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.
You have gotten to the part that is not yet finished.
You have 44 variation listings and over a 1000 other card listings. So the Item Specifics tool is going to return a thousand more listings than you need to deal with at the moment.
However, I can produce a merged scan of those 44 items with "Card Attributes" changed to something else. What would you like as the new name?
I may not be available as much the next few days, so I went ahead and generated a spreadsheet using "Card #". You can edit that name in a spreadsheet tool or let me know if you would like it changed.
The first file is a single listing to make sure it works. It would be uploaded to Seller Hub per the instructions in some of the older posts here.
http://shipscript.com/test/black_squirrel_1/black_squirrel_1.csv
The second file is nearly 5000 rows of data. Don't go here unless your first file works.
http://shipscript.com/test/black_squirrel_1/black_squirrel_2.csv
One upload of the second file will spend your daily allowance unless you ask for an increase.
Please provide feedback if it doesn't work. Unless you are comfortable with spreadsheet data, just download the file without opening it. If downloading the file causes it to open in a spreadsheet instead of saving to your desktop, you will need to convert the item number column from exponential notation to numbers with zero decimal places before saving. If that is a difficulty, I can provide a plain text file instead. Seller Hub will accept a spreadsheet upload as either a CSV or plain TXT, as long as the file itself is properly formatted as spreadsheet data.
@Anonymous
Another question on behalf of our sellers:
With the new mandatory item specifics and naming problems, I understand that listings can no longer be edited unless all the mandates are addressed in that edit.
Historically, mandates have generally not prevented listings from auto-renewing (when the seller is in good standing).
What is the situation with the July 12 mandate?
Will these non-conforming listings continue to renew so that sellers can address the requirements using the tools here?
Or will eBay deny renewal and allow those listings to end on their renewal date? If listings are ended, either by eBay or by the seller, we can't bulk repair them.
@arrowhead10-7 wrote:Second question...is this why my sales have plummeted today? Thinking that they are not viewable to others
When a listing does not meet the mandates, eBay will demote it in search.
So I believe you are seeing the direct result of unaddressed mandates.
@salvadord wrote:The same has happened to me as well. I am now getting hardly any sales anymore. Does anyone actually know what it going on with eBay???
I'm wondering about two possibilities for those who complied with the revisions.
1) every listing must now be reindexed for the new item specifics.
2) perhaps the new item specifics have not yet been incorporated into search aspects.
However, this is not the only category where sellers saw a sudden drop after Sunday. So I suspect eBay's search has not caught up with their structured data revisions.
Your listings are actually in pretty good shape. You have adopted most of the recommended item specifics and have only about 5 listings that do not have updated item specifics.
However, your biggest roadblock is that most of your variations are named "Card Number", which eBay has recently reserved for themselves.
So, I think we may want to take a two-pronged approach. We will first bulk rename the 25 Variation listings that already have updated item specifics and exclude the 5 listings that need more work. We can catch up with that remainder in another week or so, when there are better tools to make quick work of them.
Here is the link to the Variation Scanner with your settings preloaded for finding those 25 items:
The link will load your items. When the loading finishes and the report area opens, those report values have also been preloaded.
- I chose to rename your variations from "Card Number" to "Card#". You can choose a different name at this step if you wish.
- Click the "Build Report" button and your revision report will be generated.
- Click the button to Download the report to your computer.
- Go to eBay's Seller Hub page and upload the report to bulk revise your variation names.
If the upload succeeds, your variations will be renamed and you will be able to again edit those listings.
If that upload works to fix most of your listings, we can then look at your other 5 listings that are behind on the Item Specifics updates.
If you want to include the two item specifics (C:Graded and C:Sport) in the one listing, the values "No" and "Baseball" must be in the same row as the master record. The master record is the row that starts with "Revise".
When adding only the two mandatory item specifics, all other item specifics are wiped out. You would need to edit the listing to reapply them.
I am on the verge of posting a new update that will include slots for adding up to three item specifics to do what you are trying to do — which is to supply just enough data to get past gridlock.
If you are already caught up with the mandated Item Specifics, you should be able to use the Variation Scanner to bulk find/replace the name and upload a new spreadsheet to Seller Hub.
It appears that you have already made progress in that regard.
