Something went wrong and we were not able to generate the label

[budfox19]

Just wondering if anyone else is having problems printing labels tonight?  I sold an item and tried to ship it via UPS Ground, but I keep getting the message, "Something went wrong and we were not able to generate the label."  Now, the Buyer requested that I ship his item to his house in Virginia instead of Miami, so I did make that correction in his address, but that shouldn't be creating this issue (correct?).  I called eBay customer service and they said there appeared to be a problem (I wasn't the first call they had received) and it could take 24-48 hours to resolve, but that just doesn't seem right to me -- after all, eBay is a major company and any shipping issue would be hugely disruptive to the entire company.  Thoughts?

[no_zero369]

Thoughts?

Don't have just one vendor for your shipping labels.  😊  When you have only one option and that option goes down, you risk missing your handling times and getting account defects because  the eBay labels don't work.

So some sign up at Stamps.com, ship through PayPal or get a free account at PirateShip.  That way when eBay's labels go down they can go to the 'back up" plan and get their shipments out without delay.  Then they have time to wait on eBay to fix their glitch or get some IT help.

We see sellers posting all of the time about glitches with the eBay label system.  So it is not an uncommon occurrence.  Some sellers decide to manage the risk by taking proactive/protective actions, others just post.

[aurorararities]

SOLUTION:

I recently encountered this problem as well. After considerable testing it appears to be comprised of two components:

1. USPS and related API that ebay likely uses detecting too few characters in name fields
2. USPS and/or ebay supported browsers

It is not clear if one or both of these are applicable in all cases, but in my case both applied. 

I had a customer who supplied a name that was one character long. ebay confirmed that they would cover me if I shipped to the name/address provided so I attempted it via ebay shipping tool. That is when I first got the error. Subsequently, I attempted to process the same shipment via USPS.com and encountered a similar error wherein it would give red highlight on the name:company name field and not progress to the next screen to print the label. I attempted to use a first and last name with two characters each and had the same problem. At three characters each in the first and last name or in the company name field the error notice went away, but still would not generate a label. More searching identified that only Firefox and Chrome browers are technically supported by ebay. I’ve used Safari on ebay for decades without trouble, but something must have changed. 

Upon using Firefox and ensuring the name is of sufficient length for the USPS form verification the problem disappeared on both USPS.com and ebay shipping sites.

Hope this is helpful.

[1tuna]

thats a very good explnanation of label problems

I ship international all the time and am used to having to manipulat the charachters and so forth

sometimes ebay does not let ypou change thngs around

that is when I woud go to paypal shipping.it was more forgiving than ebay shipping  evn though both are run by Pitney Bowes

I wish pitney bowes would build a universal address checker for ebay

the Ebay address formats in some countries do not mesh well with ebay.com shipping

I have always had problems with Hong Kong due to no zip codes

Singapore and Maylaysia are the next with the most problems

[fed3e1]

did you ever figure this out,,its only for UPS on mine

[eriochrome_blackt]

This was my exact problem-- the issue was something hinky in my own ship from address.