A cunning plan

New sellers can get three free listings on eBay.com before 13th January. eBay are marketing this in with all the "regifting" stuff: get rid of your unwanted Christmas presents, get the cash for what you really want and so on. The same promotion has been going on eBay France since 1st December, and is currently not due to end until 31st January. As the French seem largely impervious to eBay's allure, I'd guess they'll extend it again to be an almost-permanent feature.

One has to ask, are eBay really so desperate to drum up new sellers (it'd save them having to look after the ones they've got)? Or have they realised that all these promotions really do is cause existing sellers to list three items each on all their myriad buying and posting IDs... hey, shareholders, look at the sudden massive expansion of seller numbers :-D