First Class Package--What happens to listings that are not updated during the 30 day period?
@elizabeth@ebay
From the seller news announcement:
If you ship with First Class Package, you will be able to update listings to USPS Ground Advantage over the next 30 days.
1) Does that "next 30 days" window begin on July 9th?
2) If yes, what will happen to my BIN listings if they are not updated during that 30 day window.
3) If business policies is not an option (I attempted to use them and chaos resulted), does that mean that each listing must be changed individually?
Thank you for any information. I ask because I will be on vacation during a 30 day window which begins on July 9 and unable to revise any listings.
115 comments
whitehatstore
·3 years agoIt's not the coding that scares Ebay. It's the salaries required by a talented onshore development team - that's what they don't want to pay for. Based on the minimal updates I've seen on the site in the past 20+ years, I don't think Ebay has paid any talented devs during that time. They have some offshore guys who know just enough to make a few tweaks here & there. And the QA testers are probably even less knowledgeable. These are likely waterfall devs & testers - not agile. That's why updates always break stuff, is they don't properly test. Hell, maybe they make the devs do their own testing. This is pennywise & dollar foolish, as I've already been trimming back my presence here after they failed to protect me on a brushing scam on a Fitbit return. All these video games would have to be updated one-by-one. I'm not interested. This may just hasten my total departure to sooner than Dec. 31 this year. I swear they have some real turds in the c-suite headed up by the loser from walmart. (worst retailer in America!) Now let's see which of them starts sending me spiders & dead animals in the mail!
new_spin_boutique
·3 years agoIf the problem is the code because there are too many services with "First Class" in the name
What eBay needs to do for us, with thousands of listings, is give us the ability to FILTER our active listings page by shipping service type. OR, give us the ability to filter by shipping service type in the bulk editing tool.
One way or another, eBay needs to give us the tools we need as going through thousands of listings and manually updating all of them, or having to manually select each listing with FC, one by one, is not a solution.
sin-n-dex
·3 years agoThe option to filter was my recommendation, that way if you have thousands of listings (I have that many too), you can easily see which ones are not updated and make the necessary correction.
C.
ms.rodriguez*
·3 years agoI will worry on July 9. Nearly everything is first class mail for me. Frankly, I am sick and tired of the post office constantly change the names of shipping. Parcel select, parcel ground, etc, etc. They need to give it a name and then keep it.
rustydalmatian
·3 years agoI have come to the conclusion that the USPS is simply combining 3 methods of shipping into one, which will act very much like First Class Package. Therefore, until this mess of words is straightened out, I'll just read "War and Peace" until the dust settles.
tealt
OP3 years agoI'm the OP on this thread, and after reading all the responses (93 at the moment), from both eBay and users, I have actually become glad that I will be traveling and/or out in the woods from July 7 through August 12.
No sales or money, but...
I won't have to worry/strategize about revising all my Shipping sections based on the drip, drip, drip of [sometimes confusing] information from eBay about this change.
By August 13, the dust from the "train wreck" should (I hope) have settled.
Note: I find it slightly concerning that yesterday (6/29) there was a thread by eBay about the change pinned to the top of the Shipping board, and today (6/30) that thread is gone.
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoThat's how they do, bury their heads in the sand.
nobody*s_perfect
·3 years agoIt wasn't deleted, it just got unpinned and then since it was 2 days old it immediately sank out of sight. Which is unfortunate, because it got an important revision this morning.
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/USPS-Ground-Advantage-Service/td-p/33838498
fern*wood
·3 years agoI wonder why they unpinned the notice? It's not like this is over by any means. It was only up a few days. You know there will be tons of sellers that have no idea about any of this---some still think we can give buyers negative feedback!
dhbookds
·3 years agoI think they pulled it because of the error on parcel select..........and are working on better communication.....I hope.......
We will be having questions about it for the next yr probably......as you say some sellers still don't know about feedback.............
steve_stuff
·3 years agoThis is ebay so you should know what's gonna happen - After sellers spend hours and hours switching listings by hand, on July twenty something we will wake up to a message from ebay about the new 'easy peasy switch it around' link on the drop down lists on all the bulk listers and re-listers and edit pages.
But seriously now my real question - I just picked three active listing with first class as the first option and brought up the edit page - On drop down there is a domestic shipping - it will let me 're-pick' first class, SO I presume that after 7/9 it will say whatever the new name is, so I can just bulk change that way - Right?
BUT it has no mention of package size and in most cases unless it's gonna be big, we don't enter size as it can/will change depending on service picked - a deck of cards FC is a 2x4x6 box, PM we would use one of those old 1096L VHS boxes that we have so many of. So even if we bulk change the 'name' we would still have to add size one by one?
AND it also asks about second service, which in this case is priority - most likely 'plain' but maybe flat rate envelope - Will I have to re-enter the second one or will it be left along?
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoThis is the issue. If you have calculated shipping checked in your shipping preferences you will have to manually change each listings shipping. The reason is the new USPS program will ship your package and the rate for that package based on zone pricing. It will be more expensive paying by zone verses calculated. We have tested this and found zone to be more expensive. The more expensive shipping cost is the more FVF eBay makes and the more USPS makes. USPP is saying the pricing will be a bit lower and most likely will be a bit lower. If you have been saving 2-3% by shipping calculated instead of zone and the zone goes down a bit you will be paying more. We are forced to use calculated due to the size weight and DIMM of the many products we sell and the many categories those product are in. Hope that helps
steve_stuff
·3 years agoYou said
"If you have calculated shipping checked in your shipping preferences you will have to manually change each listings shipping."
All our listing has calculated shipping now - When we did the test we mention above, the first thing we had to do was pick - in this case re-pick - calculated. Then we got the shipping options. So if we do the change using the bulk form[s], we will be 'changing' to calculated, right?
But as far as I can tell we will have to add size - right? - and do it one by one by hand. If that's the case I will still fix the calculated part in bulk.
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoNo, if you are calculated you will have to change each listing manually. If you do not have calculated checked you would be able to at this point change to Parcel Select and on the 9th those listing would all go to the new USPS shipping. Like I said above if you are like us and need various shipping choices due to weight, size and customer preference. You are faced at this time doing all this by hand.
I had a meeting with my staff and we came to the conclusion, like one of the posters here, to wait a week or two before doing the major back flip and cost in doing all of these changes. As eBay history proves that sometime close to the deadline of change there will be some fix to bulk edit all this. A smart company would have already finished that task, not eBay, not their style.
pjcdn2005
·3 years ago@allthingssurplus
"If you have calculated shipping checked in your shipping preferences you will have to manually change each listings shipping. The reason is the new USPS program will ship your package and the rate for that package based on zone pricing. It will be more expensive paying by zone verses calculated."
I don't use usps but I thought that I had a fairly good idea of how it works. So perhaps I'm missing something as your quote above is confusing me. I thought that calculated shipping was based on zone already so how is it more expensive paying by zone versus calculated?
What would happen if you added parcel select to your listing through bulk listing now? If your dimensions etc are already in there can you not just add it now so that it automatically changes to the new service on July 9th?
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoYou would not have calculated. Yes they would automatically update to the current USPS shipping program when that occurs. The real down side is if you additional shipping preferences like FedEx, FedEx Ground, Overnight, USPS Priority, like all of our listings they would be removed if you bulk edited to Parcel Select. Its a no win at eBay's current state. eBay needs to figure out how to allow updating First Class Packages so the Seller is not damaged with lost productivity which directly costs eBay as well. No one in management understands if Seller are productive eBay can't collect fees.
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoI see Elizabeth vanished from this thread today. Too many real questions to answer.
elizabeth@ebay
Good morning everyone!
I just wanted to provide an update to the new USPS shipping change:
We've just received new word about the USPS shipping update. We've shared that Parcel Select Ground MUST be the SOLE service within a listing for it to update to Ground Advantage automatically. GREAT NEWS this has now changed and Parcel Select can be combined with other shipping services and it will STILL automatically update.
nobody*s_perfect
·3 years ago@elizabeth@ebay
Thank you for sharing: That IS great news.
Now we are awaiting further great news regarding listings that offer First Class package shipping.
buyselljack2016
·3 years agoI knew I should have waited to work my listings with Parcel Select ðŸ˜
I already did them. Good news is that they only amount to about 12% of my listings 😂
I started working on the 1st Class. (changed to "standard") Likely did about 1/2 of those where several with the same flat ship costs could be done in bulk before I grew tired of doing it and decided to wait to work on the rest.
Now to wait and see if eBay can take care of it. I know next to nothing about coding, but it sure scares me when eBay starts coding.
hartungcards
·3 years agoI'm pretty sure coding scares eBay too.
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoElizabeth, this process would be easy if eBay would live by answering simple questions like, who, what why, how and when. If you can answer all of those questions when dealing with any process people will be clear and the process will have resolution. This has been a business theory since the beginning of time. Here is what we know: Who is doing this change, USPS. What are the effects of the process, in eBays control (?). Why is this being done, stream line the process of shipping and the usual raise rates down the line. How, what is required to make this change happen with clear yes and no answers, in eBays control. When, yes July 9th and as you glibly stated yesterday "a train wreck on the 8th", in USPS control.
In a question yesterday I directed to you I asked a yes or no question and have yet to get a reply. The most important thing here for my category and the auto category is first class package. That transition to the new advantage shipping should be seamless on your end. Why can't that be done??
I have friends on Amazon, no issue there. Amazon is making the transition. We are on Bonanza, no issue there, Bonanza is handling the transition. We are on our own website and no issue there. eBay is, as usual, just waking up to a major issue in regard to platform a week away from the change. However eBay has found time to push the new super duper promoted listings. How about expending some time on what matters, the day to day operation of the platform. As a company eBay need to pull their heads out and see what is important, making short term money or producing a platform that encourages Seller to buy inventory and Seller in an environment that is not gear to penalize their efforts. I get in all of the Ivy school business 101 is no loner taught and increasing the bottom line every quarter at any cost is now the new goal, that just does not work long term.
norskmediashop
·3 years agoI would encourage everyone as frustrating and time consuming as it is, to flood ebay with calls over this and keep pressing it here in the forums. This has to be heard, clearly the ones working for ebay and responding here do not understand what were up against. Its either that or ebay can say goodbye to a ton of sellers and business's. Yes this is a dumb USPS change and not the fault of ebay, but the fact they wont make this a automatic rollover in their shipping system is on them. It's not over yet so keep fighting.
glgenterprise
·3 years ago@elizabeth@ebay
Add me to the list of sellers who this is going to be an absolute nightmare for - I have 2500+ listings over several accounts most of which offer multiple shipping options.
I simply don't understand why this cannot be handled on the backend by eBay - drop a code that converts all listings with first class package to ground select on the July 9th. This should be a crazy easy programming change.
buyselljack2016
·3 years agoextended vacay for me when eBay starts coding.
will hide until all (or most) of the unintended "glitches" are resolved.
hartungcards
·3 years agoMust be nice to be able to afford a 2-month vacation.
buyselljack2016
·3 years ago2-months. You are ever the optimist 😂
elizabeth@ebay
I absolutely understand your perspective @glgenterprise, and will pass this along to our shipping team.
tsme35
·3 years agoI was just reading the USPS release and saw this:
"$100 of included insurance to cover shipments, including USPS Ground Advantage service shipments"
so will that include 1st class mail?
nobody*s_perfect
·3 years agoFirst Class Package postage will no longer exist as a USPS service, and the insurance will not be applied to letters and flats, so technically the answer to your question is "No." But there WILL be $100 of insurance coverage for all packages send via Ground Advantage, even those that weigh under 1 pound.
tsme35
·3 years agoYou know what I was asking
buyselljack2016
·3 years agoGround Advantage will have that added insurance coverage with the same process to make the claims that USPS will continue to deny.
tsme35
·3 years agoSince I stop using USPS for fishing rods, I haven't had to file a useless claim. I did have some luck when they lost packages though.
na_833338
·3 years agoJust a thought... What if I decide to change all of my First Class package listings to Standard Shipping before July 9th? Then I could decide after the change date on what works best for me in regards to shipping options.
Wondering....
nobody*s_perfect
·3 years agoSounds like doubling the work.
na_833338
·3 years agoMaybe. But if standard shipping works, then I'm already done. Quite a few sellers already have standard shipping and I wonder if any of them even think about the new shipping change. Maybe someone who uses it for a lot of their items will chime in here.
For a seller who plans on being away for extended periods during the summer, doesn't standard shipping now give them the option to change the listings (if needed) when it's more convenient for them?
Ebay has a history of glitches with new things. You could 'ride out the storm' for a while and see what shakes loose.
mcdougle4248
·3 years agoI did just exactly what you are describing here. My listings all only offered First Class Package service, flat rate or free. I changed my shipping policies for all of my listings yesterday from First Class package to Standard Shipping. I am done for now ( I think) and can wait to see if this rolls out smoothly and decide if I want to update to Ground Advantage at a later date.
Note: Standard Shipping will not work if you are using calculated shipping.
slippinjimmy
·3 years agoI use only Flat Rate shipping and always use "Standard" with no service specified, this entire change is a complete nothing for me, no changes need.
I do this for two reasons;
1 - I can use any shipping service I want, I don't have to be locked in to a service.
2 - It extends the estimated delivery window
An example of why I might want the flexibility of a generic service, most of my items can be shipped Media Mail or First Class Package, depending on the weight and destination zone the difference in cost can be very small or more significant, if Media Mail is only 10 cents cheaper I use First Class for that order, if the difference is $2 then I would use Media Mail, also impacting the choice is the proximity of the buyer, if they are in a close zone the delivery time difference is only 1 or 2 days, if it's a Zone 8 or 9 then the difference can be 3 - 5 days.
I like to maintain flexibility especially when it means more money in my pocket.
In this case my use of generic shipping services means I don't need to make ANY changes.
sin-n-dex
·3 years agoWhat you said... I learnt to do that this week. Now I need to learn to use SixBit more effectively for making changes, but there has been an advantage to ending listings on eBay and selling similar to put them back up (with minor changes). I think I can import the whole ebay database and then I'll have what's currently listed.
C.
sin-n-dex
·3 years agoI've got 11,000... since I do a lot of the same thing, I could do quite a bit of bulk editing. But there's around 3000 left that I will have to go through category by category, select what's appropriate for each shipping price, and edit those in bulk. I was advised my auction software can help, but I missed the boat on that when I started editing on eBay's site.
What I am hoping for, and I don't think we'll find out until the 9th, is that eBay puts a button to identify items with "no valid shipping option" (I only use FC, so anything that's not updated will fall into that category). As I update each group, a few are not updating at all. As such there will be about 50 stray listings with no valid shipping and a nice button to filter those would be great. I hope eBay is listening...
I do get the programming fix, that you just change FC to GA in the drop down, then problem solved. No idea why eBay can't do that.
C.
hartungcards
·3 years agoAfter reading through this thread, I've decided to just write "Train Wreck at eBay" on July 9 on my calendar.
elizabeth@ebay
Technically it's train wreck on August 8th @hartungcards, since you have 30 days to update ðŸ˜
hartungcards
·3 years agoGreat, I'll just plan to take all of August off then.
sin-n-dex
·3 years agoWe don't appreciate this humour about the situation.
C.
norskmediashop
·3 years agoI don't either, that's ebay officially stating now that they know this will be a train wreck and they have no plan to change or help. Lets see how ebay feels when sellers just pull the plug and quit here because of the mess. At some point many of us are going to have no choice, its coming.
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoI agree, Elizabeth is not being in tune how bad this is. I left a message on the thread stating this will cost me $2-3K to make my 4200 changes. No joke to me. All of my 8 employees will be involved, wasting productive time doing something that eBay could do as they are doing the change on one type only of First Class shipping. Feels like eBay need to punish the people that pay them, the Sellers. Elizabeth this is not the time for nice nice. Its the time for eBay to get off their collective butts and do something right for a change and get off the how can we find another way to increase revenue. The quest for revenue will eventually be the quest for bankruptcy. I'm I **bleep** yes.
sin-n-dex
·3 years agoI hear ya. I don't know what you sell, but I get that if you have lots of different stuff with lots of different shipping prices, you'll have to manually update instead of doing a bulk update.
I'm a one woman show here on ebay, so I had to update my 11,000 listings myself. I opted to change it to "standard shipping" so this noise won't be a problem in future, as I intend to keep adding to my store. I still have 1000 that need somewhat manual updates, but going to work on it a bit every day. I expect by the 9th I'll be done. This weekend is a long weekend in Canada, but I would have preferred to put up new stuff rather than to be fixing old stuff.
One thing I did notice (when one of my new standard shipping listings sold tonight), is that it defaults to priority postage when you haven't specified which shipping service you'll use. I find that interesting because Priority is actually an expedited service in eBay land, so why it's defaulting me to an expedited service when I opted to use a standard service, well... another eBay programming error.
C.
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoWe sell computer part all carrier services, weights, package sizes and customer requirements. Yes manual is all we can do.
mcdougle4248
·3 years ago@sin-n-dex
"One thing I did notice (when one of my new standard shipping listings sold tonight), is that it defaults to priority postage when you haven't specified which shipping service you'll use. I find that interesting because Priority is actually an expedited service in eBay land, so why it's defaulting me to an expedited service when I opted to use a standard service, well... another eBay programming error."
I also noticed this today after changing my shipping policy from First Class Package to Standard Shipping yesterday. I agree with you, it does seem to be another programming error. We just need to be extra diligent in reviewing the label screen before purchasing.
splendidthreads
·3 years ago@elizabeth@ebay
Thank you for being so active in this thread. We don't see that very often here, and it's refreshing that somebody from Ebay is participating.
norskmediashop
·3 years agohow are high volume sellers with stores or hundreds to thousands of listings suppose to do this?? Why is ebay not automatically going to be changing the first class package? It's going to be impossible to implement. business policies will not work, like the original poster said its chaos using that. so what are we suppose to do here? We can not manually change that many listings it would take months of work.
theteamsetguy
·3 years ago@norskmediashop ,
Unless you are an extremely slow typer, you should be able to manually update 60 to 100 items in an hour.
If you have 1,000 listings it should 8 to 10 hours. It would be nice project to do on a rainy Saturday.
martin2001
·3 years agocan't wait for these rainy days ....
theteamsetguy
·3 years ago@martin2001 ,
I sure hope you have business policies set up or you might need a few rainy Saturday and Sundays.
sin-n-dex
·3 years agoI updated 8000 listings this evening (4 hours). I changed them to economy & standard shipping (pending on whether it's going to be FC/GA or ESE.)
Bulk editing tool. Not all my items have the same postage, but I did it in batches of specific items, as well my store has categories which group similar stuff together. I have 3000 items left to update semi-manually (they are different postage rates and mixed in categories where some have been updated.... I'm keeping a list of which types of things have been updated en masse so I can do all the odd ball items).
C.
rustydalmatian
·3 years agoThe point is, none of this manual updating should be necessary.
hartungcards
·3 years agoIt shouldn't be necessary, but it will keep us off the streets and out of trouble doing it ourselves for several days.
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoI cannot believe you gave that as an acceptable answer. I have 4200+ listings and employ 8 people. You want me to send and pay for 40 hours of nonstop typing to correct this issue that any good programmer could have done months ago when eBay knew this was coming. It is possible because you are doing it with one form of First Class. This is just another way eBay places no value on our time. We are a $2.4 mil business doing only $300k on your site. At one time is was 100%. Real world I will spend $2-3K over a three week period making this wasteful change. You see when you suggest to a Seller to nonstop burn up a week of time you are not taking into account the normal running of the business. Like CS you have no clue how business work or what it take to making a living using your platform. You take from this platform and we Sellers pay for that. Your answer should have been honest and say eBay could have done better and because we didn't Seller are going to suffer. That is the truth something hard for eBay to speak.
mnmkoter
·3 years agoWill eBay be scanning out listing and letting us know what listings could be out of compliance? This way we can select those listings through the bulk editor and update them in mass? Currently I do not know of a way to use the bulk editor to look for listings that have First class as a shipping option. If someone else knows how to do this I would love to hear it.
buyselljack2016
·3 years ago@tealt
3) seems "business policies" will become usable to do this once "USPS Ground Advantage" becomes available. (yes, chaos now as the option does not exist)
tealt
OP3 years agoI certainly wish that that would be true for me.
I tried Business Policies a month or so ago, then went to create a few new listings and arggggghh. I couldn't find the Opt-Out button fast enough.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I sell single-quantity non-repeatable items of different weights and sizes with a variety of shipping methods, sometimes free shipping and sometimes buyer pays. I'm thinking that Business Policies was not designed for sellers like me.
buyselljack2016
·3 years agoYes , that single quantity with the varying weight is what kept me away from "business policies". Still does. The wife's selling account had it, and as I did not use it on mine, I found it to be a nightmare when I looked at hers. Too many different ones.
eBay has opted me into it. I will give it a shot for doing my "updating" July 9th to see how it works out for that because I do have some listings that may benefit me to do with "business policies" for the "updating" more easily than a regular "bulk edit". I do not use "calculated" for my 1st Class. (nearly 90% of my listings)
I will have to see how that works out, but once I am "updated" the "opt out" will be my next move if not before.
allthingssurplus
·3 years agoI am the same type of Seller and yes you are correct this platform is not designed for us. Its Seller like us that generate the larger share of eBay revenue and we are damaged the most.