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eBay Auto-Generating Multiple Business Policies
eBay has been auto-creating multiple new business policies (shipping policies and return policies). Items that I have for sale are then being moved automatically into the new shipping policies. Newly created listings are unable to go live because I get the following error: 'There is an issue with your listing: Shipping Policy'. Not sure what the problem is, but it seems to be related to the new international shipping program. If I don't keep on top of it, eBay will create hundreds of business policies automatically. Each new policy has a string of computer code at the end of it.
Here is a video of someone having this issue: https://youtu.be/isNLUnxnMYM
@devon@ebay @brian_burke@ebay
46 comments
kh-stanley1
·2 years agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
broto_64
·2 years agoDoes this actually affect sales?
Mine has been creating these extra policies for years.
This isn't new, I've let it go because it's just a few policies here and there and deleting them does little.
Also I can't really opt out, I guess I'd have to actually get rid of all the listings within policies first?
And it's not just shipping policies, it's in every category of policies.
Oh and now when I attempt to edit a policy I get either:
It’s not you. It’s us.
Or
We ran into a problem. Please try again.
salvationarmyatlantaarc
·2 years agoWe were having a very similar issue where we had a "local pick up (123456789012)" shipping policy created each night. The 12 digit number would always be different. Here is what we know-
Here is what we did that seemed to fix it - We revoked a 3rd party software we were using for sales analytics and it seemed to resolve the issue.
We are working with the 3rd Party Software now to determine how this is happening.
stuffygrotto
·3 years agoIt's still going on. Add me to the list of frustrated sellers regarding ebay generating policies at random, and without our consent. I only have 10 listings and spend literally hours fixing and/or undoing what they did!
I can't imagine the distress this has inflicted on sellers with hundreds or more listings.
catsntatsvintage
·3 years agoJust adding to the issues here - I did a major business policy cleanup the other day. Took forever. When I am creating new drafts today, ebay is making a new PAYMENT policy for me. When I go to edit it to select my existing payment policy, there are no options available. So I need to go into policies, migrate the listings, and then delete the stupid newly created policy.
Like the shipping policies everyone has noted, my new payment policies have a long string of numbers added to the end. I have seen lots of talk about the shipping issue being related to international - but this is payment policy.
little.luxe.armoire
·3 years agoI never had new payment policies created (yet!), but I did have new return policies created once in a while, along with the many shipping ones.
After watching eBay continue to generate new shipping policies for me overnight and move active listings into them seemingly at random, I opted out of Business Policies for good and I'm going through all of my listing templates to make sure they are all updated instead.
Also did a chat with customer service to report the issue, not that I think that will do a whole lot.
shanefamilystorellc
·3 years agoI am also having payment policies added to my account along with the shipping policies. I am going to try some of these methods discussed in this forum to see if anything will get resolved. Will update if things go well! Just wanted to respond so other people can see that there are more having the payment policy issue.
shanefamilystorellc
·3 years agoI opted out of all business policies and it took the glitches off our listings. Will update if it somehow gets turned back on.
little.luxe.armoire
·3 years agoI spoke too soon. After I got my policies in order and was able to create a couple of new listings with no location exclusions, I thought that was that. Put my laptop down for the evening, decided to check the Business Policies before bed and eBay has again auto-generated new shipping policies and transferred random listings to them (the three circled at the bottom):
I did absolutely nothing eBay-related in the last few hours, so what prompted the system to do this?? Thought maybe it was 30-day listings auto-renewing, but it isn't - they all have various amounts of time remaining before renewing. I should count it as a partial win since at least the new shipping policies aren't excluding countries anymore. But come ON - this is ridiculous.
little.luxe.armoire
·3 years agoSo a user on another thread suggested the one thing that I hadn't done the first time I opted out of Business Policies to try to fix this issue!
When opting out of Business Policies so you can access/edit the shipping exclusions page through Account Settings > Shipping Preferences (you can't get to this page when opted in to Business Policies), make sure to check the "apply to current listings" box when you've got your shipping exclusions the way you want them. Then opt back in to Business Policies.
When I did that, my policies came back, though eBay gave them names with lots of numbers and letters after them, but none had the list of excluded countries at the bottom. New listings are looking good and I'm not seeing any randomly-generated shipping policies.
So in my first attempt - even with zero locations excluded on the list in Shipping Preferences, AND zero exclusions in all of my nice, new shipping policies, AND all of my current listings linked to those new policies - eBay was pulling old exclusions from...somewhere for any new listing I created. But making sure that the "apply to current listings" box was checked before opting back in to Business Policies seems to have worked for me.
chapeau-noir
·3 years agoI finally tried business policies again (after people cited how helpful they were) and noped right out - they kept replicating and most made little sense. This is what happened when I tried them earlier. 😖
24-hof
·3 years agoSame Problem!!! Geesh eBay get your act together...this is nonsense
wastingtime101
·3 years agoI was going through a friend's biz policies with them to see why they were seeing these auto-generated policies since this friend was not opted in to EIS.
That friend offered EISD shipping on some of their policies. EISD is set to be discontinued by the end of the month but we've seen reports it's been discontinued already for many sellers.
What we discovered is the duplicate policies were created only when the original policy offered EISD. If you go back to the original policy and select something other than EISD like a) USPS or b) select nothing so it can default to EIS if you're opted in - then you can reassign listings to their original policies and delete the duplicates.
The elimination of EISD caused existing policies to be invalid since they offered international shipping but there was no shipping service selected.
Tagging @devon@ebay in case you find that info useful.
quiet-village
·3 years agoThe answer is above but it might not be clear just repeating what seems to work.
1. Find the policy that is being duplicated
2. Edit the policy
3. Go to international
4. It may not show any service selected (OR Ebay Intl standard shipping...)
5. Set it to something standard like USPS Priority International and not blank or Ebay Shipping)
6. Save
7. Go to the duplicated policy and select edit and Move all the listings to the original policy
8. Wait a while and refresh page. If duplicated policy now shows 0 then delete it.
nataliesknickknacks
·3 years agodevon@eBay Add me to the list of sellers encountering this issue. Please advise how to fix this ASAP as I have some policies that are currently unusable because they automatically switch to system generated policies.
hk-resale
·3 years ago* NOTE: Posting this here per a suggestion from another user (instead of starting a whole new thread)
Hi All,
Over the last several months we have experienced daily issues with Shipping Policies being generated by some automated system. When this happens, it seems to coincide with drops in impressions, views, and sales.
We set up all of our shipping policies to cover our 21,000+ listings. All of the policies have the following format 1_[Policy Name] [Date Created].
We moved all of our listings into these policies, and as we create new listings, we move them into the appropriate policy (i.e., 1_Free Shipping_Small Items 1 Day 6-04-2023).
But seemingly at random, new policies are being generated and 1,000s of our listings are being moved into the newly created ones.
The policies have the following naming convention: [Calculated / Fixed]: [Service] [Price], [Handling Time] [Random alphanumeric string] (Flat: USPSMedia $4.99, 1 business day 4ed69be39f99000).
We then spend the time to clean the policies up (moving listings back into the correct policy) then deleting the system generated policies.
1) Is there something we are doing to cause this?
2) Should we be taking the time to clean these up?
3) Is this going to continue to happen?
4) Does the existence of these policies create any issues for visibility?
Here are some screenshots to show the auto-generated policies in our business policy management page.
sabicollectibles
·3 years agoSame here, I tried everything. I was not selling much since they started that thing so I stopped my international shipping for 2 weeks and my sales were back on track until I put back my international shipping and now I sell only 1 item a week!!!
eBay's been changing my shipping policy every day and it drives me crazy, it changed my business completely since mid-April I believe. I sell a lot internationally so I really need to keep it. I am going to opt out of the "eBay Auto-Generating Multiple Business Policies" to see if it stops, we will see.
turtles-trading-post
·3 years agoThis is happening to me too. I never start a listing from scratch. I always start with an existing listing "Sell A Similar Item". It appears to be changing shipping policies... those with a string of code at the end.. upon automatic relists. Both my auctions every week, and fixed price items monthly.
redrockcollectibles
·3 years agoWe opted out of EIS (about 5% of our sales are international), and then fixed all of our shipping policies to remove international shipping. We had to end the listing that had been auto generated, but everything is now back to pre-EIS, only no international options.
hk-resale
·3 years agoHi,
We are experiencing a similar problem. When eBay auto-enrolled us into EIS we wanted to make sure some of our listings were excluded from international shipping (knives, WW2 Memorabilia, cosmetics, etc.)
We created about 20 policies that cover most of the items we list. To make it easier to select them we gave them all a 1_ prefix and filled in the descriptions.
We took the time to go through all of our listings (22,000) and assigned them to the appropriate shipping policy.
But starting a few days ago it appears 1000s of listings were moved to auto-generated shipping policies. Some of the listings we excluded from EIS were now offering international shipping. So, we went ahead and fixed those.
This morning I just checked again and these policies are being generated again. It appears that when a listing renews, it doesn't maintain the assigned shipping policy, it creates a new auto-generated policy based upon the listing settings.
Attaching 2 screenshots below. The 1st is the policies we created and assigned our 22,000 listings to. The 2nd shows the auto-generated policies.
Policies we created (note the 1_ prefix)
Policies autogenerated by eBay
This morning it's a handful but a few days ago (Tuesday) there were 1000s.
wilsonharborsales
OP3 years agoI opted out of international shipping begrudgingly today. I was able to move everything back to the way it should be after a few hours of ending and relisting (with the correct shipping policy). Opting out of EIS has solved the problem of the auto-generating business/shipping policies but unfortunately it will limit my customer reach. Hopefully they get it all sorted out. I have been grappling with issues for 55 days regarding business policies and listing visibility since GSP ended, so hopefully opting out of EIS for the time-being gets things back on track.
My head is spinning from all the detective work over the past two months. On the bright side, I have developed a deep knowledge of the site logistics that I otherwise would not have had.
cmf21
·3 years agoToday when I was trying to create a listing I ran into this garbage. When I came to the shipping section, I noticed Ebay made some sort of change that I couldn't figure out. After searching this community I came across a post where someone was able to "opt out". This caught my attention so I poked around my selling preferences and under the business policy page there is this tiny "opt out" wording in the upper right hand corner or the screen that I was able to click and now everything is back to normal. Grrrr.
brightlightbookseller
·3 years agoI know it would be a hassle, but considering the existing hassle you're dealing with, have you already tried or considered opting out of business policies and setting it up again from scratch? You can opt out on this page:
https://www.bizpolicy.ebay.com/businesspolicy/manage?sellerAlreadyOptedIn=true
glenvonnie
·3 years agoThis happened to me yesterday when I was creating a listing, they had created a shipping policy with free Parcel Post shipping which would have been around a $10 loss on this item, and it was showing up as my default policy.
I went to edit shipping policies, there were two like this, and after I deleted the first one it created two more right in front of me.
I kept deleting until I got rid of them all.
Better be careful while listing, you might end up eating some high shipping costs
1tuna
·3 years agoyou really need to go in and clean up your business polices
many sellers are surprised at the number of them that they have
the eIS shipping policy or country exclusion list is corrupt now and there is an open ticket for it
its always a good idea to get rid of excess/unused polices
my concierge was very surprised that mine were not a big mess since I had pared them down recently
good luck
@wilsonharborsales
wilsonharborsales
OP3 years agoI have 7 business policies. eBay creates up to 100 new ones every single day and it does it automatically. I clean up my business policies every day in order to delete all the new ones they are auto-generating. This is not an issue with me having too many policies or being disorganized. I have maintained clean policies and a very organized store for many years, and only over the past few days has this been an issue.
There are many others having this issue and the solution they have found was to opt out of international shipping. I was hoping that the techs could fix the issue as opposed to having us all opt out of EIS.
1tuna
·3 years ago1tuna
·3 years agothis is where I go to clean up my policies
I do believe you when you say they are autogenerating
my country exclusion list is also doing the same thing sort of
i have no countries excluded but it shows a whole slew of exclusions that are impossible to fix
I had my old auctions fixed but the new ones go right back to the same problem
wilsonharborsales
OP3 years agoIt is driving me up the wall. I clean up my business policies in the same place you do. The problem is that it keeps trying to auto-generate First Class policies on my 16oz+ listings. I am trying to opt out of EIS right now, but when I opt out of one policy that has EIS, several new ones that include EIS are created automatically and listings are automatically moved there.
The more I try to clean up my business policies, the more business policies eBay auto-generates. It is a mess.
nanniestreasurechest
·3 years ago@wilsonharborsales When you are trying to clean up your policies do you have any offers or bids going on? I found when I tried to clean my policies during a time when I have offers or bids it will generate copies of the business policies because the ones with offer or bids can't be changed.
wilsonharborsales
OP3 years agoThat is an interesting point and yes some won’t transfer over. I am specifically having this issue with brand new listings however.
rewindvariety
·3 years agoI don't like it because I need international sales. However, I've removed International Shipping from my regular shipping policies, and this stopped the auto-generating of excess policies.
I no longer have the option of adding eBay International Shipping when I'm revising policies. I'm wondering if I am going to be notified when the issue is fixed and I can add eBay International Shipping back to my business policies.
nanniestreasurechest
·3 years agomy country exclusion list is also doing the same thing sort of
i have no countries excluded but it shows a whole slew of exclusions that are impossible to fix
I had my old auctions fixed but the new ones go right back to the same problem
@1tuna I'm having the same problem. The only way I found I could fix it is to revise the listing by choosing one of my shipping policies where I exclude the other countries. Save it and then go back in to revise it again with the correct shipping policy. It will then show that it ships to the other countries. I finally gave up trying to fix them because it was just too time consuming.
1tuna
·3 years agoI finally got put into eIS about 10-12 days ago and was eager to get into it
my concierge was able to look at a lot of stuff and told me there is an opent ticket.
a few hours ater they were all fixed but my new listings have a bunch of exclusions and I dont want any except the short list every one has which is this
nanniestreasurechest
·3 years ago@1tuna That's what mine are doing. Anytime I do a new listing, relist or sell similar, it will exclude all the countries except for the US even though the shipping policy chosen includes all the countries with the exception of the ones you listed. I spent almost an hour on the phone with an agent last week. We actually deleted all my policies and set up new ones and then connected my listings to the new policies. Thankfully I don't have that many listings. After doing that they all were fine until I relisted, sell similar or created a new listing. The agent did say he was going to pass the info on to some other department for them to look at it.
cardxcraft
·3 years agoSame here.. I delete policies and more auto-policies appear. In the meantime, I'll just keep deleting them until Ebay gets around to it.
After the last two Ebay CS debacles, I'd rather not deal with them.