eBay may have ended their acceptance of listing durations other than Good Till Canceled (GTC), however, AoB has your back with a new tool to allow you to still utilize a limited listing duration. This tool will allow you to set up an automation that will use the AoB do not list settings to try and delete listings before they're set to bill again on eBay.
You'll find options in the eBay Attributes section of your listing page for individual SKU as well as a global default in the eBay Attributes section of your AoB Single List Page Settings page. Using either, or both, of these options you can set the number of days before the end of the 30-day billing cycle on eBay for AoB to begin attempting to end a listing. If you regularly list new inventory or edit existing inventory using a file that you upload to your account you can set your days before ending a listing by using 'eby_auto_end' as your header, with the number of days (whole numbers only) for the value.
How it works...
- When an item is listed, AoB records the eBay reported time that the listing will end. Days are measured in 24-hour blocks prior to that time.
- Existing items will either need to be updated in some fashion, or you can send a Refresh to eBay which will pull in the reported listing time to be used going forward for the life of that specific listing.
- A scanner has been created that will run every night and check inventories for any items with a recorded date that is within the user-specified window created by the aforementioned settings. If /when an item is found, that item is marked with a 'do not list' setting for eBay, which queues a delete that will be sent to eBay on the next upload cycle, effectively delisting your item/s before you are again billed for a listing.
It is important to note that since these deletes are as susceptible to the same sort of upload backups as any other file going to eBay, you'll want to consider your expected listing activity and set the number of days accordingly. (As an example: If you are listing a handful of items a day, setting your time as 1 day before your billing is fine. However, if you are regularly listing thousands of items you might want to build a couple of days margin in there since eBay's uploads are typically slower.)
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