September 16 is when the eBay fee changes go into effect, the main new feature being the 35 cent Fixed Price listings which promise to transfer an incredible number of Store Listings into the Fixed Price core area.
As of the past couple of days I have not been able to use eBay’s Selling Manager to move my Store listings into the core listings as Fixed Priced items. I receive a message such as this for any item I try it with:
Item #200244732602 – Collier’s Magazine May 23 1931 NEAL BOSE WR Burnett
The Item Specifics of the above item have been updated. You may want to review the listing before relisting or remove it from the list of items to be relisted.
Sorry, but this is simply not true. Here is Item #200244732602, which if you scroll down just a little ways to the Item Specifics area you’ll see that I already have them all filled in. If I click the item to revise it, I am not presented with any other options in the Item Specifications area. Beyond that I also have a Return Policy stated and I use the Shipping Calculator to specify a shipping rate.
What’s more, when this item ends later today I’ll be able to bulk relist it to my eBay Store with no such warning message.
This problem started this week. To get Store Items into Fixed Price, I’ve had to end them first. Then, and this is just me personally, but I’ve been revising items with a new template in Inkfrog, converting them to Fixed Price there, and then bulk relaunching them to eBay. I’ve noticed some of the imports show up in Inkfrog without the Item Specifications, some show with corrupted Item Specifications, others show with partially completed Item Specs, such as a magazine missing a year. Some have even included all of the Item Specifications, I haven’t had to change a thing to relaunch to eBay. But all of these items were showing the proper Item Specs on eBay at the time I ended them as store listings.
Which makes me stop to ask: 1) Is there just something wrong with eBay’s Item Specifications?; or, a little more damning, 2) Is eBay afraid it won’t be able to handle to enormous amount of Fixed Price listings looming a little more than a week away?; or, somewhat conspiratorially, and against my usual grain: 3) Has eBay in some way caused #1 to help ease the load of #2.
As I’ve said on twitter, “eBay, I still love ya, but man, you guys are really making me work lately.” I’ve been grinning and bearing it to some degree, after all, it’s a good excuse to work with some new templates (which in the long run hopefully eases some of the many soon forthcoming eBay changes!), but it’s really cutting into the number of items I’ve been sending to core this week, and thus costing me money…as well as costing eBay some of the pocket change I send their way!
I’ve heard about tools coming that are supposed to help us, but all I’ve heard so far is use bulk edit in Selling Manager or end items and edit in bulk in Turbo Lister. Sorry, I had those tools before any of the announcements. All I’m seeing now is those pre-existing tools losing some of their functionality. eBay, so many sellers are sticking by you through these changes, some even talking them up (like me, usually!), but we need a little more help to get through this.
This ties in very well to what I blogged today, update time!
Henrietta didn’t leave a link, but here’s the post she’s referring to on her Red Ink Diary, titled Clueless.