eBay Time Change Listing Date Glitch Spreads To UK, Still Not Resolved In US
UPDATE 3-10-24
The same issue has also been confirmed to be impacted sellers in Canada, coinciding with the time changes as well.
US sellers say as of today, it appears listings going forward will be correct now that the time change is complete, but it remains to be seen if it has been fixed on the back end and if eBay will proactively handle the impending additional listing fee problem that may hit at the end of the month.
Update:
Items listed February 10th
Erroneously renewed March 9th
Next renewal is showing April 10th
Additional update: now that the time change has gone into effect, listings created today have the correct renewal date as expected. Created March 10th, renewing April 10th.
This does not tell us if the issue is fixed on the backend. We will not know unless eBay confirms or unless we see the issue recur at the next time change (or leap year).
eBay community staff have provided no further updates.
eBay has made unannounced changes to how they handle Daylight Saving Time and British Summer Time, introducing a listing date glitch that could be very costly for sellers
US sellers first noticed the change with listings starting on February 10th showing an end date of March 9th when they should have been ending on March 10th.
Liz Morton
Originally it was thought this issue could possibly be explained by 2024 being a leap year, as it one time Good Til Canceled listings on eBay renewed every 30 days.
However,- the current policy actually relists Good Til Canceled listings on the same day every month - with adjustments made for some months that are shorter than others.
When you list an item as Good ’Til Canceled, it will relist every month on the same day until it’s sold. For example, if you list your item on the 1st of May, it will relist on the 1st of June.
If you list your item on the 29th, 30th, or 31st of a month, the duration will be adjusted if the following month is shorter, but will revert to the original day for longer months. For example, if you list an item on the 31st of May, it will relist on the 30th of June, and then again on the 31st of August and so on.
Sellers receive a certain amount of free listings every month and any listings that go over their zero insertion fee allowance will cost $0.10 - $0.35 per listing, depending on if they have a store subscription.
Since the free listing allowance starts on the first day of every month and ends on the last day, eBay's previous Good Til Canceled 30 day listing period would occasionally cause sellers to be hit with extra fees in longer months.
The "same day of the month" policy for Good Til Canceled renewals was put in place to placate sellers who complained about those extra fees and we can see the Insertion Fee policy page was also changed to reflect the fact that listings should only be renewing once per calendar month.
Originally, some sellers speculated this "one day off" issue could be related to Leap Day, but that didn't make much sense given the timing of the change and now that the glitch has continued with listings created so far in March, it's safe to say this is not a Leap Day problem.
The real culprit appears to be programming changes eBay has made to account for the upcoming Daylight Saving Time change.
Yesterday's new listings are showing:
Start Feb 10, 2024 2:00 pm, end Mar 9, 2024 2:00 pm
Today's new listings are showing:
Start Feb 11, 2024 2:00 pm, end Mar 10, 2024 3:00pm
Yesterday was a 1 day discrepancy. Today is a 1 day minus 1 hour discrepancy.
Edit: It occurs to me March 10 is daylight savings, so that probably accounts for the extra 1 hr - Spring forward the clocks / Fall back the clocks. It does not explain the minus 1 day though.
eBay community staff have been aware of the problem for almost a month now and say they have reported it to the proper team but the issue persists and there have been no updates or further information provided.
Unfortunately, if this issue not resolved soon, many sellers could be in for an expensive surprise at the end of the month when listings start renewing on March 31st and costing them extra insertion fees.
The time change theory was bolstered even further this week with sellers in the UK reporting they are now experiencing the same issue as eBay plans for their change to British Summer Time on March 31st.
This affected 7 new listings that were made yesterday afternoon (4th March). Six of these were scheduled at specific times to start so they slotted into existing listings in the correct order of the same type that were auto-renewing.
An example is item 204677221633 which now shows a finish on 3rd April instead of 4th. Interesting that they also show a time which is one hour forward of the time at which they became active whilst the auto-renewed listings show the time ending as the same as that they ended. It seems someone has been playing with the change from GMT to BST as there is now a disparity between existing listings and new listings.
Marco@eBay responded:
I was checking there, and the listing for the item 204677221633 went live on March 4th, and it is ending on April 3rd in case it doesn't sell before that. If you count the days from March 4th until April 3rd, you will see that there are 30 full days. Other than that, I don't see anything wrong with your listing. If you wish to flag something else, please let me know.
The UK policy page for Good Til Canceled Listings has had the "same day of the month" timing as the US since 2019, - is Marco just shockingly unaware of it or has there been a change in policy that has been pushed to internal resources that he might be referencing but not actually communicated to sellers yet?
If this was simply a programming error, it would seem easy enough to revert once the error was brought to eBay's attention. Considering the issue has been going on for almost a month in the US with no resolution and no updates, sellers are rightfully beginning to be concerned it may be an intentional change, not a glitch.
Either way, eBay needs to get out ahead of this and communicate with sellers before this turns into a massive billing and customer service nightmare at the end of the month.
