10 Years

10 years ago today we launched our flagship app, Price Spectre. At the time repricing on eBay was virtually non-existent and automated repricing was not something widely available for any marketplace. When we developed Price Spectre in 2019 eBay’s catalog was limited to just a few top-level categories like books and DVDs and these were the only products that enterprise providers like Mercent could reprice.  Price Spectre solved this problem by the providing a search console that allowed sellers to interactively create and fine-tune a very specific search that would be performed on eBay regardless if their product was in the catalog or not.  10 years later and after nearly a decade of promises eBay’s catalog is still not sufficient and general repricing services like Price Spectre are still very much in demand.

Before Price Spectre many features that the industry have adopted did not exist.  We pioneered such features as manual repricing where price suggestions are offered instead of price changes being performed and scheduled repricing downtimes where prices can be reset at specific times.

In those 10 years we have onboarded over 20000 eBay sellers and reprice millions of listings per day.  We have been able to do this despite the strict limitations that eBay imposes on all eBay apps without having to reduce functionality or increase prices for our customers the entire time.

New Billing Platform Migration For App Center Subscribers

This is a followup to our previous announcement regarding our new billing platform. For further background please see New Billing Platform .  For information on how to access our website directly after the eBay App Center closes please see Deprecation of eBay Apps Center .

We have finally been given the green light by eBay to transfer App Center accounts’ billing to our own billing platform.

All users will need to set up a new payment method by going to our billing page at https://www.pricespectre.com/billing.php .  Now that we are finally in control of our own billing subscribers should hopefully see most of the friction created by eBay finally removed.

Fees have not been changed for any of our subscribers but all subscribers are now moved to a billing cycle of the 1st of the month.  We will however attempt to close open invoices faster than eBay who waited waited 2 weeks to charge and only made one attempt per month leading to many customers to be suspended or cancelled despite trying to keep current.

Below explains your first invoice depending on your prior billing cycle on eBay :

1st billing cycle

Your subscription with our billing platform will start on November 1st.  Your invoice on November 1st covers your fees from October 16th – October 31st.  You will receive a second invoice from eBay which covers the fees for October 1st – October 15th.  This invoice from eBay will be the final invoice from the eBay App Center.  All subsequent invoices will come through our billing platform.

15th billing cycle

Your subscription with our billing platform will start on November 1st.  Your invoice on November 1st covers your fees from October 16th – October 31st.  An invoice for October 1st – October 15th was previously generated on or around October 15th by eBay.  This was the final invoice from eBay App Center.  Automatic payment should have occurred on or before October 30th.  If it did not please make sure to pay it to close out your billing.  You are now moved to billing on the 1st so subsequent invoices will always occur on the 1st of the month.  This eliminates the small variations above and below our quoted fees that 15th billing cycle subscribers saw.

New Billing Platform

Today we officially launch our new billing platform for use with Price Spectre. Subscribers will now receive and pay for all invoices through this new system rather than paying via PayPal directly.

What is staying the same:

  • fees

  • Premium points

  • PayPal

  • Invoices are sent on the 1st of every month

What is changing:

  • Payments will now be collected automatically for non eBay App Center subscribers.

  • Invoices can now be paid through credit card directly.

  • All App Center subscribers who receive invoices on the 15th will now receive them on the 1st.  Your first invoice in the system will cover 1.5 months as a result.

Outstanding invoices generated through our legacy system must still be paid at https://www.pricespectre.com/billing.php . Outstanding invoices generated through eBay’s App Center must still be paid through eBay. However no new invoices will be generated via either system.

App Center subscribers will have their accounts automatically migrated over the next few days.

Deprecation of eBay Apps Center

On August 31st eBay sent a notice to developers that the eBay App Center will be closing in November. Billing will cease after the next invoices run on September 15th and October 1st with the embedded application ceasing to function in November. At this time no action is required of our users. Existing users should not reregister with our service as all App Center subscribers already have an account on our website.

In order to access our external application simply logout from our website and perform a Forgot Password using your eBay username with “sma-” prepended. For example if your eBay username were ebayuser1 then your username would be sma-ebayuser1.

We anticipate having a new billing system up and running during the 2nd or 3rd week of September. Expect an email requesting payment details through our Chargebee portal. If you do not receive one please visit our billing page.

Users who would like to try out our service who do not have an active subscription can register at https://www.pricespectre.com/register.php.

Price Spectre Official Launch

Today is the official launch of Price Spectre. Price Spectre is currently available at both http://www.PriceSpectre.com and within eBay’s Selling Manager via Selling Manager Applications.

Benefits to using Price Spectre through Selling Manager:

  • Same great Price Spectre.  Nothing changes except the interface you use.
  • Manage your items’ prices without ever leaving eBay.
  • Automatic billing handled by eBay.

To sign up through Selling Manager Apps simply visit our application catalog entry (listed under “Listing” and “Research & Reporting”) and click the subscribe button.  You must have an active Selling Manager subscription before signing up but that is free.  You must also be a US registered seller on eBay.com as other international sites are not yet supported.