Whats changed with all these profiles?

[garethsnaim]

@Wood

Using eBay’s selling form is like trying to cut a tree down with a pocket knife. A chainsaw will be must faster but you have to learn how to properly use one first.

I get that, but if you only periodically want to cut some weeds down, you dont need a chainsaw. The reality for me is, as an occasional user, garagesale is no longer easier to use than ebay. I remember back when I got garagesale, v5 I think, ebay was a pain to use, the reverse is now true because I seem to need a degree in ebay understanding to make it work

Its been a good ride, but for my needs ebay is easier. Thanks for everyones help. I am not flouncing, just being realistic for a light user.

[kristian]

These “profiles” from eBay’s “Business Policies” can get very confusing, you are right. Maybe we need to better explain how to handle them in the GarageSale help.

Please note that you don’t have to use these profiles at all. You just have to make sure that “Don’t Use” is selected in the “Profile” menu in the shipping/payment/return options.

[garethsnaim]

Hi Kristin when I picked don’t use, garagesale refused to list. So I gave up!

[kristian]

If you can post a screenshot of the error you get and of your shipping settings, maybe we can figure out what’s causing the error.

Taking screenshots is done easily:
Press Command-Shift-4 on your keyboard simultaneously, then select an area with the cursor. It will be saved as an image file on your desktop.

[CAL]

You likely got the Business Options from using the “Sell Now” button on a listing in eBay that you want to copy and then making a new copy from that one on GS. To get past the Business Options roadblock, you need to change to Don’t Use on three settings in GS: Payments, Shipping and Returns. If one of them is still set, you will not be able to launch. If you change one, the other two will show red exclamation marks letting you know that you nee to change them too.

BTW: I Opted Out of eBay’s Business Policies because eBay creates a new one every time I make a listing with a different package size, weight or shipper choices. I have hundreds of them and I spend too much time to manage and use the hundreds that eBay has created for me.

[rlmartin]

@CAL

BTW: I Opted Out of eBay’s Business Policies because eBay creates a new one every time I make a listing with a different package size, weight or shipper choices. I have hundreds of them and I spend too much time to manage and use the hundreds that eBay has created for me.

To get rid of the hundreds that ebay made for you, you need to make your own and pick from them every time or else they will continue making new ones. I made 9 different shipping options to cover everything 2 years ago and after that they made no new ones. You then have to go to business practices and move or delete all the ones they created. It took me several hours to clean up but once done no new ones have been created by ebay. And it has worked great since.

[CAL]

Hi. I spent hours cleaning up my BOs only to realize that, because I have over a thousand mostly uniquely sized and weighted collectibles, glass, pottery and antiques with different shippers and levels of service including international options, eBay keeps creating new ones for me and it is not worth the effort to manage and use them. eBay made a lot of new ones when I removed SmartPost and when I added UPS and International Standard shipping or changed the default shipping choice from Parcel Post to Priority Mail or vice versa. I have literally hundreds and I have to hunt through them and then look at prospective ones to see what sizes and weights they cover as the display titles are useless. I am sure that it works fine for folks selling only a few sizes and weights, but not for me.

[rlmartin]

The weights don’t change the ebay profiles. My weight changes on every single listing. Every one of my items is a unique size and weight. I have 1,100 listings. I numbered profiles from 1-6 to track the ones I wanted. And in 2 years I added 3 more to get all I need. Yes, it is intimidating and takes time to set up and is a pain, you are right. But once set it works seamless because I pick from one of the 9 profiles I set up.

[CAL]

Hi. Thank you for your interest and responses. I suppose if I used only a few and manipulated them, it might work, but I change things a lot and it just keeps making new ones. Here is a small sample of the ones that eBay has made for me. I do not want to manage them. Too much hassle. I don’t see that it saves me any time. LOL.

[rlmartin]

Yes, that is exactly what mine looked like. Until ebay forces the change which I suspect the time will be coming to clean it up because the profiles must be a horrendous mess on the ebay system.

[Wood]

You would go with a gas powered or battery powered weed eater unless you run into a woody weed in which case the bypass pruners are the way go unless you want to sit there for quite awhile and let the trimmer line slowly eat through it or make the weed bounce back and forth Using a chainsaw on small weeds can be very ineffective as they may simply bounce off the chain and whip back and forth or worse yet get thrown back at you by the chain.

---

Really does not matter what size of seller you are. What you are after is taking the least amount of time, but that requires a little upfront learning about the tool in question.

Don’t use any profiles in GarageSale!

Create a master listing template.

Consider using a text snippet at the bottom or your listing for inserting your your terms of service. If you want to more easily edit your TOS snippet using WYSIWYG then create it using a blank template and copy its HTML to the TOS text snippet. If you don’t want to bother with using the Design Utility to insert such a snippet then perhaps ask someone at iwascoding to send you a blank template with a snippet reference inserted at the bottom - you simply need to add a snippet with the same name to GS.

Create a bunch of listing templates based on the master that centered around shipping scenarios.

If you sell in a category frequently create a template with the shipping, categories and attributes already set.

Duplicate one of your templates and insert title, description and pictures.

I use a Applescript to automatically insert commonly shared attributes in listings using the term “Does Not Apply”. I may have to manually add a couple others but I use another Applescript to copy “Does Not Apply” onto the computer’s clipboard so this can be immediately pasted into the additional attributes.

Desktop software has been the fastest method for more than 20 years. Back in day (2000) we had A.I.D. for Apple computers and TurboLister for Windows. Also much safer than eBay as everything is maintained on my hard drives and not temporary stored on eBay servers. Also much data to other marketplaces such as Facebook marketplace by creating Applescripts which copy the title and description to the computer’s clipboard with just a doubleclick.

I look at everything from the point of mass production regardless if I need to create 1 or 100 listings.

[Wood]

Don’t use shipping profiles!

eBay is like the government - they screw up everything they touch.

Create a series of template inside GarageSale based on shipping scenarios.

So if I am going to sell a fixed price antique via USPS Retail Ground & Priority Mail that weighs 5 pounds I’ll immediately go to that template, duplicate it, move it to another folder and start entering data.

The same applies to a more detailed template with the category and attributes already set.

Its basically muscle memory at this point. I only have to alter the weight if its above 10 pounds. I only have to enter a size if its more than a cubic foot (for dimensional weight) or exceeds one of USPS’s length surcharges.

[garethsnaim]

Well you guys are all hardcore, consider for a moment someone like me who opens garagesale once every 6 months. When I went through ebay I literally had none of this hassle, put in a title, put in a description selected the product set a price, hit list. Garagesale used to be like this!

[Wood]

I am curious as to why you would be entering sizes if you are using USPS?

Unless it more than cubic foot or exceeds one of the USPS’s length surcharges eBay will bill the customer as if its below a cubic foot and below any length surcharge.

I only enter sizes for less than 1% of items.

[Wood]

“Well you guys are all hardcore, consider for a moment someone like me who opens garagesale once every 6 months.”

I’ve stopped selling on eBay several times and came back months later.

“When I went through ebay I literally had none of this hassle, put in a title, put in a description selected the product set a price, hit list.”

Selected the product?

You mean you are trying to list from eBay’s catalog whereas you select a product already in the catalog.

Sorry, I don’t use eBay catalog because I don’t generally don’t sell mass market items.

When I do, I don’t use eBay’s catalog because it would take me far more time to go through dozens of item attributes and other eBay garbage to verify if my item exactly matches what is in the catalog. Also a very bad idea as this information not always correct. Remember, you are providing a guarantee to the buyer that the item you have EXACTLY matches the item form the catalog - one mistake and you can have a chargeback.

A lot of items that I am currently selling for a family member whose spouse died has UPC bar codes on each item. So far I’ve found two example where the manufacturer reused the same UPC for different versions of the same item. So if you were going to use eBay’s catalog for these you might end up sending the wrong item to the buyer because both versions use the same UPC but are different.

“Garagesale used to be like this!”

Still is here. Duplicate a existing template I have been using for years and enter the data. Schedule the listing with other listings to be listed at optimum time so I need not sit there and babysit the process like eBay’s listing form or sell similar.

Funny, I’ve yet to have anyone on YouTube touting eBay’s new listing form take me up on the request to post a video showing how its faster. The fact that you have to sit there and wait for eBay’s webpage based system for every listing as opposed to uploading items when you are not even home will tell you just how much time you are wasting using eBay’s listing form. Why do think eBay hired a 3rd party company to create their API circa the year 2000.

[garethsnaim]

Hey I appreciate your detailed retort. Here is mine. I could not start the listing in garagesale lol.

Well anyway this is a circular now, I will leave you all to it. Thanks for your help.

[rlmartin]

Size matters on international and the weight has different thresholds of 8 ounces, 24 ounces and so on. Weights of 4, 8, 12, 16 ounces matter for 1st class. If combining sales ebay needs accuracy to know when to go to priority at over 1 pound

[CAL]

I enter sizes because I may sell something that is over a cubic foot or that goes out via FedEx or UPS or internationally via First Class International or International Standard Shipping that all use dimensions. Also, I create some listings on other channels later and use the weight and size information for that as I do not keep it elsewhere. (BTW, the eBay calculator for ISS is all screwed up for anything over 166 CI. But that is another long rant. LOL.)

[Wood]

You cannot fix lazy.

[Wood]

@rlmartin

If combining sales ebay needs accuracy to know when to go to priority at over 1 pound

eBay cannot accurately calculate combined orders. Unless you are selling a bunch of widgets that all have the same exact size and weight every time then you cannot hope to create a set of shipping rules that allow eBay to accurately calculate combined shipping.

With just 100 different items there are 4,950 different combinations of two items. If we increase that to 3 items that can be combined at a time then there are 161,700 different combinations.

Each object has its own unique shipping requirement such as glass needing to be double boxed and the special requirements of consumer commodities. Certain combinations of items will not work such as trying to combine a book with a screwdriver and trying to send it Media Mail. Then we have to factor in USPS shipping guidelines such as maximum weights, length surcharges, dimensional weights, the different services, optional services such as cubic pricing from Pirateship.

Working out such a ever changing giant matrix of data would require considerably programming skills yet the above can be completed manually in your brain within a few seconds simply by looking at the items the buyer wants to combine.

@rlmartin

Weights of 4, 8, 12, 16 ounces matter for 1st class.

My question was in regards to entering sizes for domestic items shipped via USPS?

This is a total waste of time unless the item exceeds a cubic foot in volume or one of the length surcharges. Leaving these blank will result in eBay charging the customer the buyer a rate for a package that is below a cubic foot and below any length surcharges.

Actually First Class is limited to 15.999 ounces - 16 ounces would be Priority Mail.

If you have you eBay settings set to charge customer the retail rate while you pay the commercial rate then you do not want to go above 13 ounces since the retail rate is limited to 13 ounces. For items in the 13 to 15.999 range you want to use the maximum weight of 13 ounces. If you use 14 to 15.999 the rate will bumped up to 1 pound.

The difference between the retail and commercial rate pays for the FVF on shipping. You do not need to edit your listings when rates go up as that will automatically be taken of by eBay using calculated.

Anyway, this is all taken care of by creating a series of 1st Class templates for different weights within GS. Currently First Class packages have various price breaks at different weights but this could change in the future - they could decide to charge different rates for each additional ounce. So if you created a bunch of listing using the existing price breaks as opposed to the item’s actual shipping weight in ounces then you could find in the future that these listings are now be charged more shipping that they should be, thus making them less likely to sell. I use a series of templates from 4 to 13 ounces so should USPS alter its current price breaks in the future I will never have to edit any of these listings again.

@rlmartin

Size matters on international and the weight has different thresholds of 8 ounces, 24 ounces and so on.

Then create a series of templates within GS for different services and weights.

But are not the size rules similar to domestic packages in that if you leave them blank eBay will assume your package is not exceeding a given threshold and thus charge buyers accordingly?