Sellers who use tools to help them research historical eBay sales and pricing data may be out of luck. eBay abruptly dropped the findCompletedItems API, meaning third-party developers who provide tools to eBay buyers and sellers are left without the ability to return data about completed items.

The news hit eBay affiliates hard, especially due to the short notice eBay provided - just 9 days.

Affiliates said they received the following letter from eBay on October 6th informing them it was restricting access to the API call the following week:

eBay is intermittently changing First Class shipping labels to more expensive methods, according to sellers who began reporting the problem 5 weeks ago.

A seller emailed EcommerceBytes today, October 20, writing, "My last 2 sales have both defaulted to crazy shipping. One changed my Priority Mail selection to Fedex Overnite, the other from 1st Class Mail to Priority Mail."

That appears to be the same problem a seller told us about in a letter we published on September 7. "I have a bunch of free-shipping items with 1st Class Package as the shipping method. When I go to ... Read More

Sellers noticed this week that eBay made changes to search on eBay Stores, but they don't agree whether the changes are an improvement or if they make things worse.

"I was on my store this morning to find eBay is adding regular search options to store navigation," one seller wrote, "don't see why it's needed, isn't this why we make store categories?"

But another seller said a search box is needed because some sellers have 100-1000 items in a particular category in their eBay Store.

One expressed surprise eBay was making changes to Stores "after all these years."

Take a look at eBay Stores and at the ... Read More

Etsy sellers have been complaining loudly that the marketplace has been holding on to their money. Five days into the problem on October 9th, an Etsy moderator acknowledged the problem.

A reader told us today the problem dated back to October 5th but pointed to a thread that showed some sellers still hadn't received their disbursement as of today, the 15th. The problem was mostly impacting Canadian and UK sellers.

"No real answers from Etsy, of course," the reader said. "Some people's deposits have shown up with sender listed as Clyde Debussyl, which was explained by Etsy as part of Etsy's ... Read More

eBay may be setting up sellers for failure by pushing buyers into making inaccurate claims during the returns process that harm seller performance metrics.

A frequent poster to the eBay seller discussion boards said the marketplace only displayed two reasons when his buyer went to make a return:

Those are both options that result in claims against the seller (Item Not Received and Not as Described), but he had a customer who was initiating a return because they had changed their mind about the purchase (buyer's remorse).

"How is this set up fair ... Read More