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Posted by Laurel Kline in Business News
Thursday, Oct.09.2008, 4:39 PM PT
As Kristina Klausen reminded us, Media categories now have limits on the maximum shipping cost. Enforcement was turned on this morning.
For more information on the developer impact, see Developer Impact: Shipping Charge Limits in Media.
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Posted by Laurel Kline in Product News
Tuesday, Oct.07.2008, 6:27 PM PT
Per our announcement in August, all items listed on the eBay site must be paid for with an approved electronic payment method, which includes credit card acceptance through merchant accounts.
We know it's important for sellers to be able to offer their own merchant credit cards to buyers. In the past, you had to complete your merchant credit card transaction off of eBay. That's awkward for sellers, and can be unsafe for buyers.
Fortunately we're adding support for merchant credit cards to eBay Checkout, so you can integrate your Internet merchant account directly into the eBay Checkout flow. Buyers will be able to enter their merchant credit card information on the eBay Checkout page, and the processing and confirmation happens immediately.
To take advantage of integrating your Internet merchant account into eBay Checkout, you'll need to sign up for the Payflow online payment gateway. Normally online payment gateways charge a fee for processing your transactions, but we'll be waiving your fee for this service.
Sign-up opens in January 2009. You'll need to provide information from your Internet merchant account, so we know who should be handling your payments during checkout. You must complete sign up by end of March 2009.
This new feature does not affect users of 3rd party checkout or the PayPal Payflow Pro product. You can continue using your existing payment processing solution.
However, even users of 3rd party checkout must register with Payflow by the March 2009 deadline to verify their Internet merchant account. You don't have to use Payflow as your gateway, you just need to let us know that you're using someone.
Developer Impact:
A new payment type will be added to AddItem.
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Posted by Laurel Kline in Product News
Tuesday, Oct.07.2008, 2:38 PM PT
There's been some confusion about whether or not seller email addresses must be removed from listings before the holiday season. Let me be clear. Sellers do NOT need to remove email addresses from their listings.
We were looking at making it mandatory to remove seller email addresses as a way of keeping buyers safe from fraud. But we think we may have found a better way. As mentioned in "Anonymization of Email Addresses in Member to Member Communication," we're making all email addresses anonymous on the site and in the API, except between transaction partners. And as part of that, we were able to throw in some extra functionality too. We made it possible to send and receive messages using your existing email client.
If this is enough to keep everyone safe, we may never need sellers to remove their email addresses from their listings. We'll take another look at this in Q1 2009, and see how well it's working. If it turns out that it's necessary to remove seller email addresses to protect buyers, we'll be sure to give you enough warning that you have time to remove email addresses from your listings.
Note that some seller checklists were still showing "remove email address" as one of the checklist items. Those checklists have been updated.
I hope this clears up any confusion!
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Posted by Laurel Kline in Product News
Tuesday, Oct.07.2008, 2:11 PM PT
Nate Etter announced today that we would be extending the deadline for Required Return Policy and Handling Time in listings.
The new enforcement date for mandatory Return Policy and Handling Time will be in early 2009. To give sellers adequate time to get their listings ready, we’ll be giving sellers at least 30 days notice before we start enforcement.
Developers should still prepare to support sellers in adopting Return Policy and Handling Time
before the early 2009 enforcement date. No changes are required for Handling Time, but for Return Policy, you'll need to start using the new Return Policy node. See the API docs on "Offering a Clear Return Policy."
Recent posts on Return Policy and Handling Time
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Posted by Laurel Kline in Product News
Tuesday, Oct.07.2008, 2:06 PM PT
For those of you who are still specifying Return Policy using the old attribute style, you will need to specify "Returns Not Accepted" in this way. For attributeID="3803", use a Value ID of -10 to indicate that returns are not accepted. This code is currently supported in production.
Here's how the AttributeSetArray node might look in your AddItem call.
<AttributeSetArray>
<AttributeSet attributeSetID="2135" attributeSetVersion="81721">
<Attribute attributeID="3803">
<Value>
<ValueID>-10</ValueID>
<ValueLiteral>ReturnsNotAccepted</ValueLiteral>
</Value>
</Attribute>
</AttributeSet>
</AttributeSetArray>
As a reminder, the old attribute way of specifying Return Policy will still be supported until Feb 2009. Or you can start moving to the new way of specifying Return Policy now. See the API docs on "Offering a Clear Return Policy."
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Posted by Delyn Simons in Business News
Tuesday, Oct.07.2008, 12:48 PM PT
In addition to announcing the acquisition of U.S.-based online payments business Bill Me Later and of Denmark’s leading online classifieds site dba.dk and vehicles site bilbasen.dk, eBay today also announced plans to reduce its global workforce by approximately 10 percent, affecting about 1,000 employees in addition to several hundred temporary workers and the reduction of open positions.
Developers building applications using eBay Web Services can find additional information about these major eBay announcements here.
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Posted by John Darrow in Documentation
Tuesday, Oct.07.2008, 9:45 AM PT
The 585 version of the API documentation is now available. Please note that updates to applications using new schema versions should always be done in a test environment.
Release Highlights
New Features
- New Payment Methods Can Be Returned
Change Requests
eBay Shopping API Documentation
Please refer to table at the top of the Release Notes for when each version of the API will be available.
Keep up to date with the latest API documentation at the eBay Developer Documentation Center.
John Darrow
API Tech Docs and Tools
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Posted by John Darrow in Documentation
Tuesday, Oct.07.2008, 9:44 AM PT
The 585 version of the API documentation is now available. Please note that updates to applications using new schema versions should always be done in a test environment.
Release Highlights
New Features
- Maximum Shipping Costs Now in Effect
- New Payment Methods Available, Including ProPay
- Retrieve Payment Methods by Site or Category
- AddItems and EndItems: New Batch Calls
Documentation Changes and Errata
- CompleteSale: ShippedTime
Change Requests
eBay Trading API Documentation
Please refer to table at the top of the Release Notes for when each version of the API will be available.
Keep up to date with the latest API documentation at the eBay Developer Documentation Center.
John Darrow
API Tech Docs and Tools
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Posted by Laurel Kline in Product News & International
Thursday, Oct.09.2008, 4:50 PM PT
Lorrie Norrington announced in July that we would be rolling out a new process this month to resolve issues with buyers, even after a buyer has left negative feedback. Everybody makes mistakes—buyers and sellers alike—and buyers should have a mechanism to change feedback if they make a mistake or if the seller rectifies an issue in a timely manner.
Unlike with our previous Mutual Feedback Withdrawal system, our new process will enable buyers to change their feedback of the seller, not just withdraw the rating. DSR ratings can also be revised.
AU has announced that they will be releasing this feature Oct 13. US will be releasing this feature the week of Oct 20.
Note that you cannot request feedback revision through the API. You must request it from the eBay site.
Update (9 Oct, 2008): For more details, see this announcement:
A Message from Brian Burke: Feedback Revision Launches Soon
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Posted by Laurel Kline in Categories and Item Specifics & Product News
Monday, Oct.06.2008, 5:16 PM PT
Over the next few months eBay will be increasing search exposure of item specifics. In more and more places, buyers will be able to click on item specifics in the left hand navigation area to narrow their results to items with that specific feature or attribute. In addition, eBay will be expanding the list of eligible values for left navigation to include popular Custom Item Specifics. This will be the first buy-side exposure of Custom Item Specifics (previously limited to Title and Description Search). Additionally we are increasing the exposure of Catalog Product information in the buying experience through the Matching Product Module in search results.
Why is this important to you? Sellers who aren't able to adopt Custom Item Specifics or Catalog Products will be at a competitive disadvantage in Search. Developers who support Custom Item Specifics and Catalog Products in their selling tools will have an important competitive differentiator—better sell-through performance for items listed using their tools.
Third party developers can use the existing eBay Web Services to incorporate Custom Item Specifics and Catalog Products into their selling tools. If your sellers have not yet started using Custom Item Specifics and Catalog Products, encourage them to do so for exposure they'll get in navigation and search.
For more information on how to incorporate Custom Item Specifies and Catalog Products into your selling tool please see the relevant documentation: http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/XML/docs/WebHelp/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm?context=eBay_XML_API&topic=ItemSpecifics
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