Item Condition

Hi christhebookend,

Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention. I reviewed a couple of your recent posting attempts that failed due to the errors described as “Condition is required for this category” and was able to find that eBay's system attempted to route the items to different eBay categories based on the ISBN information you provided.

Since you had selected a category that does not support the “Item Condition” field and eBay's system attempted to redirect the listings to a different category that requires the item condition be specified, the listings ended up getting rejected because the item condition was not included.

Unfortunately, the additional error details I was able to get from eBay do not specify which category that attempts to redirect these listings to, but it is apparent that eBay's system felt that they would fit better in another category.

If you would prefer not to select a new category, I believe that you would be able to post these books in the category you have already selected by removing the contents of the “ISBN” field on the lister page. However, in order to list them with the ISBN information intact, it appears you would have to try posting them to a different eBay category.

I realize this is not apparent based on the error details that are displayed in your account and I will look into the possibility of updating our system to include the full details of this particular error.

That being said, I am not aware of any issue that would cause an error of this nature to be returned if you select “new” instead of “used” so, if you have encountered anything like that, we would need to look into that particular behavior further.

I hope this helps. If you need any further assistance with this, please feel free to contact our customer support team by mousing over the “Help” tab and selecting the “File Support Case” option.

-Mike

Thanks for your speedy and comprehensive reply Mike; I will try removing the ISBN field as an experiment the next time I list a graphic novel (these seem to be the ones that most commonly get bounced; maybe this is the category?).

However, removing the ISBN field cannot be great for web exposure of the item (I believe that search engines use the ISBN information for displaying your item within their search results?), so it could possibly be detrimental to sales.

The bug does seem to be fixed in all instances by changing the item condition to "new" (either "new" or "used" in this category, graphic novels, on Auctiva); when I have edited these listings through Ebay however, the item condition is a multiple choice of new, very good, goo or acceptable.

Is it possible that there is some sort of conflict as the item condition options between the two listing programs differ??

Regards, Chris.

I am not an expert on books....(or on anything for that matter). However, I do know that more and more people (myself included) use their phone scanner to scan items for prices. In my case if the UPC is not in there, it does NOT show up in scan so though mine may be the lowest price it does not show up. I do see people scan books and questioned someone about a year ago about that an she said they check values on them so they know which to buy to resell. I specifically asked if they scanned ISBN or UPC and they said ISBN. (shorter no) not UPC. Not sure why and did not know enough about it to ask then.

Sooooo my thought as both buyer and seller is if ebay has a space for it, the that # should be included to be shown in most searches. Again, I am very far from an expert...just know..I scan items more and more.

Hi christhebookend,

Thanks for the clarification. I am not privy to everything that eBay uses UPC codes for, but I am also under the impression that can help your items get returned in more search results and that it is generally best to include that information whenever possible.

Our system should offer the same Item Condition options that are available on eBay for each category so I suspect the listings you mentioned that showed different Item Condition options when they reached eBay were redirected to a different category than you selected on the Auctiva lister page.

If you find that our system is not displaying the same condition options as eBay for any given category, please file a support case including the category in question and any other relevant details, and we will be happy to look into that further.

-Mike