Sellers Report Issues with Brand New eBay Shipping Option

Some sellers are reporting issues with eBay’s new shipping option for low-priced trading cards. eBay Standard Envelope provides sellers with a way to get tracking information at a far more affordable rate than previously possible.

Sellers of trading cards have been discussing their experiences with eBay Standard Envelope on this thread since late January. It appears from the comments that some postal workers are unfamiliar with it, and it is also unclear if sellers are getting the kind of tracking information they were expecting – which was a major appeal of the new shipping option.

One seller explained in a post on the eBay discussion boards they were experiencing problems creating multiple labels in eBay Bulk Shipping.

“For the most part, it has worked well. However, I’ve been having trouble with generating labels. For instance, let’s say I have 15 orders to ship with standard envelopes. If I were to create the labels in eBay’s bulk shipping, only like 5 labels would be created, and the other 10 orders would get the error “label could not be generated, you were not charged.” I would then have to go back and to purchase labels for the remaining 10 orders, of which only 4 would work and the remaining 6 would get the label generation error again. I would need to rinse and repeat printing the remaining labels until all I’m able to purchase labels for all the orders. For 15 orders, instead of getting all the labels done in 1 try, it would take me like 5 or 6 cycles of label printing. Does anyone else have this issue? Any way to fix this?”

Another seller told EcommerceBytes they were overcharged for shipping labels related to a technical issue from a few days ago.

“You should warn people about the postage issue the other day on eBay. Not sure if it applies to more than Standard Envelope with the issue, but during downtime I tried to run a label many times unsuccessfully. Today I was hit with a major list of these labels in my managed payments billing, all separate transactions not associated with the original sale. I am being charged many times over for certain labels however. eBay is such a damn embarrassment.”

Another seller reported a similar issue on this eBay discussion board thread.

Sellers were excited about the price-plus-benefits of the new Standard Envelope. Feel free to share your experiences in the comments below.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.