eBay made a surprise announcement on Tuesday: it had began making updates to several categories, and, as far as we can determine, with no prior warning.
Sellers have come to dread the consolidating changes eBay makes to categories and Item Specifics with each seller update. (Thus the comments the post attracted such as, “Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy night,” and, “May God have mercy on us all!”)
But at least eBay usually gives advance warning by including details of the changes in its semi-annual updates. That does not appear to be the case this time.
eBay announced: “We’ve revised some categories and item specifics to help make your listings easier to find on eBay and by external search engines. Starting today, you’ll see updates to the following categories,” and it listed Collectibles, Parts & Accessories, and Home & Garden, under which it will make changes to certain subcategories.
Typically eBay announces the Fall Seller Release the Wednesday after Labor Day in September, but it has yet to announce the fall update this year.
A company rep revealed last week that eBay would tease out some the changes during this week’s eBay Open seller conference, which kicks off on Wednesday (September 21), to be followed by a formal seller update announcement at a later time.
However, by delaying the release, eBay left sellers uninformed about category changes that began rolling out on Tuesday. The delay in the Fall Seller Update announcement could also mean eBay is planning to make more changes to the site later in the holiday shopping season – a practice frowned upon since any resulting glitches could negatively impact sales during the busiest time of the year for sellers.
i dont get the fuss over categories, and why bother the sellers about it, and marketplaces nitpick about it, other than to have an excuse to charge more for some, if not all listings.
I mean if i want to buy an antique yankee baseball cap, wouldnt i just put that in the search bar?
why would a buyer limit their search to a specific category? (at least not initially)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! NO! NO! NO! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE…… …..DON’T DO IT EBAY!………………. Because every time you arbitrarily change a category on any listings it deletes ALL of the item specifics from the listings which makes the joke of a search even way worse. I have several hundred vintage car tail and stop and parking and side light lens listed and the last time you made this STUPID MOVE, you changed all of them to a light “”assembly”” category which they are not. They are all only lens. So by changing all the listings to lighting assembly you deleted all of the item specifics associated with the original listings. After numerous phone calls to support with no answers or solutions from ebay I finally figured out myself how they had screwed up all my listings and also realized there was no way they could fix them. So I had to spend many hours editing listings to correct what ebay had screwed up. This was around the same time that I was getting constant emails to edit in recommended or sometimes required missing item specifics. It was very infuriating to say the least and there is no doubt in my mind that if they STUPIDLY PURSUES this same idiotic course that this time perhaps millions of listings will be screwed up by it and ebay cannot fix it on there end.. They really need to get rid of the idiotic way of screwing everything up. The saying …”IF IT AIN’T BROKE……DON’T FIX IT APPLIES and also the saying……… “”YOU CAN’T FIX STUPID””…………. So the best thing they could do would be to get rid of the stupid people. They have already lost literally millions of sellers and buyers since the October 2021 so called “UPDATE” and I firmly believe if they continue on this idiotic course it could be the straw that broke the camels back and could quite literally put them out of business. And no amount of lies from the CEO is going to hide the stupidity of the actions. Wake up! and listen to reason before it is to late….PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE…… …..DON’T DO IT EBAY!………….