Anyone notice the Removal of the Choice Policy Announcement?

simsoftenterprisesMember

I'm curious if anyone noticed the announcement by John McDonald on Monday May 19, 2008 about the Removal of the Choice Policy on eBay.

I'll repeat it below for anyone that hasn't seen it yet:

"Removal of the Choice Policy
First, starting immediately, the Choice Policy, which has required sellers to list similar items in different sizes and colors in separate listings, has been removed. Sellers may now create listings that offer choices such as size, color, and configuration. For example, a shoe seller may now offer a particular shoe in multiple sizes in one listing.
This change adds significant cost savings and convenience for sellers, while helping them delight their buyers with more choice.

Keep in mind that it will continue to be the seller's responsibility to accurately represent the available inventory in a listing. Being unable to fulfill a buyer's choice of a stated offering is considered a violation of the Seller Non-Performance Policy. Offering a choice of completely different items in the same listing is also prohibited under the Fee Circumvention Policy."

As someone that sells clothing items, this would actually make my life considerably easier. I could probably reduce my listings by 75% if I were allowed to use the same listing for all the various colors and sizes for a particular item. The downside would appear to be the lack of an automated information exchange between the buyer and seller regarding item specifics when the auction ends. Currently, listing 12 variants of the same items is expensive and rather silly when you think about it but at least when a buyer wins an auction the seller knows exactly what the buyer wanted. I'm not sure of an easy way to handle item specifics if a listing covers several variants for a particular item. It is hard enough getting buyers to actually pay for the items they bid on. I would hate to have to try to exchange messages with each buyer to find out what color and size they wanted for each item.

If the auction listings contained drop down menu boxes that allowed the buyer to choose the color and size that would be great, but I'm still not sure how that information would be sent to the seller. Perhaps I am missing something that would allow me to take advantage of this change immediately, but if not, does anyone know if Auctiva is looking at implementing something that would allow sellers a way to take advantage of the policy change. Maybe a custom template is required?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Steve

5/20/0810:36 PM

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dannoMember

Steve,

I think the solution is the Checkout process, i.e. select color and size options at checkout time. That might make Auctiva checkout a logical place to implement the change (and perhaps eBay with its other properties is thinking likewise to move more and more to full Retail model).

Tieing that to inventory and always showing correct onhand inventory in the listing is then a must and/or backordered with date available. The only thing that makes me nervous on backorder is buyer negs for not reading what's written (that's another subject for discussion).

In the mean time, one color on the Floor (auction or BIN) and the rest in the Store to keep the order straight is probably workable. I'd show all my colors and size options in the auction listing and point them to the Store, where listing is cheap. Folks have often done that anyway, but I think this policy suggests it's now sanctioned from the mountain top.....with more Commandments to come.

I posted the FULL policy release in the eBay Talk section of the Forum.

Danno

5/21/084:57 AM

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simsoftenterprisesMember

Thanks for the reply Danno.

I agree the best place to implement selection options would be at checkout time. Who knows how long that will take to implement, but it sure would make things a lot easier for the sellers of clothing items.

We actually do run one or two colors in auctions and then refer them to the store for the rest, but prior to now we had to do it in subtle ways. At least now we can be more obvious about it. The only downside to it is that we will still need to maintain all our listing and we have around 400 in Auctiva so it is a real pain when we want to change a template or something since we have to go through each one individually. It literally takes all day. That is unless you know a way to change a template used on listings in a bulk manner? I've checked the find and replace but didn't see a way to do it there unless I overlooked something.

If the checkout method you mentioned was available we could reduce our total listings to less than 100 and things would be much more manageable.

Perhaps in a few months this will be a possibility. One can only hope.

Thanks again!

Steve

5/21/083:00 PM

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