Hi - I opened a case with support about this several days ago and they are still working on it. I sell mostly media items - about 95% of my listings -- and I have used Auctiva very successfully and happily for about 10 years - until now. I have not been able to work with my saved listings, nor create new ones, for over a week at this point. My business is at a standstill while I wait for Auctiva's fix on this. I would like to hear from others who sell in these affected categories.
We all knew Ebay was changing several category numbers this month and I wrote to Auctiva support about 6 weeks ago concerning this upcoming change and how it would affect our new listing as well as editing ability of saved listings here. All they told me at the time was that they would be fully integrated with eBay when it rolled-out the changes but at the time, could tell me nothing.
Unfortunately they are not integrated at all now. The Auctiva software engineers did not seem to anticipate this well at all (exactly what I was hoping to avoid by calling it to their attention several weeks ago.) The program should recognize the old category number in saved listings and be programmed to change the number, not to treat it as if it is a brand new category. That is causing a host of problems.
Anyone selling in any category that has received a new number by eBay has to deal with this. It especially affects your saved work. Saved listings are completely useless now unless you are choose the category all over again because Auctiva "thinks" its new (but only its number is different). When you choose the "new" category, it wipes out all your item specifics that you had in place, because you then have to resubmit the ISBN or UPC to find the product. So you cannot re-submit your saved listings if you want to, without going to a lot of time-consuming work.
To complicate matters, you cannot create new listings either, because - just as the OP said - an error message is returned saying the category chosen isn't supported in the eBay catalog. The error message is incorrect. Non-fiction books are in the eBay catalog, as are children's books, and literature, etc.
Of course, we are soon to be required to list with product identifiers, such as ISBNs. This further complicates the known issue by creating a huge time crunch on the fix. The irony is that most media sellers have been using product identifiers for a long time by choosing them through the Auctiva system that used to work perfectly for this very thing until now.
The "work around" I was given was to go ahead and create a listing without choosing a product, since we are getting a bogus error message, then go directly to eBay and revise the listing by adding the specific product there. Seriously? That is not a work-around. It is triple the work for each listing. This is not a viable plan for any seller with hundreds of items.
I would be interested in hearing from others experiencing the same problems with creating or working with saved listings whose category numbers have just changed. Have you found any solution? Are you considering dropping Auctiva and finding other listing solutions?
Thanks for listening and sharing your thoughts.
