Important eBay Updates for November 2019! You need to know this!

all right so today we're going to talk about eBay's new update to their item location policy and what it means for us as dropshippers how we can temporarily fix it for now and some long term solutions as well I'm sure at some point in this video I'm going to go off on a long rant about this because I have very strong feelings about this so what is this new policy that has just been

enacted well eBay has said for a long time that they have this item location policy where items must accurately state listings must accurately state where the item is being shipped from now in the past this hasn't been an issue because we could just either put a specific zip code if we knew the item would always be shipped from that zip code or we could put something like multiple locations because a lot of times we have items that were drop shipping from a supplier and the supplier will just ship out the item from the warehouse that is closest to the buyer we see that even with bigger stores on eBay maybe like stores that sell on there like overstock for instance when you buy an item from overstock on eBay or when you used to do that they wouldn't ship out from one location they would ship out from the location that was closest to you so they couldn't put a specific zip code they had to put something like ships from multiple locations somewhere in the United States no it depends on where you live as the buyer and that's good practice right but eBay has just made a change in November 2000 19 that says that we must provide a zip code for every single one of our listings and if we don't do that well then the listing could be ended or it could be demoted in the search results or you know different things could happen to our listings or to our accounts so we do now want to make sure that we're actually uploading ZIP codes for our listings so if you come into your listings now and if you didn't give a specific zip code in the past this is what it's going to look like you can revise a listing and then when you scroll down to the item location section you see here for this one I had only entered in the city San Jose United States but it's asking for a specific zip code here so you can click change and then add the zip code and then you could just scroll down to the bottom and update the listing and that will make sure that it complies now the question is of course what zip code do you use well if you're using a supplier that always ships from the same address then you should use that zip code that makes sense but us as dropshippers a lot of the suppliers we use it doesn't work that way so for now I'm just entering in any zip code and the reason for that is because I did speak to some representatives over at eBay and even though they don't always have the best information these were representatives who work in eBay's concierge program so they tend to be a little bit more informed than other representatives and they said that's starting soon again they can't tell me when but starting soon you will be required to have a zip code and if it doesn't that item could be deleted or not show up in search results at all so at the very least I want a zip code in there now what I'm doing is for most of my listings I'm adding a zip code and for at least some of them I'm going to leave at multiple locations just to kind of see what happens and I'll of course update you guys on what happens to those listings

but I want to show you another place that you can go to change these so when you come into your active listings you will see a pop up here at the top that tells you that you have to change the zip code if you have something like multiple locations this account is just a teaching account only as four items so we've already updated them so it's not going to show up here or what you can do is on the Left where it says item location zip code you can open up that one and just enter in one zip code here and that will apply to all your listings so if you're only using one supplier and all the items are shipping from one zip code then this is the best place to update it again just come to all your active listings and on the left click on item location zip code and just change it here but if each of your items has a different chip from address because you use different suppliers then come into your active listings and you can either manually change them one by clicking on edit just like I showed you before or you can bulk change them by clicking this drop-down clicking edit all four listings or all 50 listings and then you'll want to one by one come in here and change the location here and then submit the changes down at the bottom

now this policy obviously stinks for many reasons we do have some good news but real fast I just want to explain why this is so frustrating for two primary reasons one I looted two before right this is just not practical in this day and age we want our items to get out to our customers as fast as possible so it makes sense for these big companies to have multiple warehouses throughout the United States and for them to ship the items from those warehouses which ever ones are closest to the buyer that's just good selling practice and that's what makes Amazon so good that's why they can get you your items in one day two days at max for many people and that's what allows Walmart to do two-day shipping and this is eBay actually lagging behind in the competition because they can't offer that it's very hard for them to offer fast shipping when these items are just shipping out from somebody's home and they don't have multiple warehouses so not great practice in my opinion at all and it's really frustrating and the second thing really frustrating about this is why in why on this earth is eBay doing this during q4 they promised us after the last update which was the item specific update they recognize how meant how many problems that caused and they promised us that they wouldn't make any more change during q4 and they apologized for making it so late in the year so why would they make another change during q4 why are they doing this to us again look if they wanted to roll up this policy fine it doesn't make any sense but why do they always roll out policies like this during quarter form why can't they wait until January it makes zero sense at all it's just hurting us sellers doesn't make any sense now the good news here is that this item locations zip code policy as of now doesn't apply if you were shipping items from China and have to give a big shout out to the guys over at Autodesk for discovering this they actually just released a video earlier today so I will link up that video underneath this one you guys should definitely go watch that one next because he shows an example about how he listed an item from a u. s. supplier and one from a Chinese supplier or supplier that lives that's located in China and the zip code was not required for the item shipping from China so very cool video is definitely something I'm keeping my eye on very interested in that I've worked with shipping items from China in the past using a website called banggood and had a lot of success with it so very interested kind of to see how this plays out what the next few months will be like I'll definitely keep you guys updated on that like I said I will be running some experiments on my own using item shipping from the United States ones that say multiple locations ones that say specific zip codes that are incorrect and using Chinese suppliers as well so I'll definitely keep you guys updated on this channel as normal as things develop so if you don't want to miss out on anything like that make sure to subscribe to the channel down below and then go check out leoz video over at Auto DES because it's pretty cool what you'll see there and I think ultimately this is just another policy change eBay's making eBay's made plenty of them in the past but we dropshippers keep finding ways to make things work we're just working with these changes that they want and as long as we're willing to adapt and change eBay dropshipping one way or another is gonna continue to go and to thrive so if you guys got some value out this video if you watch this and help solve this problem for you at least temporarily I would appreciate if you smash the like button down below because that will get this video out in front of more people to bring more awareness about it so more people can fix this problem before eBay potentially starts to take action on it and again subscribe to the channel for any updates and check out leoz video right now