Latest On The Demise Of Turbo Lister

I just got this answer this morning from ebay when I asked about the June end date that they had discussed.

"In the short term, nothing is going to change. The ebay servers that Turbo Lister communicates with will remain on and we will continue providing technical support for Turbo Lister users who need it.

At some point down the road - possibly months, possibly years - if the ebay site starts requiring some new piece of selling information, Turbo Lister will not be updated to reflect that. At that point, while Turbo Lister will still be installed on everyone's computers with all the item information still stored in it (and available to be exported), it will not longer be able to upload items to ebay."

Nice that they can be so definitive.

Still, that's about as close as you'll ever see to ebay doing a 180 on an issue. They probably got a crapton of complaints about the Turbo Lister phaseout.

That said, for the last 2 months I have forced myself to use their online lister in preparation for Turbo Lister's demise. Now that I have templates all set up and saved, it's actually faster (for me) to use than Turbo Lister for my store listings.

My problem is that I sell a variety of stuff. This being the 21st century version of a yard sale for me. And there's stuff that I list sort of seasonally. Without being able to keep an inventory on my computer, I would be in trouble when ebay's time limit on unsold items expired. So Turbo Lister being free works for me.

The inability to export/archive listings or templates from the listing tool in a way that can be re-imported or recreated easily is a problem. Additionally, the inability to work offline using the listing tool is a major problem.

I'm glad that Turbo Lister will have some more life left. I also prefer to work offline. I actually create my listings in a word processing program and copy & paste them over. It's just so much easier for me to do with the methods I've created for myself.

I gave up on TurboLister in 2005 when I discovered that it could easily lose records from its "database". Later reincarnations of TurboLister made import and export more difficult. The current version will not export active listings, but some third party tools may be able to export running listings into their database.

Switching to Selling Manager Pro which morphed into Blackthorne and then SixBit before ebay pulled the plug turned out to be the right move. In addition to listings and images, SixBit retains sales data in SQL Server, a stable relational database accessible outside of SixBit. Sales data goes back twelve years from when SA Pro was fired up and includes BidStart and Hipstamp sales also. This is much better than the 60 days of data that ebay retains in their database.

Also, note that TurboLister has not been available for download for a few months now, so it's only if you already have it installed that you can continue to use it. I had to change computers last December, and didn't have an archived copy of the installation program, so I've been out of luck and have been using their web-based version instead.

But the inability to archive old listings is really troublesome.

I may have a TL installer archived at home. Would you like me to try and see if I can find it?

This just popped up in my inbox.

"As you may know, ebay announced in the fall 2016 seller update that Turbo Lister would no longer be supported starting in June 2017 and key functionality would be available in Seller Hub.

We understand from our conversations and surveys that for some of you, a few of the Turbo Lister features you rely on are not yet available in Seller Hub. In keeping with our promise, Turbo Lister will continue to be available beyond June with limited support.

What this means is that Turbo Lister users can continue to use the tool and contact customer support and the Community Board with questions. However, Turbo Lister is no longer available to new users and we will not be making any product updates beyond support for category changes.

Meanwhile, we continue to add functionality to Seller Hub to make it the most convenient and powerful way to manage your selling from one convenient location. For example, you can upload listings in bulk with File Exchange, as well as create and manage listings from the Seller Hub listings tab. Regardless of how you list, we encourage you to take advantage of the unique competitive features in Seller Hub including performance reports, marketing tools, and growth and inventory guidance.

We will continue to enhance Seller Hub and will keep you posted, as new features are available."

I kept a copy of Turbo Lister Installer after the last time I cleaned the computer. However it's almost 32 Mb so it probably doesn't work as an email attachment.

Following up, there do appear to be several public software sites that still offer downloads of Turbo Lister. I don't know how up to date they are and have not checked them for viruses or malware, so experiment at your own risk!

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others...Lister.shtml

http://turbo-lister.software.informer.com/

Thanks for that offer, Dan! I really appreciate it.

As luck would have it, I just learned yesterday that an acquaintance of mine has that .exe file, and he sent it to me this morning. I've just now installed it, and waiting to see if it'll work. After installing correctly on my system, it seems to be hung on "Setting up TurboLister for first use" in a connection with ebay. So we'll see what happens ... (Perhaps if I contact their support and ask to be let back in again ...)

But thanks very much for offering. Except for the coincidence of yesterday, I would definitely have taken you up on that.

Be very careful using turbo lister.

I have had issues with the Sync not being accurate and others have had as well. Sold items do not go into sold but stay in active.

The image uploader is having some issues as mine used to work automatically but now my auto is using image url's and I constantly have to change it. Never had that issue before. People have also had images disappear from TL and ebay as a result

The program will not be updated in the near future either.

If I had important older files in TL, I would definitely export as much as I could that was not active.

To use TL going forward, it is fine for ebay to say continue to use it, but like so many things, if you have issues, they might just say too bad.

Personally, I would say use at your own risk and check everything regularly. I have moved elsewhere just to be safe.

I have moved over to using the new ebay Seller Hub, and uploading images directly from my computer -- saves time and will eventually help me escape from dependence on Photobucket. The one thing I still use TurboLister for is to reduce prices in large groups.

Actually you can do that all in Seller Hub as well (assuming fixed price listings as opposed to auctions). You can either:

1. Use Markdown Manager to run a "XX% off sale" on some or all of your listings, chosen individually or by category. 45-day maximum, but it leaves the original asking price intact if you want to try higher or lower percentages as different sales.

2. Bulk edit your listings and via inline editing you can edit the prices one after another similar to how you would edit records in an Excel spreadsheet.

As much as I had relied upon Turbo Lister and was rebelling against Seller Hub, I have now used the latter exclusively for several months, and in many respects I find it more usable than TL. There are only a few areas where I find Seller Hub lacking:

1. No way to work offline. Not an issue for me personally, but it impacts some people. Yes, you can work in CSV files and then upload, but I find that too cumbersome for me personally.

2. No way to archive your listing templates off ebay in the event something in ebay hoses your templates (I don't trust systems that I cannot archive information from in case of system failure, especially ebay). Yes one could export their listings from ebay via Turbo Lister (for now), but that's not the same as saving your Seller Hub templates in a usable fashion.

As far as I know, Seller Hub will still only keep unsold listings for 90 days. At one time, they said Seller Hub would have all of the capabilities of TL, plus all the enhancements of the Hub. I really need those archived and available to relist at a later date, and know of other sellers who do, too (without having to pay a 3rd-party company for that capability). If Seller Hub allowed for true archiving, then I think I could do without TL.