Reporting issues related to the ongoing technical issue with Item Specifics

[community_team]

This thread is dedicated to reporting issues related to the ongoing technical issue with Item Specifics. Please share details including screenshots, steps to recreate, etc. This thread is not meant to be a place for in-depth discussion of the situation, but to be a  place for you to provide us detail into what you're seeing so we can pass this on to the appropriate teams.

Please know that off-topic discussions in this thread will be moved to their own threads. 

For the most recent updates on this issue please review the Announcements Board.

[frappl-16]

or a free listing month for all the trouble eh?

[abuelashairbowfactory]

Hello, I am also having a problems with Item Specifics for Sports Cards

I am unable to edit price or anything else from seller hub without opening each listing individually and entering in required info. This seems to have resulted in less views and I haven't been able to bulk edit. Good luck getting everything back up and running. Thank you for your time.

[chris_2092]

Relisted items under coin categories are requiring me to re-enter item specifics that were previously entered on the original listings.  Entries must be done individually per listing, cannot be done in bulk. 

On a positive note - my monthly selling limit is now $2,000,000,000. I'm guessing that's a separate technical issue.

[edwardian-dreams]

i didn’t think vintage or not was a compulsory specific

anyway, i agree with you

we now have a specific in women’s clothing called compression area and compression level, who on earth puts that when they search for items, NO ONE, and what the hell does it mean anyway? sounds like it belongs in car parts spares

whoever has managed this specifics car crash needs sacking

[pips_place_8]

Sales are down for me too since the update. If I list a Blue sport coat then it adds to the Character item specifics for Blue the dog. I have to make sure nothing autopopulates like this because it would make me look incompetent if it got through. Why is there an item specific category for Character on everything it seems? None of my clothing has a character theme and never would. There’s waaaaay to many item specifics, tiny specifics that I doubt anyone actually searches for. This has gotten out of hand eBay.

[lisat_9701]

I agree. It is draining to go thru all the irrelevant field.  A billion dollar company like ebay could hire the very best talent to build the smartest platform.  So if they need “department” it should be entered on the back end and we are unaffected.

I am truly perplexed that the system gets more complicated as technology advances by the second.  The system should populate fields that pertain to the item. Drop down menus should contain relevant choices. Isn’t this common sense? 

Maybe the platform has reached its size and cant handle the number of listings anymore? And with managed  payments and promoted listings revenue will stay high.  

Sorry for the rant but I just can’t wrap my head why these changes were rolled out at the beginning of Q4. 

[rugged_outback_outfitters_llc]

@pips_place_8 

@community_team 

Some of the items that the system suggests to put in the boxes for items specifics are just absurd.  Like @pips_place_8 says things that are hardly related start to come up as "recommended" on our men's clothing listings.  I just look at the suggestion and make sure I don't click near it.  It is nuts where these suggestions come from.  I fear I might accidentally click it and ruin my listing by such.  The suggestions should be more tailored to the items listed and the category.  Men's clothing do not have to my knowledge many of these "character" suggestions on the clothing.  It pulls suggestions for who knows where and says to add them.  It is not realistic to offer such suggestions and is a waste of time as a seller cannot choose "all" to add, because of such nonsense in one category, especially the "character"  item specific.

[the.quality.goods.store]

I sell a lot of men's clothing too and I see descriptions in the drop down menus that i've never even heard or seen as a descriptor of any piece of Men's clothing in any store, catalog, men's tailor, who made this stuff up? You guy's need to roll-up your (pick one) and go back to work on this trainwreck!

• Cap Sleeve
• Asymmetrical Sleeve

• Balloon Sleeve
• Bell Sleeve
• Cap Sleeve
• Cold Shoulder Sleeve
• Dolman Sleeve
• Flared Sleeve
• Flutter Sleeve
• Puff Sleeve
• Raglan Sleeve
• Roll Tab Sleeve
• Slit Sleeve
• Strappy Sleeve

[saskconnection]

I just want to reinforce this message to eBay in regard to the changes made to the Stamp category.

eBay, please just admit that you made a colossal mistake with the latest mandatory requirements for item specifics!!!. 

Sellers don't want these changes and there is no benefit to buyers so why are we being asked to invest hundreds of hours to make these changes.

The solution is quite simple - just delete a few lines of code - remove the code that makes these fields mandatory.

No one searches for Place of Origin. 99.9+% of stamp listings either have the country  in the Item description or are listed in the appropriate country category, so why are sellers being required to fill in "Place of Origin" for these items? It is completely redundant. Also, place of origin does not equate to Place of Manufacture because some countries such as Canada have used printers in at least 6 different countries to produce, while about 50% of countries don't even print their own stamps.

A check of Canadian stamps indicated that here are only 582 (out of 175,156) listings found by the certification filter, of which only 155 have certificates or Certificate numbers. Others claim to have a certificate but provide no evidence of the certificate. More than 50% of the listings are clearly make false claims of certification (i.e. are low value stamps selling for 10% or less of the cost of certification).

What do Stamp seller have to do to get the message to eBay that they are being asked to add information to listings that is only applicable to about 0.1-0.3% of the listings. If this is not reversed, then any value of having this information on a listing will be quickly lost. In a few months this search criteria will return 10,000's of items with fake certifications and eBay will not be able to eliminate the deceptive listings.

[dietaryconsultant]

on my jeans "waist" was being added under compression area. watch your listings. 

[buzzapparel]

The only thing that works is to end the listing and list each item piecemeal from your computer and pay attention to designators for size and department. Listings that don’t have department (Men’s, Boys, girls, etc) will not come up in a search if someone selects women’s or men’s clothing. Also, make sure you enter the size twice without adding the word for that size (small, medium, large, etc) in the second redundant field as it will throw off the listing if you go back and make alterations from your phone. 

Seller added variation fields did not migrate into the new system. If you created your own variation field for example like writing the word “size” or “color” the variations in those respective fields are not understood by the AI in the current system. Only the fields that were already assigned migrated. 

[saresales1]

I SELL ITEMS THAT SHOULD BE IN A CATEGORY OF UNISEX BOTH MEN WOMEN AND CHILDREN WHERE IS THAT CATEGORY

[zzyzx000]

One thing that hasn't made sense for a long time is how to list men's polo shirts. In the sub categories, from Men's Clothing/Shirts there are 4 branches: Button-Down Shirts. Polos, T-shirts, Dress Shirts.
If you search 'polo shirt' you will see there are 10 times more of them listed as Button-Down Shirts than Polo shirts, and for the Type item specifics there usually is 'polo' selected.
How it got this way was due to an older ill-conceived item specifics update but that's not what matters. It seemed to me a great time with this update to start putting Polo shirts in the correct subcategory, but I discovered there is no item specific there for Materials. This should be required and is of course present in the Button-Down shirts subcategory. 4 materials cover 90% of all polo shirts: 100% cotton, 100% polyester, cotton/polyester blend, and polyester/spandex blend. Please add them as defaults when you create a Materials Item Specific to the Polo subcategory.
Also, if I was in charge, I would have POLO deleted as a default item specific under Button-Down Shirt. Make the seller write it in if they insist on being there, and soon I think Polo shirts will mostly be where they belong.
It looks like you dropped STYLE from the required specifics in the last few days. Good thinking. Now both TYPE and STYLE are recommended specifics. I personally don't see the difference, but before the changes, sellers chose between Hawaiian, Polo (that's why most sellers put their polo shirts there) Button-Front, Button-Up, Button-Down, etc. The subcategory is called Casual Button-Down Shirts. Why complicate things by making BUTTON-UP one of the defaults under TYPE? Is it Button Down, Button Up or Button Front? One of these is good enough.

[zzyzx000]

You need to click on the little info box above the item specific and you'll see the 'waist' measurement they are looking for, if it's just a blazer or sports coat, is to estimate what the ideal customer's waist size would be for your blazer.
I'm not making this up. Buy yourself a dozen male manequins of different sizes, put the blazer on each one and then measure the waist of the manequin that looks like the best fit.

[zzyzx000]

A couple years ago they changed the GOLF caterory by adding about a dozen subcategories. It was just as bad a mess as this one but affected so few sellers that it didn't get much attention. Not only did a man's golf shirt belong in a sub category that required a dozen clicks, but they moved all my golf shirts to an OTHER subcategory as the algo wasn't smart enough to put them where they belonged. I called, was told they would fix it, but they never did. I spent days moving them because as you know, once you change subcategories, all the item specifics you had used before, vanish.
Just like then, my sales have tanked. I'm busy redoing listings individually, because the bulk editor can't handle it.