Double Printing Labels

[mrfindit]

In December, E-Bay has been double printing shipping labels, as in I tell it to print once, and  the print driver has 1 copy, but two labels come out of the printer.

In early December, I ended up mis-shipping a package, because two labels printed (had never happened before in 5 years with the same printer) and a third was in the print queue.  I didn't notice  the third in the queue, and put the duplicate labels on two packages.  Fortunately it was just one package, and I had a good seller who returned the extra with a pre-paid label.

Something I noticed at the time, in my printers job log, the description of all my labels in November had been a long stream of random letters and numbers.  This is usually what appears at the top of E-Bay's pop up window.  But on this double print, one was a long sequence of letters and numbers, and the other was "Ship your order".  The time stamp on both print jobs was identical to the second as well.

After that first double print, every label I printed was "Ship your order" and  the string of numbers and letters had seemed to go away.  So November, everything was letters and numbers, then after the first error, everthing was "Ship Your order."

But on December 23, I once again had a double print of the same label, even though I only printed once and only one copy.  This time it effected four packages, and I had to pay $40 to have two of them intercepted and returned.

Once again, on the duplicate labels, one was a long stream of letters and numbers again (1390b9fd-df25-4b11-8), and another one with the description "Ship your order."

So now I was very sensitive to this issue, because it had effected me twice in one month.  So just now, I had this error happen again, and I caught it.  Again, one label window title was a string of letters and numbers, and the other description was "Ship your order".  Again, I printed once, with a copy of 1, but two labels are printed.

So this makes the 3rd time in December this has happened.

So I went back and looked for any other similarities.  One thing that stands out.  The first time his happened was at 2:05 AM EST.  The second time this happened, it was 2:40 AM EST.  This 3rd time was at 2:46 AM EST.

So all three times this error has occurred, was between 2-3 AM EST.  Could some maintenance on E-Bay's end be causing these double labels to occur?  If so, shouldn't the printing system be taken down?  Or is this caused by some incompatibility with E-Bay and Chrome?

I'm assuming this is the result of some coding change at E-Bay.  The fact that the pop-up window header with  the label has changed from a string of letters and numbers to "Ship your order." indicates a coding change at E-Bay.  So I think it is telling that whenever a double label prints, it has the old string of letters and numbers that E-Bay has appeared to move away from.

[rudy2828]

Maybe uninstall and reinstall printer drivers?

[mrfindit]

I did that after the first double print, but it's done it twice more.

I feel something changed, either with E-Bay or Google Chrome, or possibly both.  I'm on the same operating system, updating to Windows 11 back in the summer before  the Windows 10 phase out, so nothing recently new there.  The last print driver for my printer was issued a couple of years ago.  So nothing new there.

It used to be that the first time I would print my E-Bay label, the popup window that appeared would have a name at the top like 47639655-17ba-4a82-9854-613e08665f90, and my printer truncates that in the printer log as the description of t h print job.  But starting the day of that first double print, the random letters and numbers changed to "Ship your order".  I do see that if I teel E-Bay to reprint the label in the shipping labels section, it still creates a window with a title at the top that is random letters and numbers, but only when I reprint.

So this seems like something in the coding of the website that may have changed at the time the issue started.

The second change that may have happened around that time was an update to Google Chrome.  It used to be when I clicked "Print Using Dialog Box" on the print screen, the actual dialog box would open.  There was an update to Google sometime in the past few months.  Now if you click that a Google Chrome print app opens.  Then you have to click "More Settings" in that app to get the actual dialog box.  And this dialog box has the ability to change the default print settings of your printer (which you can disable it  having that ability).

So Chrome did add this print app thing too, so perhaps some compatibility issue there with E-Bay coding and  that Chrome App.

The time of day theory just went out the window, because it just happened again at 11:54 AM.  this is the first time it has happened twice in the same day.  Two print jobs sent with one click.

[kibble-net]

Try clearing cache and cookies.

Try on a different web browser, or a different computer.

Try uninstalling and reinstalling your printer driver.

[mrfindit]

And I just noticed that if you look at the printer log description for the duplicate label it matches that long string of characters I posted above, which is the" blob:https://www.ebay.com/476..." window that E-Bay creates when you make the label.  That long string is the title of the window.

So this makes it look like it does tie back into the E-Bay coding somehow...