I want to bulk revise the shipping fields in my listings so that they all show updated postage rates.
I am highlighting all listings in the centre panel and then making the changes in the right hand bar. However, this doesn’t change anything and I still get ‘Multiple Selection’.
Oddly, I have also done bulk revisions of my returns policy in the same way. That worked fine. It is just shipping that I am struggling with.
Any suggestions? Changing them one by one will be painful.
Here is an AppleScript I use for managing fixed price shipping charges in multiple listings. I assume you’re not talking about fixed price, since eBay handles calculated charges quite well.
tell application "GarageSale"
set newMediaRate to (display dialog "Set Media Rate shipping to be: " default answer "3.85" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button "OK")
set newMediaRate to ((text returned of newMediaRate) as number)
repeat with theListing in (get selected ebay listings)
set shippy to (the shipping option of theListing)
tell shippy
set mailType to the service name of the first ebay shipping service
set fee to the fee amount of the first ebay shipping service
end tell
if (mailType = "USPS Media Mail") and (fee < newMediaRate) then
tell shippy
set the fee amount of the first ebay shipping service to newMediaRate
end tell
else
-- display dialog "no change made"
end if
end repeat
end tell
It should be pretty straightforward to see how to extend or modify this, with a little careful practice. Hope it helps!
The trick is (correct me if I misspeak, @ilja &c) that a shipping “plan” is handled by a complex shipping option object. Each one of those internally contains a fee amount. But any given listing can have multiple shipping option items, so you can mail a thing Priority Mail, Media Mail, Express, &c.
As a result, when you select multiple listings, the interface has no idea which of the possible shipping option items associated with those listings you want to change.
Another way to build a script like mine, I realize, would be to set up one “correct” shipping option object, and replace the shipping option of each listing you want to update with a copy of that. But again, the direct interface won’t be able to do that unless you completely delete all their shipping option data and add a new one from scratch…
Thanks for the input Vaguery. All over my head unfortunately - needs the iwascoding team to respond.
I’m still none the wiser as to whether shipping rates can be updated in bulk or not. It’s a fairly fundemental need as postage costs are forever increasing and there needs to be an easy way to update rates.
A simple solution is to charge free shipping. Figure the highest possible cost to ship and add that to the price and charge free shipping. Ebay benefits sellers by showing items with free shipping in search results before those with not free shipping and lowers seller fees and discounts. Most important is that they will allow your items to show in search results.
Free shipping doesn’t work for me unfortunately. Charging ‘the highest possible cost to ship’ would cover me for items going to New Zealand, for example, but would make items sold in the local market look very uncompetitive.
And even if I did go for free shipping, I’d still want a way to bulk change all my listings!
International for me is always 100% paid by the customer. Any domestic over 1 pound the customer pays. Enter the weight in GS and eBay figures the shipping and those rate changes are updated every time USPS or Fedex or UPS increases rates.
I guess eBay works different in the UK. We just enter the weight once when creating the listing and eBay calculates the shipping when the buyer checks out.
Could you please export and send us two example listings, for which you get the “Multiple Selection” string after you bulk-changed shipping options for them?
In case both listings use the same shipping settings on the same eBay site, you should a summary of the used settings in the inspector, instead of “Multiple Selection”.
nick777vvv:
I am highlighting all listings in the centre panel and then making the changes in the right hand bar. However, this doesn’t change anything and I still get ‘Multiple Selection’.
Could you please export and send us two example listings, for which you get the “Multiple Selection” string after you bulk-changed shipping options for them?
In case both listings use the same shipping settings on the same eBay site, you should a summary of the used settings in the inspector, instead of “Multiple Selection”.