I think ebay understands that there is value to allowing synchronization with other sites.
The value comes from the fact that it encourages folks to spend their time listing (most) everything on eBay and synchronizing instead of some on each site. So eBay buyers have a chance at more stuff. Certainly material sells on the other sites, but again the goal is to encourage having "everything" on eBay.
It appears as if many folks are doing just this, probably for that very reason.
Lots of stuff has been changing on the eBay side, along with a number of issues, I'm surprised this is the first time there's been an extended synchronization outage.
going on three weeks without the sync working? has it worked for anyone with inventory updates or sync on sold merchandise? haven't seen any updates in this even though staff has been here on forums posting on other things. I am thinking this is bad news or certainly not any good news to report from them on this? hope i am wrong as i don't see this as a good thing for this site if it does not get fixed. or.. is it working and they forgot to remove the banners?
I find it interesting that eBay's sync with other platforms is seemingly unaffected; only Hipstamp. That tells me that either the "external issue" isn't external at all, or as others have speculated, this is a negotiations issue between Hipstamp and eBay.
Regardless, the deafening silence from Hipstamp in any formal capacity is telling 3 weeks on.
Blistering incompetence. At this point I'm sorry I prepaid for a year's store subscription, as (comparatively) nominal as it is. Fool me once...
"Perhaps eBay and Hipstamp have had a "fall out" over commission/fees for the sync service. I don't think it all happens for free.........................does it?"
It did occur to me when I first joined Hipstamp that the sales fees % was very close to what eBay were charging back then and I wondered why when Hipstamp could easily have charged less to be more attractive and competitive to sellers?
The conclusion I reached was that perhaps the % was so high because Hipstamp had to sacrifice and pay some of their % to eBay to secure the right to sync across inventory? The trouble is though when it next becomes time - or eBay decide - to renegotiate things then eBay are the type of outfit who want things THEIR WAY OR NO WAY and that could be what is going on at the moment?
I think a "lot of companies" including hipstamp :-) have that mentality Tania. :-) certainly Ebay is one of the more obvious ones. LOL - this situation and other recent changes are eye opening as to this attitude here.
The sync here really is needed by most of the sellers and without it i think, many will leave eventually because of the returns on work required to list and reconcile on selling on other sites and tying up inventory if listed separately as "not listed elsewhere items". this is not as much an issue if you are listing more common or duplicate material.
Logic will set in eventually for sellers if better material is listed here as far as the price it can sell for and it's chance of selling here at any price -compared to elsewhere. Ebay is now offering 50,000 item stores for $25ish a month- where as before the limit was 1,000 items in this range store level. Just saying the logical decision to list large inventories here due to listing fees elsewhere is no longer a valid issue. The sync "was" a great tool and great selling feature of this site. Many sellers like myself would not be here unless it is/was an option.
Starter Store Best for sellers who have a handful of products and want a storefront to brand and promote their business.
$4.95/mo with annual subscription
250/mo
Free auction listings in select categories or fixed-price listings
30¢ insertion fee for additional listing
Basic Store Just getting started? Enjoy more free listings, final value fee discounts, and a quarterly coupon for eBay-branded shipping supplies.
$21.95/mo with annual subscription
1,000/mo
Free fixed-price listings
25¢ insertion fee for additional listing
250/mo
Free auction listings in select categories
25¢ insertion fee for additional listing
Premium Store If you have an extensive product assortment, a Premium Store subscription gives you substantially more zero insertion fee listings.
$59.95/mo with annual subscription
10,000/mo
Free fixed-price listings
10¢ insertion fee for additional listing
500/mo
Free auction listings in select categories
15¢ insertion fee for additional listing
Anchor Store For high volume sellers who have an extensive product catalog or are running a business that would benefit from dedicated customer support.
$299.95/mo with annual subscription
25,000/mo
Free fixed-price listings
5¢ insertion fee for additional listing
Enterprise Store For enterprise sellers who have an extensive product catalog or are running a business that would benefit from dedicated customer support.
$2,999.95/mo with annual subscription
100,000/mo
Free fixed-price listings
5¢ insertion fee for additional listing
2,500/mo
Free auction listings in select categories
10¢ insertion fee for additional listing
In order to list 50,000 items per month you would have to have an enterprise store at almost $3,000 a month just to have the store open without selling a single item. And that's with an annual store subscription. On Hipstamp my store only costs $900 in store and listing fees. On Ebay my store fees ALONE would be $36,000 for a single year. (That DOES NOT include listings that would go over my store subscription)
I have no idea WHERE you are getting your figures from as those are the subscription prices and limits are posted from Ebay itself. The only I can think of is you didn't look at the store subscriptions as to what they really offering.
The large size stores such as mine are not syncing as many items from Ebay as you think they are due to the much higher store costs on Ebay. Ebay's store fee are killers, which is why I gave up Ebay. I would have to sell almost 5 times as much on Ebay as opposed to Hipstamp just to take in enough to pay the store subscription for the same size store I have on Hipstamp and I refuse to be working that hard only to be working for Ebay.
Your pricing does not reflect the real totals for managed payments stores- but I did mis quote the prices! $59 not $25 :-) and all stores are now required to do managed payments so the listings you posted are not correct but even if they were... they are now almost 10x what they were before (last year) on levels below enterprise stores. add the managed payment bonus and it is huge!
I have two stores on Ebay - the listing limits are hugely improved from a year ago due to the managed payments bonus. Example Additional Fixed Price Free Insertions in Select Categories
Additional fixed price insertions in select categories.opens in a new window or tab 49407 left.opens in a new window or tab / 49,407 <--- NOTE THIS (my store) and this is NOT an enterprise store and the monthly fee is $59 not $3000
in addition 10,000 + 500 auction Premium Store Subscription – 10,000 Fixed Price Listings
Pay no insertion fees for 10,000 listings.opens in a new window or tab Used/Left:1Promotional offers, 1 used, 9999 left.opens in a new window or tab / 9,999 ebay.com store level for above is $50ish? the $50 a month store added 50,000+ free listings total= 60,000+ auctions
now the second store is lower level $21.95mo - very generous listing limits also so i mispoke a bit on exact pricing but the second store has 11,000 listings plus 250 auction level its previous level was 1000 listings +250 a gain of 10000+ listings. Being as i list less than 10,000 items both stores are similar but one is $25 more for me. :-) add the two stores together= 72,000 listings available free for about $80 a month in store costs. Hipstamp charges $10 a month for 10,000 listings on the level i had. this "was" to include Sync to Ebay. This $22 Ebay store is greatly underpriced ,imo
the point being and was in my post.. before it was a 1000 limit on store listings.. the new limit is 10,000 -> to -> 50,000 items and one of the selling features of value here is now gone.. as in advantages in higher listing amounts than Ebay to store excess inventory. But the sync becomes even more important with the HUGE increases in Cheap free listing amounts on Ebay. and the store fees there are extremely cheap for the new amounts of items allowed to list. Please note.. the monthly fee is probably slightly more than $50ish and $22ish and I only have 3,000 items listed between the two stores right now.. I hope to greatly expand this and keep my fees at the level they are now. though I doubt I will list more than 10,000 items within the next year. my original plans was to expand here with a simple Sync. that is looking like a no go at this point. Hopefully this Sync will get resolved and fixed as i think this site has great potential.
Those are the prices Ebay is showing on that page this MORNING. (What they are not showing on that page is the listings for the selected cats.) That's something they are not showing up front.
The page they are showing for this is
Seller Center Store Subscriptions and Benefits
And there is NO MENTION of any differences for selected cats except for auctions.
Wow!.....American eBay stores are cheaper and better value than UK ones.
I have a UK Featured store £69/month (£80.20 including tax) and get just 1500 free listings and 300 free auction listings + a £10 packing voucher each month. Extra fixed price listings over 1500 are 5p each and extra auctions are 15p each.
I'm worried about the time it's taking for Hipstamp to sort out this Sync issue........................if it was just something technical it should have been fixed by now?
Yes , i agree Tania - odd that they are not the same price? are you under the Ebay managed payments system or still with Paypal? might be they have not extended the new system to international?
Strange Michael.. I started getting excited earlier .. about a year ago when they started the new system. so the rates and listing amounts are almost a year old now. I doubt i will ever list more than 20,000 items so I should be ok even if they cut back on the extra listings (two stores= 20,000 listings @ $59 per store is basic) but they have been there for almost a year. add that to the new postal method- tracking for stamp dealers free.. and it really adds up to a lot of savings in fees.
Yes Jerry - switched over to ebay managed payments last March after leaving it until the last moment under the threat of eBay cutting off my ability to list anything new on my 100% F/B score and Zero defects account.
In the UK sellers only gain slightly in fees on managed payments if the item you sell is over £9.00. Over £25 you notice the savings. The majority of my items are priced between £3 and £7 so I'm paying more in F/V/Fees. Those sellers that were on PayPal Micropayments are losing out even more as the MP transaction fee is now 30p + tax. I think there are still only 5 eBay international sites that are compatible with managed payments?...........so overseas sales have been down (plus there was Brexit)............ but they have started to recover again.
As this continues it becomes less worthwhile to stay on hip. One big issue is that none of my new listings are coming across. Is there any manual export/import type function that I can use to copy listings from eBay manually?
I also had a message that I had to renew my ebay token (approval to update ebay stuff) which I did.
It appears they're now using syncsquid to do the synchronization.
There's also this message:
"Do you have an active ebay store?
If so, you can automatically sync all of your stamps and related fixed-price listings from ebay through Sync Squid - for no additional fee! With Sync Squid, when an item sells on Hip, the item will be automatically closed or the quantity updated accordingly on ebay, and vice versa. Additionally, any new items listed on ebay, or updates to your existing listings, will automatically be synced to Hip.
Note: Unfortunately, we cannot yet import existing ebay listings. However, we are working to provide a solution for this soon."
So I'm not clear what this means, ie if an ebay item sold during the outage and is currently on Hipstamp, will it be deleted here now? I had presumed there would be a "reset" of everyone's synchronized items, but that does not seem to be the case.
It looks like previously synchronized and listed here items will still be here.
Because I don't really know when this started, I don't know how many items would need to be found here and zapped.
I guess I'll do an experiment and reopen my store and see if ebay sold stuff is here or not now, and report back.
Things I know: -previously synchronized items are still synchronized -items sold on eBay during the outage are NOT showing as sold here, they remain active. -a newly listed item on eBay does show up on Hipstamp a couple minutes later
Things I need to know: -will the sold on ebay during the outage but not showing as sold here be automagically corrected? -if NOT, then we will need to know the actual start and stop time of the outage so we can go through our sold eBay items and correct things here (this is going to mean many hours for folks who've sold 100s of items during the outage).
It would be nice to hear from the support folks regarding what is/n't in place yet. Clearly a "new synchronizer" is out of luck until that gets in place but that's all that's addressed in the message in my previous note.
No they will be as full as when it was closed but there will be anything sold on ebay showing as available still.....unless you zapped all your synchronized items out before you closed the store....
I have had to manually delete all my ebay sales over the last 2+ weeks on Hipstamp as none have been automatically removed and there was a serious risk of duplicate sales of already sold items.
When I reopened my store, all of my ebay synchronized stuff was still there, so as long as you had synchronized inventory before you closed the store, it should still be there now (but with extras of stuff that sold on ebay that appear to have to be manually closed here).
The import existing listings caveat would be for someone who had not synchronized before and wanted to start synchronizing now. At least that's how I understand it.
I know that listing a new item is automagically populated here. Haven't sold anything here yet nor anything on ebay since I reopened the store so don't know about those aspects.
It would be nice if the actual technical folks would advise instead of us having to guess, experiment to figure it out.
As a note, I suspect ALL of us will have to redo our ebay token, if you go to your members area summary, you'll have a note that you need to renew your certificate, you will need to do that if you haven't already.
"The import existing listings caveat would be for someone who had not synchronized before and wanted to start synchronizing now. At least that's how I understand it."
yes that is what i'm doing :-) so its not fixed yet.. i recon?
I'm already having problems even looking up my items, I'm not sure how folks find anything here that isn't a country with a stamp number, certainly explains why my mixed lots seem to be hard to find for folks.....
The synch for me is working. I cancelled a couple of Buy It Now lots on Feebay and immediately relisted them as new BIN listings on that site. Within a minute or so, they showed up on HS. However, it does not appear that lots that were listed on Feebay after the linking was terminated have automatically shown, at least for me. Finally, it is somewhat distressing that the management of this site has not up to this point, made an announcement of any kind to address the issue that has caused many of us sellers one heck of a lot of work.
Ebay Syncing still does not work. I have several listings sold on Ebay today, which is not reflected in the number that is still available here. The cost of staying on Hipstamp without a working Ebay sync is not at all interesting as the fees here are way too high compared to Ebay after the Ebay managing payment upgrade, numbers of listings and the actual sale. Then comes all the manual work to maintain the inventory when it is not synchronized. I stay in extended vacation mode until Sync is resolved. And will leave if it is not resolved. I do not have time to change hundreds of listings sold every week to prevent double sales and disappointed customers...
Comments
Being the corporate monster that eBay is they are probably trying to put Hipstamp out of business or weaken them for a takeover?
If it does get corrected then expect yet another fees rise!
I too am waiting until the formal announcement is updated.
The value comes from the fact that it encourages folks to spend their time listing (most) everything on eBay and synchronizing instead of some on each site. So eBay buyers have a chance at more stuff. Certainly material sells on the other sites, but again the goal is to encourage having "everything" on eBay.
It appears as if many folks are doing just this, probably for that very reason.
Lots of stuff has been changing on the eBay side, along with a number of issues, I'm surprised this is the first time there's been an extended synchronization outage.
Regardless, the deafening silence from Hipstamp in any formal capacity is telling 3 weeks on.
Blistering incompetence. At this point I'm sorry I prepaid for a year's store subscription, as (comparatively) nominal as it is. Fool me once...
"Perhaps eBay and Hipstamp have had a "fall out" over commission/fees for the sync service. I don't think it all happens for free.........................does it?"
It did occur to me when I first joined Hipstamp that the sales fees % was very close to what eBay were charging back then and I wondered why when Hipstamp could easily have charged less to be more attractive and competitive to sellers?
The conclusion I reached was that perhaps the % was so high because Hipstamp had to sacrifice and pay some of their % to eBay to secure the right to sync across inventory? The trouble is though when it next becomes time - or eBay decide - to renegotiate things then eBay are the type of outfit who want things THEIR WAY OR NO WAY and that could be what is going on at the moment?
The sync here really is needed by most of the sellers and without it i think, many will leave eventually because of the returns on work required to list and reconcile on selling on other sites and tying up inventory if listed separately as "not listed elsewhere items". this is not as much an issue if you are listing more common or duplicate material.
Logic will set in eventually for sellers if better material is listed here as far as the price it can sell for and it's chance of selling here at any price -compared to elsewhere. Ebay is now offering 50,000 item stores for $25ish a month- where as before the limit was 1,000 items in this range store level. Just saying the logical decision to list large inventories here due to listing fees elsewhere is no longer a valid issue. The sync "was" a great tool and great selling feature of this site. Many sellers like myself would not be here unless it is/was an option.
You need to go back and double check those fees. There is NO WAY you can list 50,000 an items a month for $25 a month.
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/run-your-store/subscriptions-and-fees.html
Starter Store
Best for sellers who have a handful of products and want a storefront to brand and promote their business.
$4.95/mo
with annual subscription
250/mo
Free auction listings in select categories or fixed-price listings
30¢ insertion fee for additional listing
Basic Store
Just getting started? Enjoy more free listings, final value fee discounts, and a quarterly coupon for eBay-branded shipping supplies.
$21.95/mo
with annual subscription
1,000/mo
Free fixed-price listings
25¢ insertion fee for additional listing
250/mo
Free auction listings in select categories
25¢ insertion fee for additional listing
Premium Store
If you have an extensive product assortment, a Premium Store subscription gives you substantially more zero insertion fee listings.
$59.95/mo
with annual subscription
10,000/mo
Free fixed-price listings
10¢ insertion fee for additional listing
500/mo
Free auction listings in select categories
15¢ insertion fee for additional listing
Anchor Store
For high volume sellers who have an extensive product catalog or are running a business that would benefit from dedicated customer support.
$299.95/mo
with annual subscription
25,000/mo
Free fixed-price listings
5¢ insertion fee for additional listing
Enterprise Store
For enterprise sellers who have an extensive product catalog or are running a business that would benefit from dedicated customer support.
$2,999.95/mo
with annual subscription
100,000/mo
Free fixed-price listings
5¢ insertion fee for additional listing
2,500/mo
Free auction listings in select categories
10¢ insertion fee for additional listing
In order to list 50,000 items per month you would have to have an enterprise store at almost $3,000 a month just to have the store open without selling a single item. And that's with an annual store subscription. On Hipstamp my store only costs $900 in store and listing fees. On Ebay my store fees ALONE would be $36,000 for a single year. (That DOES NOT include listings that would go over my store subscription)
I have no idea WHERE you are getting your figures from as those are the subscription prices and limits are posted from Ebay itself. The only I can think of is you didn't look at the store subscriptions as to what they really offering.
The large size stores such as mine are not syncing as many items from Ebay as you think they are due to the much higher store costs on Ebay. Ebay's store fee are killers, which is why I gave up Ebay. I would have to sell almost 5 times as much on Ebay as opposed to Hipstamp just to take in enough to pay the store subscription for the same size store I have on Hipstamp and I refuse to be working that hard only to be working for Ebay.
I have two stores on Ebay - the listing limits are hugely improved from a year ago due to the managed payments bonus. Example
Additional Fixed Price Free Insertions in Select Categories
Additional fixed price insertions in select categories.opens in a new window or tab
49407 left.opens in a new window or tab / 49,407 <--- NOTE THIS (my store) and this is NOT an enterprise store and the monthly fee is $59 not $3000
in addition 10,000 + 500 auction
Premium Store Subscription – 10,000 Fixed Price Listings
Pay no insertion fees for 10,000 listings.opens in a new window or tab
Used/Left:1Promotional offers, 1 used, 9999 left.opens in a new window or tab / 9,999
ebay.com store level for above is $50ish? the $50 a month store added 50,000+ free listings total= 60,000+ auctions
now the second store is lower level $21.95mo - very generous listing limits also so i mispoke a bit on exact pricing but the second store has 11,000 listings plus 250 auction level its previous level was 1000 listings +250 a gain of 10000+ listings. Being as i list less than 10,000 items both stores are similar but one is $25 more for me. :-) add the two stores together= 72,000 listings available free for about $80 a month in store costs. Hipstamp charges $10 a month for 10,000 listings on the level i had. this "was" to include Sync to Ebay. This $22 Ebay store is greatly underpriced ,imo
the point being and was in my post.. before it was a 1000 limit on store listings.. the new limit is 10,000 -> to -> 50,000 items and one of the selling features of value here is now gone.. as in advantages in higher listing amounts than Ebay to store excess inventory. But the sync becomes even more important with the HUGE increases in Cheap free listing amounts on Ebay. and the store fees there are extremely cheap for the new amounts of items allowed to list. Please note.. the monthly fee is probably slightly more than $50ish and $22ish and I only have 3,000 items listed between the two stores right now.. I hope to greatly expand this and keep my fees at the level they are now. though I doubt I will list more than 10,000 items within the next year. my original plans was to expand here with a simple Sync. that is looking like a no go at this point. Hopefully this Sync will get resolved and fixed as i think this site has great potential.
Those are the prices Ebay is showing on that page this MORNING. (What they are not showing on that page is the listings for the selected cats.) That's something they are not showing up front.
The page they are showing for this is
Seller Center Store Subscriptions and Benefits
And there is NO MENTION of any differences for selected cats except for auctions.
I have a UK Featured store £69/month (£80.20 including tax) and get just 1500 free listings and 300 free auction listings + a £10 packing voucher each month. Extra fixed price listings over 1500 are 5p each and extra auctions are 15p each.
I'm worried about the time it's taking for Hipstamp to sort out this Sync issue........................if it was just something technical it should have been fixed by now?
https://www.hipstamp.com/store/stampsfirst-day-covers-and-curios
In the UK sellers only gain slightly in fees on managed payments if the item you sell is over £9.00. Over £25 you notice the savings. The majority of my items are priced between £3 and £7 so I'm paying more in F/V/Fees. Those sellers that were on PayPal Micropayments are losing out even more as the MP transaction fee is now 30p + tax. I think there are still only 5 eBay international sites that are compatible with managed payments?...........so overseas sales have been down (plus there was Brexit)............ but they have started to recover again.
I also had a message that I had to renew my ebay token (approval to update ebay stuff) which I did.
It appears they're now using syncsquid to do the synchronization.
There's also this message:
"Do you have an active ebay store?
If so, you can automatically sync all of your stamps and related fixed-price listings from ebay through Sync Squid - for no additional fee! With Sync Squid, when an item sells on Hip, the item will be automatically closed or the quantity updated accordingly on ebay, and vice versa. Additionally, any new items listed on ebay, or updates to your existing listings, will automatically be synced to Hip.
Note: Unfortunately, we cannot yet import existing ebay listings. However, we are working to provide a solution for this soon."
So I'm not clear what this means, ie if an ebay item sold during the outage and is currently on Hipstamp, will it be deleted here now? I had presumed there would be a "reset" of everyone's synchronized items, but that does not seem to be the case.
It looks like previously synchronized and listed here items will still be here.
Because I don't really know when this started, I don't know how many items would need to be found here and zapped.
I guess I'll do an experiment and reopen my store and see if ebay sold stuff is here or not now, and report back.
-previously synchronized items are still synchronized
-items sold on eBay during the outage are NOT showing as sold here, they remain active.
-a newly listed item on eBay does show up on Hipstamp a couple minutes later
Things I need to know:
-will the sold on ebay during the outage but not showing as sold here be automagically corrected?
-if NOT, then we will need to know the actual start and stop time of the outage so we can go through our sold eBay items and correct things here (this is going to mean many hours for folks who've sold 100s of items during the outage).
It would be nice to hear from the support folks regarding what is/n't in place yet. Clearly a "new synchronizer" is out of luck until that gets in place but that's all that's addressed in the message in my previous note.
just to be clear as i do not want to close them again..LOL :-)
one little post i noticed as stated here before- i went ahead and opened the store again but no inventory until they fix the import part?
Note: Unfortunately, we cannot yet import existing ebay listings. However, we are working to provide a solution for this soon.
So.. doesnt look like it is fixed yet.. not sure what they did fix other than add the name "Squid Sync?"
The import existing listings caveat would be for someone who had not synchronized before and wanted to start synchronizing now. At least that's how I understand it.
I know that listing a new item is automagically populated here. Haven't sold anything here yet nor anything on ebay since I reopened the store so don't know about those aspects.
It would be nice if the actual technical folks would advise instead of us having to guess, experiment to figure it out.
As a note, I suspect ALL of us will have to redo our ebay token, if you go to your members area summary, you'll have a note that you need to renew your certificate, you will need to do that if you haven't already.
yes that is what i'm doing :-) so its not fixed yet.. i recon?
Now I just have to figure out what items have sold on eBay since whenever and somehow find them here to end them.....
The search is too difficult for many of my items so I'll experiment later when I've got some fresh coffee in me.
The cost of staying on Hipstamp without a working Ebay sync is not at all interesting as the fees here are way too high compared to Ebay after the Ebay managing payment upgrade, numbers of listings and the actual sale.
Then comes all the manual work to maintain the inventory when it is not synchronized. I stay in extended vacation mode until Sync is resolved. And will leave if it is not resolved. I do not have time to change hundreds of listings sold every week to prevent double sales and disappointed customers...