UPC DISASTER

[waddingtonfirstaid]

Absolute disaster this mandatory UPC field. Can't revise listings even after using my clairevoyant skills to navigate to advanced listing tool from changing product category. Even when it was possible to revise a listing by setting UPC field to "Does Not Apply" it can not be revised again because it comes back losing the "Does Not Apply" value. Some revised listings get stuck in a fail cycle and can never be revised again. So I've given up.

eBay help phone me and she can't fix it. It's been going on for months and programmers have failed to implement fixes. For months I was told there wasn't a problem. use the advanced listing tool I was told. Well folks, that too is a failure.

Massive bugs. The biggest bug should be sacked - the person at the top who thought it was a good idea to make UPC necessary. Honestly, a lot of businesses do not support the US company raking in mega $$ controlling barcodes. I've never bought barcodes for what we manufacture and never will in future.

[waddingtonfirstaid]

And I forgot to say, eBay better not be using UPC field data as a condition for improving search rankings when it's massively unreliable on so many fronts, the least being disadvantaged sellers who can not apply them.

[digital*ghost]

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@weducational2 wrote:

Absolute disaster this mandatory UPC field. Can't revise listings even after using my clairevoyant skills to navigate to advanced listing tool from changing product category. Even when it was possible to revise a listing by setting UPC field to "Does Not Apply" it can not be revised again because it comes back losing the "Does Not Apply" value. Some revised listings get stuck in a fail cycle and can never be revised again. So I've given up.

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Next year, 'Does Not Apply' will no longer be allowed, so I suspect pushing through with fixes for any associated glitches is very low on eBay's priority list, I'm afraid.

Instead, they'll be requiring a UPC in one form or another in the majority of listings, regardless of condition - either from the manufacturer / retailer, seller generated (for private label products), or eBay generated (they're referring to those as ePIDs).

 http://sellercentre.ebay.com.au/news/sp16/structured-data

[heihachi_73]

Clearly eBay is moving from a place where you can sell your unwanted second hand goods to an online superstore which only stocks the latest brand new items and ships the same day. I wonder how long it will take until eBay completely bans the sale of second hand items.

The fun will start when we see 'United States vs. eBay Inc.' or some other large-scale, billion dollar class action lawsuit when 98% of their non-business sellers worldwide suddenly find themselves suspended from selling due to the missing UPC (GTIN) field due to items not having any sort of barcode e.g. antiques, coins/stamps/cards, clothing, furniture, let alone anything which had lost its original packaging decades ago, such as old Nintendo games or Matchbox cars...

[shepherdsrule]

I know things have to evolve with time, and eBay has evolved very quickly, especially in the last 10 years as technology has improved.

But I miss the good old days, I started on eBay about 7 years after it's conception and I loved that it was mostly like an on line garage sale.

Just sayin'

edited: to fix the spelling errors my PC made !

[davidc4430]

i spy with my little eye----ebay getting many many calls from sellers asking HELP!

[waddingtonfirstaid]

Yes, many.

[waddingtonfirstaid]

digital*ghost, UPC numbers will not be mandatory as stated by their policy http://sellercentre.ebay.com.au/news/sp16/structured-data headed,
2. WE’LL ACCEPT NON-STANDARD PRODUCT IDENTIFIERS ON EBAY.

Looks like eBay will be so keen to retain business they will create their own identifiers for sellers to use. If they go down the UPC barcode track of charging, then my guess is a lot of sellers will create their own under:
Private label product identifiers (seller- generated identifiers)
It's going to end up being largely irrelevant and a complete waste of time for both the seller and the consumer. For goodness sake, I don't even remember my car rego number when I book it in for services. Products change so quickly these days, new models come out, updated firmware happens in days, cheaper to buy new rather than repair, a number to identify something supersceded within months will be a totally irrelevant concept. In fact, it could end up causing people to buy old, outdated rubbish and not keep pace with innovative trends or new, highly efficient, local, social-networked or cutting edge product that does not see any need for bloated UPC like numbering technology.

Regardless, the situation at present is hopeless for sellers who get stuck in a UPC field loop and can not edit listings. It's plainly very bad when the help people can not fix the problem.

[kashon59]

Yes, I can't list my dress tonight as there's this red message saying I need a upc or ibsn number. I don't want to have to pay for barcodes for dresses I sell for under $10.00. There is no where to put this info in either, this is very bizarre.

[clarry100]

For the moment you can enter the value "Does not Apply" and that will be accepted.
Once it becomes compulsory next year then if you leave the above value in the fields then eBay will do an automatic update adding in their own generated data. At the moment all our stuff is listed with does not apply.