items moved into wrong categories--do we just have to fix them all?

[magpuppie]

I mean vastly wrong, like plates in "cups", vases in "plates", rings in "necklaces" etc. Things that even just assigning categories based on the title keywords should have worked for. between several stores this is hundreds if not thousands of items, do we just have to fix this manually? wiping the 'item specifics' when we do, too, I bet. this is going to be an expensive fix, seller side. is eBay just done with their side of it? for awhile it seemed like some items were getting sorted back to their right categories, but i haven't seen any info on this since around the 19th. 

[coastaltechsolution]

Yes looks like we are left to do all the clean up work 

Cannot say if anything else is to be rolled out for fall update, I hope not! 😁

Been using the bulk editor and chipping away at fixing listing little by little  

[katzrul15]

Unfortunately, Yes......you are expected to get it to the correct category.

We take a quick pix on our phone of the item specifics before we change the category as those go away......once you change the category, you are re-entering the item specifics.

Good luck!

[magpuppie]

Thanks for the replies! Unbelievable that it's this way though. Not even any word from eBay to the effect that it's safe to start on these weeks and weeks worth of work? I see people saying their changes to category or IS don't stick and that worries me too. It's all seemed so absolutely shady, with no real communication from eBay's side. 

[catherandbrownbooksabaa]

I now sell MOSTLY vintage postcards on ebay.  I just noticed that ALL of my "topographical" postcards illustrating towns & cities in in the state of Georgia have reverted to a "Manufactured in GEORGIA [i.e., the former USSR country]" instead of showing them being "Manufactured in the United States" or even leaving the country of manufacture blank :-{  Not good if someone is searching only for postcards made in the U.S.A. [Sigh]. More work for me to do thanks to ebay's new "item specifics."

[m_pthisandthat]

I have been working on this for weeks, now down to 125 needing required item specifics and category corrections. Significant time investment that I would normally use to list new items.  The mistake in these categories is hard to understand in my case wine glasses identified in the title of the listing now called everything from candlesticks to creamers but not wine glasses and it goes on and on.  The part that really does not make any sense is they will get the next listing correct. It just not seem like ebay I have been selling for 17 years and have never encountered anything like what is happening now. Has ebay reached out to anyone with any type of explanation?

[anjie234]

@m_pthisandthat 

   "Significant time investment that I would normally use to list new items."

Exactly!  Not to mention, I just NOW discovered, after you spend all that time

fixing bunches of listings, eBay just RE-CATEGORIZES them... AGAIN!

...and WIPING OUT ITEM SPECIFICS... AGAIN!

This is TOTAL B****sht!!!

And I'm just a very small seller compared to most of you. And I'm p****-off raw!

I  don't know what I'd do if I had thousands of listings!

eBay SHOULD compensate. Will never happen, though!

Really, though... Sellers pay a lot for the use of this platform.

And they just go and destroy your listings ... over and over again!

it's **bleep**!

[gwens*4saleitems*]

it is true .... entered IS and they disappeared .... entered IS and they disappeared.....

entered IS (again) and NOW they wanted DIFFERENT/other ones (I only have less than 200 listings right now)

it's like every day they want something different added.

[glenvonnie]

I've added 241 required soon IS, still have 400 recommended, but first I edited all 1108 listings to put them back into the right categories. While adding the required soon and starting on the recommended I saw that about 40% were back in the wrong category.

[glenvonnie]

I suspect someone had the grand idea of redoing item specifics and then they hired a bunch of programmers in India to modify all the existing code, there is little logic to what they're doing.

I wrote code for 20 Years, code which made sense and was logical, it ran dangerous machinery, there was no room for mistakes.

[cubano4u]

I've been posting about this in the doll categories too. Even though you spend all that time moving them into the correct category, the bots will move it right back to the wrong one. It has been happening to my listings as well. I've stopped fixing them because there is no point at this time. Until eBay gets the bots under control, you will be making the same exact changes over and over. 

[printpeople]

……..And sadly, it will take well beyond the holidays to fix this mess.  The item searches I’ve done brought up far too many items that don’t apply to what I search for…then I went and searched on Etsy, and everything applied to what I searched for….much easier shopping going on over there.

[downunder-61]

---

@glenvonnie wrote:

I suspect someone had the grand idea of redoing item specifics and then they hired a bunch of programmers in India to modify all the existing code, there is little logic to what they're doing.

I wrote code for 20 Years, code which made sense and was logical, it ran dangerous machinery, there was no room for mistakes.

---

PLEASE apply to work for eBay's IT team.......... As a trainer, seriously, PLEASE !

and no there is no sarcasm in this, where do they get their people, from prep?

[Anonymous]

I've been dealing with the "dolls and bears" category too and I thought I had it covered as of yesterday with ONLY 11 more listings to update.  I get up this morning and there are NOW 109 wanting to be updated because they now want franchise and a name for THAT franchise.  I sell antique and vintage paper dolls where only about 10% of my items are in some sort of franchise.    I'll have to edit all of these with N/As just to get it right and those SHOULD have been there from the beginning of this horrible mess.  Sales have been WAY down, as well as views since all of this started a month ago.  I am completely frustrated and about at the end of my rope.  I think you were right about not doing anymore "fixing" until eBay has decided exactly what it wants under the mandatory item specifics so we don't have to keep going back to work already done.

[magpuppie]

It would be nice if eBay would at least let us know when the changes are really over, instead of saying it would just take a few days and then never addressing it again, as near as I can tell. Really just any kind of communication or transparency out of respect for how much work and lost revenue this is causing. I'm really just kind of shocked at how unprofessional this is. Imagine if you had a physical store and a vendor came in and just sideswiped all your displays right before Black Friday and then left without helping clean up, or even making eye contact, that's how this feels.