It's here! Spring 2016 Seller Update

[readabouthorses]

http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/news/sprupd16/index.html

[dktoss]

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@posting*master wrote:

I'm surprised about the move towards shipping supplies, considering how difficult they have made it to find the 6 co-branded Priority Mail boxes.  The link changes about once per year.

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I'm sure they have a china supplier all lined up.

[blackbird*singing]

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@posting*master wrote:

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@prefontained wrote:

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@posting*master wrote:

I'm surprised about the move towards shipping supplies, considering how difficult they have made it to find the 6 co-branded Priority Mail boxes.  The link changes about once per year.

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There used to be an in-your-face link where you could purchase them. When that went away I thought they stopped making them. I vaguely recalled looking to see if they still made them last summer, and when I found the link it directed me to order supplies at USPS - no co-branded boxes.

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That's exactly what I mean: the link keeps changing, so it seems like they aren't available any more. But they are!  Here's the current link:

http://pages.ebay.com/ke/en-us/usps/preparingitems.html

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I think the link changed since even that one you posted. Did you look at the top of that page and click one level back? It takes you to a page not found.

I think this is the new one:

http://pages.ebay.com/USPS/preparingitems-flatrate.html

Or there is this link:

http://uspssupplies.ebay.com/uspsweb/catalog

which was found here:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/pay/questions/shipping-supplies.html

[blackbird*singing]

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@dktoss wrote:

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@posting*master wrote:

I'm surprised about the move towards shipping supplies, considering how difficult they have made it to find the 6 co-branded Priority Mail boxes.  The link changes about once per year.

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I'm sure they have a china supplier all lined up.

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I wonder if they're specially producing those tiny envelopes for the Chinese sellers who ship with ePackets...

[posting*master]

Oh, for crying out loud, I even opened that page to make sure the link still worked, I didn't think of checking within the page!  Thanks for extra-double making my point about the links changing!

[keziak]

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@ebbyisme wrote:

2.

Then again 2 basic store may be the answer, If you only had a premium store before, 500 fixed price, you are happy with that level of listing and you sell a variety of items, two basic stores will save you $30 off the new fees and you still have the same fixed price free insertions you have now with many more auctions at a lower price ($10 less for me) then what you are currently paying.

 <<<

this is food for thought for me, thanks for your analysis.

[fern*wood]

Maybe I misinterpreted an above post, but is it a possibility that ebay has decided to get in the shipping supply business due to learning of the possibility of USPS discontinuing their free supplies?

[*eponymous*]

Fine metals that are plated or filled with another fine metal must be listed in the Fine Jewelry category.

Great.  Filled and plated garbage is now FINE jewelry.  FGS eBay, that's the stupidest thing you've EVER done!

Plated and filled metal is GARBAGE!

All the Chinese garbage now qualifies as fine

CZ set in Sterling Silver Plated ring.

^^^^ That is GARBAGE!  THOSE RINGS SELL 10 FOR A PENNY.

eBay execs, buy your lovely wife a plated gold ring with a CZ.  See how fast she files for divorce!

GARBAGE IS NOT FINE JEWELRY

GRRR GAAAAAH!

I BELIEVE EBAY IS NOW IN THE BUSINESS OF VIOLATING FEDERAL LAWS GOVERNING SALE OF NOBLE METALS!

[posting*master]

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@smick55 wrote:

... is it a possibility that ebay has decided to get in the shipping supply business due to learning of the possibility of USPS discontinuing their free supplies?

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Personally I think the chance of that happening is remote.  Everything USPS has done in the past few years has made them more competitive with the private carriers: free tracking for all packages, carrier pickup for everything, etc. 

[terprov]

All I see is my sales are at their lowest ever on ebay and their fees are going up.  Pretty sad

[*eponymous*]

There is no such thing as "Sterling Silver plated".

There is no such thing as Plated Karat Gold, platinum, or any other precious metal.

Those are commecial terms intended to deceive the general public into buying garbage.

There is NO PLATED OR FILLED METAL THAT IS CLASSIFIED AS PRECIOUS METAL!

I intend to take a hard look at the law regarding misrepresentation of precious metals and stones and will absolutely report eBay's unfair business practices to the FTC and US Attorney General over this new jewelry policy that REQUIRES CHINESE SELLERS TO LIST THEIR JUNK JEWELRY IN THE FINE JEWELRY CATEGORIES.

Somebody at eBay best take notice and get this c bleep ap fixed for the jewelry categories before I can do some research.  I kid you not, eBay.   Somebody at eBay better GET ON THE STICK!

[blackbird*singing]

Further update on what shipping supplies are being offered:

http://community.ebay.com/t5/2016-Spring-Seller-Update/Will-the-EBay-25-Shipping-Supply-Coupon-be-re...

[njrtsr]

Yeah, I saw that too. Jewelry should be 100% "fine" in order to be listed in the fine category, not 1%. They even used an example with a horrible looking fake stone and they called it fine! What little chance I had of shopping for fine jewelry on ebay has just been ruined.

Now sellers are going to be screaming FINE FINE FINE because of a tiny cheap plated section. Ebay shot themselves in the foot with that change.

[retrose1]

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@*eponymous* wrote:

There is no such thing as "Sterling Silver plated".

There is no such thing as Plated Karat Gold, platinum, or any other precious metal.

Those are commecial terms intended to deceive the general public into buying garbage.

There is NO PLATED OR FILLED METAL THAT IS CLASSIFIED AS PRECIOUS METAL!

I intend to take a hard look at the law regarding misrepresentation of precious metals and stones and will absolutely report eBay's unfair business practices to the FTC and US Attorney General over this new jewelry policy that REQUIRES CHINESE SELLERS TO LIST THEIR JUNK JEWELRY IN THE FINE JEWELRY CATEGORIES.

Somebody at eBay best take notice and get this c bleep ap fixed for the jewelry categories before I can do some research.  I kid you not, eBay.   Somebody at eBay better GET ON THE STICK!

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epon, I don't do a lot of jewelry and none on ebay, but i saw that and wondered about how much of a change and how it seemed to really favor the Chinese garbage.

It will create a lot of problems with newbies who will be happy to see that their junk can be listed as much better than it seemed.

[dktoss]

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@prefontained wrote:

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@dktoss wrote:

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@posting*master wrote:

I'm surprised about the move towards shipping supplies, considering how difficult they have made it to find the 6 co-branded Priority Mail boxes.  The link changes about once per year.

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I'm sure they have a china supplier all lined up.

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I wonder if they're specially producing those tiny envelopes for the Chinese sellers who ship with ePackets...

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Well, they probably buy them from china so they can ship them back to them for free - you know, for their new ebay 'training centers'?

.

[blackbird*singing]

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@prefontained wrote:

I found all of the updates to lsitings as they pertain to mobile shoppers interesting... eBay is going to choose a small # of characters (I have to go back and look, but I think it was 250) to display from your listing.

Or you can customize the html yourself (manually) for all listings and choose your own text to display up to 800 characters. I think it was the FAQs section where they showed the html code to use.

And they will still keep the link to view the entire description. I think I'm going to have to change every listing to select the text I want shown, and the first line on every listing will be something like "if you're on a mobile app, please click the link to view the full item description."

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While I have no problem writing or using html, it would be even better if a user could highlight the text they wanted then click a button on the toolbar above (where you adjust fonts, etc) so it would insert the html automatically.

Also, it really stinks that they're doing this based on character count but the description field does not have a character counter... so people may have to throw things in a word doc or other location that counts characters for them? SO much extra work to determine which part of the description you want featured on mobile...