First Class to Ground Advantage is a Time Consuming Change

[rappstradingpost]

I just manually revised 100 listings. You'd think with all the money that ebay rakes in, they could have found a way to bulk edit these things..

[chapeau-noir]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

I haven't revised anything - my first class listings all say 'standard' now, which is fine. I'll fix my templates though.

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I think you might have missed my other reply @chapeau-noir 

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Shipping-policies-mandatory/m-p/33861334#M2241876

Your listings still say First Class. Any service classified 'standard' is prefaced with the word standard, but the actual service you chose is still there.

Item 266269453297

Shipping tab shows: Standard Shipping (USPS First Class®)

So you still have to make updates.

Just like Priority is classified as 'expedited' you'll see on those listings: Expedited Shipping  (USPS  Priority Mail)

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@wastingtime101  That's a new wrinkle, then - when I checked they just said 'standard' and that was it, but that was several days ago, just after the supposed change-over.

Curiously, when I was changing my templates, BOTH first class and Ground Advantage were listed under shipping.

[shipscript]

@chapeau-noir 

You have 161 items with flat rate first class shipping. There are no secondary shipping options for those 161 items.  Six of those items have free shipping, so I can't tell if they are to remain as First Class (letter envelope) or will convert to Ground Advantage.  However, the titles suggest they may be packages. The remainder are over $3.50 shipping, so those are most likely Ground Advantage.

Please send me a private message if you would like to receive the spreadsheet. My next task is to investigate uploading a revision spreadsheet through Seller Hub, given the limited amount of data retrieved. If that is successful, then that could be an option for some sellers.

[chapeau-noir]

@shipscript  Thank you! 👍 I actually just sorted the items by shipping cost in the seller hub and then revised them with bulk editing. It didn't take long.

The hangup with bulk shipping that the bulk edit forces one to use the same shipping cost for everything selected, but it was easy to sort shipping cost and then bulk edit the four or five groups that my flat rate shipping cost fell into. I don't have very many items, but I suspect a revision short cut through seller hub would be immensely helpful to those with large numbers of listings.

[wastingtime101]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

I suspect a revision short cut through seller hub would be immensely helpful to those with large numbers of listings.

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I do agree with you. Since that doesn't currently exist, for large numbers of listings I can't stress enough how much business policies help. 😁

Anybody that wants to set them up can check out this post for help getting started:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Shipping/Setting-up-Business-Policies-Update-to-USPS-Ground-Advantage/...

[norskmediashop]

We were told by ebay yesterday to wait this out, they are still working on solutions. Despite the warning in seller hub about changing first class listings to simply ignore it, apparently more changes to help are coming. We cant deal with buis policies and can't do bulk edit as every item is different and has different ship needs as Im sure many stores with hundreds to thousands of listings are dealing with. So lets see what happens. 

[falconsys]

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@duffy4444 wrote:

      The reason why we have to manually do the First Class to Ground Advantage ourselves is because ONLY First Class Package is being integrated into Ground Advantage by the USPS. There is still First Class Letter and First Class Large Envelope/Flat that is NOT being integrated. Ebay doesn't know whether our listings to be shipped First Class are for packages or for FC Letter or FC Large Envelope/Flat.

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There is no such thing as "First Class Large Envelope/flat" (at least, not usable by eBay), and First Class Letter (a letter and stamp) has never been an acceptable (trackable) eBay shipping method. The only eBay acceptable shipping method that falls under some niche categories (and I have been salty about this for YEARS) is eBay Standard Envelope, which only applies to certain categories - which excludes the bumper sticker category I used to ship under (and have ALWAYS been forced to use First Class Package to ship flat mailers under).

It actually ticks me off quite a bit that there is no cheaper way to ship flats... and comes back to tick me off even further that the erroneous distinction between First Class categories has led to me needing to go update every one of my items (which are now primarily 4oz and 10oz First Class small boxes).

There simply is no reason for that to even be a thing - they should have all been auto updated.

[duffy4444]

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@falconsys wrote:

"

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@duffy4444 wrote:

      The reason why we have to manually do the First Class to Ground Advantage ourselves is because ONLY First Class Package is being integrated into Ground Advantage by the USPS. There is still First Class Letter and First Class Large Envelope/Flat that is NOT being integrated. Ebay doesn't know whether our listings to be shipped First Class are for packages or for FC Letter or FC Large Envelope/Flat.

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There is no such thing as "First Class Large Envelope/flat" (at least, not usable by eBay), and First Class Letter (a letter and stamp) has never been an acceptable (trackable) eBay shipping method. The only eBay acceptable shipping method that falls under some niche categories (and I have been salty about this for YEARS) is eBay Standard Envelope, which only applies to certain categories - which excludes the bumper sticker category I used to ship under (and have ALWAYS been forced to use First Class Package to ship flat mailers under).

It actually ticks me off quite a bit that there is no cheaper way to ship flats... and comes back to tick me off even further that the erroneous distinction between First Class categories has led to me needing to go update every one of my items (which are now primarily 4oz and 10oz First Class small boxes).

There simply is no reason for that to even be a thing - they should have all been auto updated.

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@falconsys:

Greetings... your frustration is understandable.

   I don't have shipping hassles anymore because I use Stamps.com, where FC Letter & FC Large Envelope/Flat are always right there to use at my discretion unless weight or dimensions bump it into GA.

   The USPS does not yet issue tracking for FC Letter and FC Large Envelope/Flat (which you are wanting to use for your bumper stickers). I have been using FC Large Envelope/Flat for hundreds of shipments of appropriate quilt and cross stitch patterns and the like. I also ship a lot of DMC Floss items via FC Letter, where I simply add a stamp or two and click on "Mark as Shipped" and manually enter feedback at eBay. When I ship FC Letter and FC Large Envelope/Flat items, I give the buyer a heads-up that the USPS does not issue tracking numbers for their purchase, but to rest assured the shipment is on its way and will be delivered in a few days. My buyers appreciate the heads-up. I've had only two INR's over the last 18 years for legitimately lost items. Those refunds (trivial in the big picture of hundreds successfully sold and delivered) are acceptable to my business model. 

   The Stamps.com website currently has an outage due to a GA software change glitch, but will be back up soon. They are reliably on it, and have a much better track record of up-time than eBay, which seems to be obsessed with tinkering and half-measures on fixes and updates. That's why I dumped eBay for Stamps.com nearly 20 years ago. So much is now left to my discretion, which includes automatic download and post-back to eBay, along with the same reduced rate structure. I like that. Costing only around $19 a month, perhaps consider them or other similar, more reliable and user-friendly shipping services, depending on your business model.

Cheers, Duffy

[jbbowers12012]

Counting my Blessings - I was able to change mine over thru. my Business Policies.  Just over 200 listings took less than 5 mins. - EBay was smiling on me........................Good Luck Everyone! (J.B.)

[couch-potato-sales]

Is there a way to select listings by shipping method? I have about 11,000 items listed with about four different shipping methods.

[shipscript]

@couch-potato-sales 

When you say "four different shipping methods" do you mean four methods in a single listing?

Or only four methods across all your listings?

Have you switched to business policies?

I could scan your listings into a spreadsheet, but I could only do a few thousand a day because I have an eBay API limit.  I did go ahead and scan the group of 498 items that are less homogeneous (green below).

Contact me if you would like me to email the spreadsheet.

Ultimately, we would like eBay to provide the ability to sort listings in Seller Hub by shipping method. Some of us think eBay may be working on something because eBay extended the deadline.

As it is, you might be able to sort by category and at least skip over all of your cards and letter-class listings that way. Then sort the category listings by shipping cost to see "Calculated", or a fixed price, or FREE and bulk edit each of those cost groups.