ShipScript has been an eBay Community volunteer since 2003, specializing in HTML, CSS, Scripts, Photos, Active Content, Technical Solutions, and online Seller Tools.
eBay's sports trading card deadline for the item specific "Graded" arrived today.
Sellers with variation listings could not modify their item specifics until they resolved conflicts with the variation name "Card Attributes". Now sellers can not bulk update the "Card Attribute" conflict until they add the "Graded" item specific (most will state "No" as the graded item specific) .
Catch-22.
Time to move to Plan B.
For those sellers who still have listings with hundreds of variations to update, but who missed the opportunity to use the bulk variation scanner provided here, and who now can't bulk update at all, the next solution is to include the full set of item specifics in the bulk revision of variations. We can not simply add the missing attribute. Unfortunately, the whole set of Item Specifics must be restated in a bulk revision. I'm working on some sort of solution.
I've got two tools to work with.
The Variation Scanner will pull in the variation data.
https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/VariationScanner.htm
The Item Specifics Scanner will pull in the item specifics.
https://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/ItemSpecificScanner.htm
The task will be to merge the two spreadsheets and restate the old item specifics with eBay's new headings and values.
I believe the removal of zero quantity revisions only occurs if you have not enabled the "out-of-stock" feature. If you are only selling one of everything and the photo is the actual item, then letting them purge is fine.
Some sellers list multiples of an item and the photo may simply be "representative". In those cases, turning on the stock control will maintain those empty slots for future restocking. And of course, even if only listing one at a time, it still allows updating the photo without the need to update any other data.
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/listing-tips/bulk-listings?id=4160#section4
https://www.ebay.com/uas/selling-pref
However, when stock control is enabled, it applies to all listings, so you would need to manually end your your single-item sold listings.
I see that you have 60,000 variations that you have renamed to Card Number (probably all by hand), and that you would now have to rename to something else. I agree that eBay should not have done this to sellers and I hope they can find an accommodation.
If not, we'll work with you here to solve the problem.
@Anonymous
How does Seller Hub measure the 5000 daily upload limit? Is that by actions or by spreadsheet rows? With a variation rename, half of the spreadsheet will be "Actions" (Delete) and the other half are variation rows that do not have an Action field. So teampulicebelievesllc would have either 60,000 rows or 30,000 actions to break into groupings of 5000. Which is it?
And File Exchange documentation lists a 150,000 upper capability per upload. Is that for rows or actions? With Seller Hub replacing the File Exchange portal, do all the File Exchange limits extend to Seller Hub uploads? If the row limits remain, the 15MB file size would not likely be reached by variation renames because the rows do not include a description field.
eBay has a Seller Hub feature that will flag listings that require updated Item Specifics. A nifty XLSX spreadsheet file can be downloaded that includes all of the possible item specifics that are color coded by urgency. The best part of eBay's spreadsheet is that it offers a droplist of options, just like the online listing form. But, unlike wading through the online listing form, the spreadsheet method will allow filling in the missing data for all items at once.
Because the XLSX file opens in a spreadsheet tool, bulk editing can be as simple as selecting the droplist option for the first line, and then duplicating all the way down the column.
After all of the data is populated, export the spreadsheet as a CSV file, which can be uploaded to eBay in the Seller Hub Report uploader.
Caught in the catch-22 problem that won't allow revising the item specifics until the Variations are renamed, and vice versa? I should soon have a tool to merge the Variation Scanner data with this spreadsheet exported data so that the two requirements can be handled in one upload.
The tool will create a "Rename" report that you can upload to eBay to batch rename your variations.
You have 8 listings with "Card Number" and 7 listings with "Card Attribute". You won't be able to revise those listings until your rename your variation groups. I see that you have chosen "Card #" for your other variation listings.
When your variation listings load in the scanner, make selections at the top of the tool and enter your find/replace variation names. Then click the "Build Report" button. Below are the options I have chosen for your items. You would need to run two separate reports. One for "Card Attributes" and another for "Card Number"
Normally, after running the report, you would click the Download button and save to your computer, and upload that report to Seller Hub, shown below. BUT....
...BUT, your variation listings are missing the mandatory item specific called "Graded". so you are now in that catch-22 problem of not being able to do anything. The field value would be "No", but you have a whole suite of item specifics to fix.
So, I would recommend one of two approaches:
1) Download the Seller Hub spreadsheet that I mentioned in a prior post and fill in all of the data for those 15 variation listings and export a CSV file. Then we can merge the Item Specifics with the Variation files (in another tool) for a single upload.
2) Or, take the Variation report, open it in a spreadsheet and add two more columns for the two mandatory Item Specifics, called "Graded" and "Sport"; where "No" and "Baseball" would be the values in each master record row. This would then lose all of the other item specific data for those listings. Then redo the item specifics after renaming the variations releases the catch-22 gridlock.
I am actually quite leery of anything that can be found in the list of item specifics. To be safe, pick something that is NOT in the list of item specifics.
I would AVOID all of these:
- Card Name
- Card Number
- Card Attributes
- Features
- Player/Athlete
- Player
- Certification Number
- Type
- Product
- Series
- Theme
eBay's taxonomy appears to prefer full words. So abbreviations should be safer, as well as verbs (instead of adjectives) that can not be used to describe a card feature:
- Card#
- Card No
- Card Num
- Card Choice
- Pick Card
- Choose Card
- Select Card
- Player#
- Athlete#
