So, um, er… This is awkward but I, uh, completely messed up. Remember how I told you I was closing my eBay store because of the new price increase? Yeah… about that.

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Photo by wolfgangfoto

I was pissed at eBay for raising the price of a Basic eBay store to $24.95 a month because I was paying $14.95 a month on the yearly rate and a $10 increase a month was too much for what they were offering. I’d been taking on less Selling Assistant clients and listing less items anyway so I decided it was time to dial everything back to concentrate on my writing and other income. I sent out an email to our mailing list letting them know we were closing the store, I prepped as many new listings as I could to take advantage of the free listings per month one last time, deleted a bunch of store content and got all ready to close the store on the 6th (which is the day the price officially went up).

But I goofed up.

Firstly, the breakeven point for stores at the new cost is 100 to 125 items (that’s where the monthly cost for a Basic store even at the new rates is the same cost as listing that many items as a non-store owning seller) and that’s how many items I currently had listed. I also had just prepped another 100 to list all of which would have been free (using the Store credits) so it actually would have cost me more to downgrade. Apparently my version of “casual seller” is off because I’m still selling in a greater quantity than I realized, even if it feels like I’ve dialed back.

Hmm, I thought. Well then maybe I should keep the store one more month just until I sell some of that stuff off. Then I could try the new store features and review them for the site anyway. It was a plan.

Now here’s the part where straight up stupidity on my part comes in and I don’t even have a good excuse. Bad excuses, yes, I have many of those. I’ve been super busy what with the three publishing deals and the 9 zillion deadlines for other things and also really tired because I’ve been up late with work and then toddler gets up at 5 AM in blatant disregard for my deadlines or late nights, but that’s just business as usual around here. Maybe all the lack of sleep and distractedness is finally catching up with me and resulting in my brain becoming some kind of useless ooze? Not sure. Either way, here comes the part of the story where I’m an idiot.

When I logged into my account to switch to monthly for that one last month, I discovered that apparently I wasn’t on the yearly plan as I thought anyway. This means, firstly, that I wasn’t paying $14.95 a month as I thought, I was paying $19.95 a month. I was paying an extra $5 a month for who knows how long for NO REASON AT ALL which really steams my dumplings but, whatever. (And, yes, I should have been paying better attention to my invoice but Mama is tired yo. Brain ooze, remember?) Some sort of massive confusion went on in my head versus the monthly / yearly rate at some point because the price isn’t going up to $24.95 a month on the yearly plan, only on the monthly plan. The monthly plan was only going up to $19.95 a year which is what I was already paying because of aforementioned stupidity.

Well, golly, I thought, now completely and totally confused. If I was already paying $19.95 a month because I was never moved to the yearly plan for reasons unclear to me then, if I actually did move to the yearly plan, the fee would actually not go up at all for me. But I didn’t want to commit to a whole year more, not when I’m thinking of closing up shop!

But I was doing this on March 6th so the prices hadn’t gone up yet. Aha, I thought! I will upgrade to the yearly today and lock in the $14.95 a month price before the prices go up, aren’t I clever? So I did that on impulse, thinking I was being sneaky and making up for the years I overpaid because I wasn’t on yearly like I was supposed to be, and everything during checkout said I was on the lower price so I really thought I was grandfathered in.

Except now? eBay says I bought into the yearly plan at $19.95 a month so it was all lies. I don’t begrudge them their treachery, I was trying to find a loophole after all, but I do think they should have put a message up during the switch to yearly that was something like “Haha, the price listed is lies, you’ll really be billed $5 more than this a month for the entire year you just agreed to, suckah!” because not every seller knows what’s up. I mean, allegedly I know what’s up and this whole situation has proven me to be a blubbering idiot who knows nothing.

So. Now, instead of closing my store as I was all ready to do, I have reupped for another year. Was that wise? I have no idea. What I do know is that I won’t be paying more a month than I already was so there’s that. It also felt somewhat wrong to be shutting the store down when I wasn’t getting out of selling, even before I realized it didn’t make financial sense because of the quantity of listings I had up. On the plus side, the toddler has randomly decided she LOVES listing on eBay and that it is super fun so maybe I’ll have time to do more selling in the future than I think I will.

Usually I try to end these kind of posts with some kind of conclusion or point but I got nothing this time. I jumped the gun by saying I was walking away. Apparently I’m still in the game after all.

If there is any real takeaway from this post, it’s that, as much as I think I’ve got everything handled, I clearly don’t. Things are falling through the cracks and I’m making mistakes. Maybe instead of going full throttle all the time, I need to slow down, rest up and start making sure I’m doing everything right instead of just doing everything.

So here’s to another 12 months of selling and then we’ll figure out where we are in a year’s time…

Photo by wolfgangfoto