Just found something handy regarding this Country Of Origin thing
EDIT: proceed with caution. I made this post last night, and I'm seeing totally different numbers now, despite not touching any of my listings, myself. This feature is clearly not road-ready.
You can select some/all your listings from the listing view in Hub, click Edit -this goes to your bulk edit page, and right at the top is a new box stating exactly how many of your listings have no COO at all, and how many have been filled by eBay. If you check either box, the screen below populates with exactly the listings that pertain to that selection.
You can do what you want from there, but at least you don't have to open up each listing individually to see that item specific.
51 comments
dhbookds
·6 months agoEdit...........I incorrectly intrepreted this information..... it is for international sellers...... and does not apply to US Sellers selling to US buyers......
Another thread brought up some new (to me) info and since @wastingtime101 called Kyle in, perhaps it will get an answer
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/County-of-Origin-in-listing-s-detail/m-p/35487795#M2665999
just to try to keep information on this thread....it concerns info on the customs page
it's noted on the ones ebay hasn't changed yet......on the learn more:
When selling internationally, you’ll need to specify the country of origin to your applicable listings. This information is used to determine duties and taxes. If your item is located outside of the US, listings without the country of origin or with an "Unknown" country of origin may not be eligible for purchase by US buyers or qualify for eBay's managed shipping programs. Including this information helps manage buyers’ expectations, improves their shopping experience, and builds trust in buying and selling international goods.
https://www.ebay.com/sellercenter/resources/customs-requirements
Further instructions say
Enter a valid country name in the “Country/Region of Origin†field in your listing under “Item Specificsâ€. Please note that selecting “Unknown†is not a valid entry.
More possible problems without any enlightenment from ebay........since it says in one place "unknown"/blank country of origin..and another place unknown is not a valid entry..........
norskmediashop
·6 months agoI don't know but whatever they did it has turned off all EIS orders. We only had 1 since these changes were implemented last week with no notice whatsoever. Before this happened we had 10 the week before, and usually anywhere for 4 to 10 a week give or take. No one is responding to the matter no mods seem to be here anymore. The only thing I haven't done is called on the phone, I guess its worth a try but they probably aren't going to know anything. This is a problem because it is now blocking good business.
adamcartwright
·7 months agoAll I know is I just used the bulk edit feature to identify all the listings where eBay claimed I needed to either fill in that field or confirm that ebay filled it in correctly, then I opened each one and fixed/checked it, yet NONE of my revisions stuck.
The bulk edit is still showing the same number of listings requiring me to check as before.
(This is after clearing my cache to be sure the bulk edit was registering all my revisions.)
I GIVE UP. Let the chips fall where they may, at this point. Enough time WASTED.
kandf_vintage_finds
·7 months agoeBay really needs to fix this. I now have obvious things that are made in China but they filled in Country of Origin as the United states??? The item not as described cases are going to start rolling in.
dhbookds
·7 months ago@devon@ebay
@kyle@ebay
@elizabeth@ebay
Message 6 ??????
norskmediashop
·7 months agoso has this change turned off international orders and blocked them? Were use to receiving around five to ten eis orders a week and since they implemented this back on Monday was it? Not a single new eis order. Anyone else experiencing the same?
gurlcat
OP7 months ago@norskmediashop We can't say it definitely turned off or blocked anything, nor can we really know when they started tinkering. I noticed several days ago that my international orders had abruptly diminished, in the past month or so. And not just EIS orders but freight forwarding ones too.
adamcartwright
·7 months agoI just made my first EIS of the year, and remembered this issue.
Went back in and checked the listing to make sure eBay had not changed the Country of Origin from what I filled in. Fortunately, they left it alone so it's correct.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·7 months ago@gurlcat Just my understanding: IF this has NOT been filled out with a country name, that will impact visibility to international buyers....some, maybe all, international buyers, will simply not be shown the listing. IF this HAS been filled out with a country name, international buyers will normally be shown the listing, but presumably if they look at the listing they will also be shown the total amount, including tariff related charges. Not everything has a tariff from every country, but I would guess in some cases, international sales will decline because the tariff related costs make the purchase unattractive to the potential buyer.
Of course, the average ebay seller can't keep up with all the tariffs from around the world, and it is hard to keep up with the tariffs from even one country such as China, because tariffs have been in such a state of flux. And also because of the unpredictable nature of tariff changes, even if a rate is fairly low today, some buyers will be hesitant to buy because the rate could increase between the time of purchase and the time of shipment , and the buyer would be responsible for any increase. (This is what happened to many American businesses when this all started....an American manufacturer might have placed an order for parts or raw materials from a foreign country at, say, 5% tariff, but when the tariff increased to, say, 50%, he had to pay the extra to get the stuff into the US, or he had to cancel the order (often with contractual penalties).
gurlcat
OP7 months ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques I do understand all that; my reply to the other poster was more in regard to the "tinkering" as in eBay doing this prefilling stuff "for" us. That's just not right, and then on top of that they "gave" us a tool that purports to show which listings have been prefilled so we could easily check the accuracy .... but it's totally broken. It looks like they actually prefilled ALL my listings as U.S. at this point -even changed a couple that I know I originally selected the true countries of origin, changed them to U.S. Yet that counter thing says only 8 are prefilled right now.
Probably breaking some laws, but I'm beyond caring at this point, because if they're doing it to me they're doing it to everyone and I'm not going to invest a bunch of stress into THEIR problem.
gurlcat
OP7 months ago@my-cottage-books-and-antiques Also note how none of the 3 Blues who were tagged in this thread ever replied. There's a reason for that.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·7 months ago@gurlcat LOL.
Here's another example of ebay's "seller communications"
On Jan 14th... a month ago...ebay issued its Monthly Update, which included the announcement of a new Stores Ad feature, with a link to use it. However, if you follow the link, or try any other way to actually find this new tool, it does not exist I had questions, called in devon, and he forwarded my questions to the ads team the same day.
As of today, we still have NO response from the Ads team.
It seems fairly obvious that the announcement was, to say the least, premature. If so, it would be simple enough for the ads team to respond with a basic "Sorry, we are behind schedule, this isn't ready for release yet, we now expect it to be released on or about "x"..."
But...NOTHING.
NOTHING. AT. ALL.
To quote the movie Cool Hand Luke: What we have here is ...failure to communicate.
The enormous disrespect ebay has for its sellers is depressing to say the least.
But I think many of us have simply come to expect it.
norskmediashop
·7 months agoanyone seeing any updates or changes to this today compared to yesterday?
jonathanbrightlight
·7 months agoOnly update on my end is that I was able to confirm just now that some of the items that say eBay prefilled the Country of Origin were ones where I at least confirmed it while listing, and they are correct, so going by that count and filtered list isn't sufficient.
gurlcat
OP7 months agoDefinitely not seeing any of the 3 tagged blues responding and it's not even the weekend, so ...... ???
dhbookds
·7 months agoAgree, thought we'd at least get an acknowledgement by now.....
real_solid_gold
·7 months agoAs a follow up to my last post leaving eis is not enough to be able to delete coo. The intl shipping requirement is still part of the permanent listing record. That is why (after leaving eis) I still had to completely end and then "sell similar item" every listing that I wanted to delete coo on.
real_solid_gold
·7 months agoI left eis and blocked all international countries but still had to go through and delete all the incorrect coo's that had been filled in. Because i had left eis I had no way to use the feature you described...although that is when it is most needed so we can find and delete them - if you are still in eis you can't delete them anyway and if you don't know the origin what do you do? So it took me a LONG time to look at every single listing and put a check mark next to each with (usually United States) an ai generated value. After that though it was pretty fast to choose "end listings" then go into "unsold listings" and click "sell similar", then in bulk editor go into item specifics and remove country of origin. But finding and putting checkmarks next to almost half my listings was a huge pain and although I thought about just blowing away the coo for everything there are plenty of listings that have valid coo's which i put in there myself - so I didn't want to lose all that.
Anyway I also loved the eis program but for now the only choice I saw was leaving it or dealing with hundreds of listings with incorrect data. Once eBay comes up with a clean and simple way to categorize listings into two groups: 1.) having coo and available for international sale, and 2.) no coo known and only available domestically.......then I will gladly rejoin the eis program!
fern*wood
·7 months agoI’m not a big seller, but I do have around 2400 listings, and frankly, I’m not in the mood to do anything about this…at least not yet. eBay needs to step up and offer some clarity about what the heck they are doing and what actually needs done, if anything.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·7 months ago@fern*wood At this point, I am with you on this. I'm not going to do anything about this just yet. This is an ebay screw up, which they might or might not fix (or perhaps give us an easier way to fix it) If they don't, I'll eventually start making necessary changes, and, if I really feel it is necessary, I will end up doing exactly the opposite of what ebay wants us to do---I'll simply abandon any form of international shipping.
It sometimes seems ebay and the Law of Unintended Consequences were made for each other.
gurlcat
OP7 months agoSo this stuff is REALLY in constant motion apparently. Note in my OP^ I had 11 "missing" and 22 "pre-filled" COO's? Now less than 24 hours later, it says only 6 and 5. There's no way the rest of my listings have COO's that I filled myself, because I rarely address that item specific, and I sure haven't touched any since yesterday.
EDIT: So yall can take those 'Helpful's back; all I found was a piece of junk feature! 🤣
adamcartwright
·7 months ago@gurlcat
Maybe they are working on mine as we speak, because I'm not able to bulk edit -- " Something went wrong. Please try again."
tobaccocardyahoo
·7 months agoI am one lucky seller. After dealing with the warnings on my listings about no COO and Ebay generated COO in the category specific manner, I have decided to prioritize my listing which I can search in a manner that finds me the most listings, in the fewest categories which are made in the USA, and modifying them.
The more I can do without relying on the Ebay flagging, the easier dealing with the outliers will be. I know you jewelry sellers are not as fortunate as I.
I do wonder if this amount of effort will provide the fabled rejuvenation of listings spoken of in seller folklore.
dhbookds
·7 months agoIs there some way we can check to see if any particular current listing is being offered as an EIS one?
As a buyer, Go to the listing and Click on see details next to shipping:
change the ship to to another country.....and then click update.....that will change to show EIS (if you use it)
Note that country will "Stick" until you change it back to the US.......when (lol) you forget to change it back, will scare you to death looking at shipping........
gurlcat
OP7 months ago@dhbookds Thank you so much!
So, @fern*wood it appears the jewelry mixed lot I currently have for sale IS available via EIS, at least to China.
I also checked a ring I have listed that (currently) has no COO. -Even it was available via EIS to China, UK, Canada and Australia. That's all I checked but those would be the main buyers I'd have anyway.
So I'm not even sure why eBay is doing all this rigamarole. What a stinkin mess.
norskmediashop
·7 months agowhat a mess, so we get a lot of eis orders and shipping works well for that overseas and dont want to lose that visibility,,,,,so now is it better to bulk edit to make sure they all say US as the COO so they get found and seen ,,or don't do that yet? Have already found a couple that ebay changed, one stating Thailand. What fun here we go. Between things like this and amazon throwing sellers under the bus,,its getting so difficult.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·7 months ago@norskmediashop
You probably understand this, but I know there has been some confusion, so----Just want to be clear: Country of Origin is the country where the item was manufactured. It is not the country you are sending from. So, if I am selling a vintage figurine that was made in Japan, country of origin is "Japan". I will be sending from the USA, but the USA is not the country of origin.
gloryglorygifts
·7 months agoVery helpful. Thank you!
stainlessenginecovers
·7 months agoFYI; they 'added' for Ebay Motors/Parts & Accessories as well.
Out of my 552 listings (which I clicked 'edit all', 2 were 'missing' so I was able to click that top box, just the 2 showed, hit the 'edit pencil' one at a time and added USA to the drop down.
Now none are an issue.
pls-consignments
·7 months agoUnfortunately, I'm unable to bulk edit these after populating. Still have to edit one by one. Am I missing something?
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·7 months agoAt the risk of stating the obvious, there is a simple solution here, but only ebay can implement it: ebay, remove all your "pre-filled" COOs immediately, and stop adding them. Post an announcement and make it clear to sellers that international visibility will be tied to filling this out accurately, and strongly advise sellers to fill it out correctly. And then continue to follow up.
Where the COO is unknown, have a way for sellers to indicate that so that ebay does NOT show items internationally where a COO is required.
But for the love of God, stop making extra work for your sellers!
jonathanbrightlight
·7 months agoThis is key in my opinion. Many things we list don't state a country of origin. We can't provide accurate info because it doesn't exist. So we leave it blank, or before we would choose "Unknown" (that disappeared a while ago). If that limited our visibility, so be it. But filling it in incorrectly is a massive issue.
gurlcat
OP7 months agoThey have everything to gain and little to lose by doing this prefilling crap. More sales (=fees) overall, and if an item doesn't make it through customs they'll have to refund the buyer but then sell the item to the liquidator.
Then again, I don't know what happens when a package does pass through EIS but then gets rejected by customs in the destination country.
Here's a question: Wouldn't a company potentially be breaking some law by filling in a vital descriptor like this, without having the item in-hand, just letting AI make guesses? If we were just talking safety and environmental type prohibitions it would be bad enough, but now that huge TARIFF money and increasing international tensions are factors, maybe eBay shouldn't be taking this so lightly.
dhbookds
·7 months agoYep.........I wouldn't change anything wholesale until we get some decent answers......and I don't call....."we're passing this along to the team".........and nothing ever to be heard about it again......a decent answer.
pls-consignments
·7 months agoJust a heads up, I too have been using the bulk edit to address the COO items. However, I found two items already that were flagged in blue for COO, but upon opening the items to edit, they were already filled in accurately... by me when listing. Therefore, they should NOT be flagged!
dhbookds
·7 months ago@devon@ebay
About time we got some explanation on this?
Specially, what is our liability if ebay fills in an incorrect country as the origin.......since, apparently, we can't leave it blank as ebay refills it with their guess. Yet there are many older items that have lost stickers showing where they are made. What do we do?
Adding to this as I think of things, lol.
We don't know WHY Country of Origin is "necessary" and how it will be used.........Example......I think,now, sales from Russia are prohibited....... But if I have a used item here in the US, produced in Russia.....is selling that going to be/is prohibited?
prohibited in the US and internationally?
jonathanbrightlight
·7 months agoI'll add tags for @elizabeth@ebay and @kyle@ebay who could also potentially get some answers for us.
fern*wood
·7 months agoI'm really not clear what to do here. The country of origin makes a big difference in value for many of my items. That's why I put it in when I know and try not to guess when I don't. Buyers wouldn't trust me if I just made this up and even worse would be for ebay to fill in a country that hurts my value.
Just looked at mine and it shows hundreds are missing and hundreds have been filled in by ebay with a note to check them to be sure they are correct. How can I check for correctness when I don't know what is correct? What a mess of revisions to look at.
jonathanbrightlight
·7 months agoSo, out of the first 2000 listings (we have a little over 6000, so it would take a few batches), we have 193 missing a COO, and 113 pre-filled by eBay.
All different types of items, too, DVDs, CDs, books, etc.
Selecting all of them and pulling up the Item Specifics part of the editor does give me the option to "Remove All" when I scroll to the Country of Origin field. It's annoying because it breaks them into sections by eBay categories, so it'll take some time to do them all, but I'm going to try to do that for all of those it says eBay added it to, then wait a little while, and check the same ones again (I'll save a list).
Edit: And we just confirmed with at least 3 new listings, we listed them and intentionally left the COO field blank, and then immediately went back into the editor, and they were pre-filled with United States as the COO. Not happy with this change.
Edit 2: Just went back to edit the same 2000 listings as above, to see if it had added back the fields I removed...
They added COO to more of the ones that didn't have it before, and undid all the changes I just did.
gurlcat
OP7 months agoThat is just unacceptable. After all that work! And as if it's not bad enough they pre-fill it; they even override the seller's edit -WHAT?!!!
I wonder what would happen if you edited and chose a different country; would that get overridden back to the United States too?
I was about to revamp my whole store in a couple of ways including this COO thing, but I think I'll wait and see if this automation thing is just glitching or whatever. Nothing I hate more than doing a bunch of work only to have it undone.
gurlcat
OP7 months ago@jonathanbrightlight So it's not just clothing and jewelry -do you see any rhyme or reason in what they're auto-filling and not? Or does it just seem to be expanding in real time?
jonathanbrightlight
·7 months agoNope, couldn't find any pattern, and I don't know if some of mine were mistakenly flagged like @pls-consignments said. In fact, I don't know if it's distinguishing between prefilling the COO as we're listing (using the catalog data or pulling from other details in our title, for example), and prefilling it as in adding it after we list. I know both happen, I just don't know if that checkbox is only selecting one or the other, or both. I won't be making any more changes until we have some answers, though, no point.
adamcartwright
·7 months ago@gurlcat
Yikes, I have a bunch filled by eBay. On my list for tomorrow. Thanks.
Now I see some of mine have SIO pending, so I can't revise.
christworks
·7 months agoI can confirm the COO box goes away when you leave eIS.
@jonathanbrightlight eBay was filling it in on all of my listings. As best I was able to piece together, this happened when the listings were renewed or I edited them for other reasons. I left eIS because of it.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·7 months ago@gurlcat Thanks for the update!
jonathanbrightlight
·7 months ago@gurlcat , thank you! I’ll try that tomorrow. I think they haven’t been filling it in for us, since from what I’ve seen it’s been primarily jewelry and clothing sellers reporting that, but it’ll be good to be able to check.
njtoyreseller
·7 months agoYou can also go to "Active Listings". Then choose the menu at the top for "All Filters". Then expand "Missing Information" and it will pull up there "Missing Country Of Origin".
I believe it will only matter if you allow international shipping of any kind. If you only ship within the US, then it shouldnt matter if you or eBay fill it in.
tealt
·7 months ago@njtoyreseller
I think you are quite right.
I opted out of EIS and now offer no international shipping. Those new boxes guri described don't appear for me.
If I only ship to USA addresses, eBay doesn't care whether I have COO or not.
centennialofthreads
·7 months agoFeels like a great time to drop international shipping. I probably haven't had more than a dozen in a year, so no big deal to drop it for me.
fern*wood
·7 months agoThat's the last thing I want to do. I really like my eiS purchases, but we need to know what is going on that makes them not eligible. I've also read things about having "lot" in my listings. If that makes them not eligible, I sure wish it was clearly spelled out and I would stop using that common term.
gurlcat
OP7 months agoIs there some way we can check to see if any particular current listing is being offered as an EIS one? @jonathanbrightlight @wastingtime101 @my-cottage-books-and-antiques
@fern*wood I know this: I have foreign buyers purchase my jewelry lots fairly often, but typically they get shipping through freight forwarders. I couldn't say when was the last one with EIS. In fact, the one I do remember was back before the Russia/Ukraine war started -Russian buyer, and the package was rejected/liquidated because jewelry mixed lots were prohibited by Russian customs. Nothing to do with tariffs, just a total prohibition of imported gold or silver, and with a mixed lot they couldn't prevent sneak-in stuff.
I'm not saying that was THE last EIS lot sale I had, but definitely the last one I remember.