every 7 days interval and there are no options for any other time frames.
While this could be a very useful tool for some sellers, it's also likely to lead to some questions and confusion as sellers may not realize some settings in the listing form can be "sticky" - meaning if you turn it on when creating one listing, it may default to "on" for subsequent listings or when revising other listings.
It's not entirely clear if this setting is "sticky" but at least one seller posted in the eBay community forum that they are seeing it automatically turned on when trying to revise listings.
Auto Price Reduction
Every time I list something then go to revise it, I noticed that it is defaulting to the Automatic Price Reduction. I made sure that I didn't turn on the button but it keeps defaulting to the ON position. How can I turn this off??
You should still have to enter the price and time increments as well as the minimum price, so in theory just having it defaulted to the "on" position shouldn't cause price to be reduced without the seller's knowledge, but it's definitely not a bad idea to double check.
The feature is also sure to add fuel to the age old debate about whether it's really a good thing to encourage automated price reductions as it may foster "race to the bottom" dynamics and sellers already face significant pressure to provide discounts, coupons, and lower prices through buyer and seller initiated offers.
Last year, eBay tested a feature that went so far as to offer post-sale price matching for lower prices.
Liz Morton
Many sellers felt that was a step too far and the test was eventually ended after significant pushback.
What do you think of eBay's Auto Price Reduction functionality? Will you use it on your listings if/when it is available? Let us know in the comments below!
