Relisting with listing software

Well, here is a step backwards then

The t&c's used to state that gold members were allowed to relist the same items a maximum of 3 times a year (which works out once every 4 FOUR months), but no mention was made of API or easyUploader.

In order to include these in the t&c's a change has been made and it now reads:

QUOTE: "The Delcampe website provides efficient and swift listing tools. In addition to the classic selling form, the Delcampe Lister, the API system or the easyUploader system.

These listing tools should be used with moderation. In order to avoid abuse, the same item (same title, same image(s), same description) can be put up for sale, by a same person, maximum once every three months." UNQUOTE

So, effectively one extra relist a year.

Given the problems with slowness of listing, problems with the search engine, etc. which have been reported recently, was this really a wise decision?

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Well spotted Mainly.......another poke in the eye for the "sane" policy I guess.......

If you understand French, read this: Link (http)

Monitoring will be done by you and me - we're invited to report any infringes to them.

Die Informationen sind nicht mehr verfügbar, da das Konto dieses Benutzers gelöscht wird (DSGVO-Grundverordnung).

This particular change in the t&c's is not going to de-clutter anything.

I am aware of 2 postcard sellers with over 500k items each who optimize the allowed use of the listing software. Just those 2 are responsible for 3 million fake new listings every year. No doubt they will be very quick to realize this change and will now become responsible for 4 million fake new items a year!

Roughly once a month I take a snapshot of the figures Delcampe displays on their home page.

I shall quote some figures - the first one mid September, the 2nd one was yesterday and the third one the difference. So roughly 3 weeks between those 2 sets of figures.

Ongoing sales: 53774714 54042974 268260
Items since beginning: 216462393 218249452 1787059
sold since beginning: 47415693 47661243 245550

Conclusion: in 3 weeks 1.78 million items were listed, off those 268k are still on the site and 245k were sold. The difference roughly 1.27 million items.

Now there is always going to be some "wastage" where a seller sells something directly to someone, makes a mistake in his listing, etc., so lets mark it down to 1.25 million in 3 weeks. That is roughly 22 million items a year that "disappear" (closed by the sellers in question and relisted using the software)

As a buyer I'd be very disgruntled having to look at that many items again and again - I know we have the facility to block sellers, but only a limited number of them.

As a seller, I find it worrying that I run the risk of my items instantly disappearing to page10, 20 or wherever, when I am listing new items.

Recently we have seen a spade of complaints about the site being very slow, problems with uploading images, search engine not working properly, etc etc.

These 22 million items a year are taking up server space. Although you may not be able to find them when you do a general search, if you search for item numbers or have them in your watch list, those items are still on the servers, complete with images, etc.

Instead of increasing the number of permissible relists, this should have been decreased.

Decotiques, the duplicate sales is a separate issue (I assume you mentioned them because you read the French post). Again, this is not going to get resolved, unless Delcampe gets tough on the serial offenders and re-writes the t&c's to make it absolutely clear in all languages that this is not allowed.

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Hello everyone,

On the French forum I had indeed highlighted the same ratio:

Items listed / (ongoing sales + lots sold)

For the site as a whole over the past year, the ratio has climbed from 1.8 times to 2.2 times. In other words there have been 2.2 items listed for every unique item that has passed through the site, and the trend is up.

A good part of this is due to the legitimate relisting of expiring (long duration) renewals (indeed, so long as there are unsold items, the ratio should inoxerably and slowly trend upwards as the site gets older). Some of it is also due to legitimate prices changes, image changes, description changes, etc. These numbers cannot be known. However, considering that 2.2 times is an average for the site and most sellers are not actively recycling old items, I am convinced based also on what I see that some stores out there are running with ratios well in excess of the average (possibly 5x or even 10x or more), suggesting disfunctional behavior by their owners. On this view I had suggested to the staff that they actively monitor the ratio on a per store basis, which in all fairness they may already have been doing.

Having said this, the recent rule change does effectively allow an increase in the per item recycling rate from 3 to 4 times a year, although there is an important subtlety: before, it was 3 times a year whenever you wanted; now it's 4 times a year, but not more than once every three months. This forced interval seems intended to complicate matters for those interested in actively recycling their stocks, and to facilitate monitoring and spotting the offenders (for one thing, the size of the database required is now 3 months of data, versus 12 previously).

Still, the rule change does mean the following: whereas previously a certain seller with 700,000+ items could recycle an average of 40,000 items a week without infringing the rules (700,000*3/52), now he can do 54,000 (700,000*4/52).

And unless everybody has misunderstood or is not seeing things right, it's this above all that is sticking accross most throats: that some very large sellers who are actively rotating their stocks are effectively being allowed to drown out all the others on a daily basis, thereby also hiding many if not most truly new items from the view of potential buyers.

For buyers, two solutions to this scurge are black-listing and advanced searches. But the former is too brute or black and white to satisfy, and the latter does not always suffice, given the size of the site (the lists can still be long and dominated by relistings from a few).

So in then end here we all are, with measures being taken and tools being provided, but also the persistent feeling that certain things, as Voltaire would have said, 'are not for the best in the best of all possible worlds'.

Best regards,

Brice

Georgie,
I didn't make myself very clear - I was referring to invisible items after they are closed. After 3 months keyword search doesn't pick them up any more, but they are still on the system if you search by number.

As far as active items not showing up is concerned - this seems to have been an ongoing problem for some time now and like you, I sometimes wonder if that is by design.

Brice, I spotted your post on the French forum - my French is not good at all, but I did get a rough idea of what you said.

There may be something in the 3 month thing. Closed items remain visible/searchable for 3 months, so it would be easier to spot offending items, if people were actively looking for them.

I don't understand your reasoning about less server space being needed - even more space is going to be needed to cater for increased daily activity and for storage of closed items - every item that has been closed almost since the launch of the site is still lurking somewhere on the Delcampe servers.

Hello Mainly,

I meant that from now on, when searching through the servers for false news, they will only need to manipulate and visualize 3 months worth of data at a time, rather rhan 12. If in this data you see the same item twice, you've caught a false news.

No impact on server storage capacity whatsoever. Just easier to control.

Best,

Brice.

Hi Mainly,

"I was referring to invisible items after they are closed. After 3 months keyword search doesn't pick them up any more, but they are still on the system if you search by number."

I wasn't aware of the 3 month restriction on keyword searches. It would confirm my thinking, that by aligning the two, the new rule on relisting makes it easier for members, employees and moderators to spot false new items.

It thus seems that policing not relisting frequency was their primary focus with this change, that otherwise is totally counter-intuitive.

But I'm merely guessing and it would be nice for someone to confirm this. It would certainly help calm things down on the French forum.

Brice

OK, we are exactly on the same wave length. I was confused because you wrote "the size of the database required is now 3 months of data, versus 12 previously".

I've sent you a message illustrating the 3 month thing. Couldn't post it on the forum or I would be naming and shaming.

Thanks, Mainly.
Indeed. That item's already been relisted 5 times in the last year, with only a few days in between. When you see examples like this it's easier to see how the new rule should slow things down and simultaneously enable better control.
Best,
Brice

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Hello Decotiques,
Could you clarify your thinking, about "it" being "a sure-fire way of weeding out small sellers"? What "it" do you mean, and how?
Thanks,
Brice

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Hello,


Yes, indeed, you can understand that in this way. But... the real problem has now been fixed.

Previously, a seller could upload the same time 3 times in 3 months if he wanted to. Just because he could do it 3 times a year.

A few sellers understood this breach in the Charter, so they decided to upload their 3 times, for the new "commercial year", September-October.

This is why this problem became so obvious now.

So, we decided to fix our Charter, and to enforce it.

But, yes, you are right! It is now possible "4 times a year", while it was possible "3 times" before. But, it just sounded us illogical to use quadrimesters, while trimesters are more usual.

Globally, it fixes the problem and does not really bring any new one.


Sebastien Delcampe

... and, I forgot, when you see sellers breaching the Charter, just report them to our team.

I can see the logic of a minimum interval between relists, as Brice and I have already been discussing in this thread.

However, I calculated that under the previous 3x a year, this is creating roughly 22 million "false new" listings a year. Under the new system this would go up to about 29 million. That is one heck of a lot of server space!

Concurrent with this thread, there is also a conversation going about search preferences: Link (http) relevant posts are yesterday's.

Might it be worth considering changing the default for something like a one month trial period to "ending soonest" first? I have expressed the pro's and cons, as I see them, but do the pro's outweigh the cons?

btw, in my post on the French forum I did not mean you personally, but rather anyone/someone from the Delcampe Team.