I’ve been observing this bug for several years now, based on the earlier posts about it.
It’s increasingly clear it’s something about the interaction of GarageSale and eBay producing the bug, not anything about my listings as far as I can determine.
Basically, every 4-6 days, a handful of listings I have manually ended and try to re-list will generate a validation warning:
Condition is required for this category.
The problem is that
the item was already listed, and nothing has changed in the 10 minutes since I stopped it
when I look at the Supported Fields in the Category picker, GS does not actual “think” that category supports Condition. For example:
When I select “Update Categories” and wait, GS will download new, apparently correct support info, but will not update the supported attributes in the selected listing
I need to change the category of every failing item to a different one, then deselect the Category picker, then reselect the correct category. It will then show “Condition” at the end of the list
This process of category-change, deselect, reselect has to be done manually for every affected item. At no point does re-downloading the Categories seem to fix it, without changing the category of the items, too.
Observations:
when I do this over the last few weeks, there is often a new bug introduced: Other categories that were detected as “fine” begin failing to verify on launch, but the ones I’ve fixed do verify
it is always “Condition” that is missing
it is always a small subset of categories, which I have checked still exist in the tree (some stitching ones, some toys ones, some collectible housewares ones)
it seems as if I get frustrated and walk away for an hour or so, it “fixes itself” somehow…?
Thoughts:
Is there maybe a leak in the table used for these “supported attributes” that GS stores? It feels like something might be writing beyond the correct bounds of a data structure? Or is it maybe that the returned value from eBay for these deep leaf categories is malformed?
Note: Unlike some earlier bugs, it does not appear to be one of eBay’s servers. When it happens, it happens until I do the annoying fix. It is not a random fraction of launched items.
Hi,
the same bug is happening to me. It only happens in very few ebay category (modern book for me), but when I update category, it fixes. I don’t have to deselect and then select again as Vaguery explained. There is nothing wrong in the listing and nothing changed in ebay condition requires. It is just a GS bug, and always happens with the same listings when every month they expire and I manually relist them. This is not frustrating since happens on very few items, but it’s a bug anyway.
I have the same problem. I end a group of listings, make a duplicate and delete the ended ones. I then may massage the titles and prices and attempt to list them in bulk. At this point, I usually get the error and have to update categories for some of the items. Quite frustrating and time-consuming.
Good question, and useful that it literally just happened again. The sidebar setting shows Condition is "NOT SUPPORTED and the dropdown is grayed out.
So internally GS is consistent, in the sense that it honestly believes eBay will refuse to accept the Condition attribute, and uses the UI to turn off my ability to add it.
But in truth, eBay demands the attribute, and I have already set the attribute.
One fix might come from overriding the deselection, and always sending Condition with every listing? (I might get warnings, but I would not get failures)
The harder fix would come from determining what randomly breaks the local copy of the “Attributes supported” blob downloaded occasionally from eBay. And also how the local copy seems, honestly to become different from the one I would download manually when I force it in my “fix”.
OH this might be a clue! Also it might not be 100% true?
The problem does NOT appear in items that are running, as far as I can tell. It appears in new listings created by “duplicate and delete” launching.
But I am checking now and I wonder if this is the case. I will need to wait for the problem to crop up again to see.
later:
However in running items that do in fact not support Condition (like Antiquarian books, in the US), the GS menu says “Not Used” and is not grayed out. When this bug thing happens, the GS menu says “Not supported” and is grayed out.
I have just experienced the worst example I can recall:
manually stopped 500 listings
[various modifications]
select Start…
verification showed some of the usual suspects failing with “Condition is required” error
selected and edited ALL of the failing listings, but also (because I noticed something else), closed the launch window
[sort selected listings in a new order]
select Start…
verification shows a DIFFERENT subset of the same listings failing, for the same reason. These are listings that passed, a minute or two before. Again, it is only “Condition is required” errors. They are also listed in categories which often produce this bug, but strangely none of them are in categories that the earlier errors were in.
It increasingly feels like the merge of downloaded data from eBay into the local GS store is producing the error, but I can’t work out more of the details from pure behavior The fact that I encounter this error most often on (1) early mornings, when GS has overnight updated things, and (2) near weekends when eBay has [often] updated their category tree, also seems symptomatic.
The fact that it is always “Condition”, and Condition always seems to appear last on the list of supported attributes, makes me want to look very closely at the iterator ranges used in the GS merge code, to see if maybe sometimes they are not reaching the final item
I just ended and started 24 listings and had no issues except the duplicates warning which I ignore because GS thinks the original was still running and that goes away after a few minutes. I am guessing the issue is category specific. I sell in antiques. If I do choose a condition other that Do Not Use I get a warning that says not supported and will be dropped.
Yes, @rlmartin the bug I’m describing is definitely in only a very few categories, and in my case I have very few items listed there. Also I am guessing it will act differently on different eBay servers, so US ≠ UK, etc.
I just noticed something that may be testable. I realize I leave GarageSale running constantly, and only rarely reboot the computer it’s on.
I did that yesterday because of a separate update. I had no issues today.
I wonder if anybody has this problem in the near future, could you just quit and restart GS and/or the computer to see if that fixes it? I will do the same, when it crops up again here.
Also… The Category version number was 130 before updating and also version number 130 after updating the Category data. Data version number is found by holding down the “option” key and clicking on the Category Sprocket popup menu. Not sure why I need to hold down the “option” key to see the version number…
The fact that I encounter this error most often on (1) early mornings, when GS has overnight updated things, and (2) near weekends when eBay has [often] updated their category tree, also seems symptomatic.
