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Following up on my post from earlier this month regarding the July 15th USPS Rural ZIP Trap. I just had a 4 oz package going to a rural address in Massachusetts, the label cost me $7.69.
So heads-up, eBay’s Calculated Shipping tool is still messed up on the rural zip codes. When a rural buyer checks out, eBay continues to charge them based on the actual light ounce weight (like 4 oz). But when we print the label, the USPS back-end forces the maximum 15.99 oz rate, leaving us sellers to swallow a $ loss per package. eBay owes us a fix on this.
Check your shipping metrics closely because eBay is still quietly draining our profit margins on these lightweight orders.
To make matters worse, keep an eye on your heavier packages this week. On Saturday, July 25, USPS quietly rolled out another Ground Advantage rate hike, adding a $0.10 surcharge specifically to all 3-to-5-pound packages. Make sure to adjust your listings manually, because eBay’s calculator seems to be failing us right now.
Heads up! I just shipped a 4 oz item only 225 miles from Atlanta. Because the buyer is in a rural ZIP code, the eBay label cost $7.30. eBay barely charged the customer enough to cover it, so their system clearly hasn’t caught up with the new rural delivery surcharges. I use calculated shipping.
Since a large portion of eBay buyers live in rural areas, look out for your margins. I’ll definitely be lowering the custom discounts I offer to buyers after this.
The new USPS price increases are live. Although all the talk leading up to this rate hike seemed incredibly dire, the actual impact appears less costly for us strictly because of eBay’s discounted label agreement with USPS. However, while eBay insulates us from some pain, at least for the time-being, we aren’t escaping all of it.
Watch out for USPS Ground Advantage under 1 pound. USPS just unified ounce-based pricing for these light packages sent to rural Zip codes, matching recent hikes to non-contiguous and military destinations.
The hit is real. On June 15, I shipped a 4 oz package to APO 09114 for $5.72. Today, 30 days later, that exact same label costs $7.46—a massive 30.4% spike.
With non-contiguous, rural and military rates getting this aggressive, flat-rate shipping is risky. Double-check your listings or switch to calculated shipping to avoid these surprise costs.
I use Sixbit software to manage my listings and eBay was blocking activities on Sunday evening.
The service issues began on Sunday afternoon, April 26, 2026, starting around 3:30 p.m. ET. Over the rest of the day, the site became increasingly difficult to use as thousands of people reported problems. These glitches lasted all through Monday and didn’t fully clear up until late Tuesday night, April 28. During this three-day stretch, the main problems involved the search bar not working, pages loading very slowly, and buyers getting stuck at the checkout screen when they tried to pay.
As a buyer, I saw problems with my watchlist and with making offers.
Much of the trouble was caused by issues with the eBay API, which is the system that connects the site to external apps and tools. This meant that many sellers who use outside software to manage their listings or shipping were locked out, often seeing messages that looked like they were being blocked by the site.
By late Tuesday evening, most of the site was back to normal, though a few people saw minor bugs hanging around until Wednesday morning. To help sellers who were hurt by the downtime, the company is automatically removing any negative feedback or late shipping marks for orders that happened after 12:01 p.m. PT on Sunday. The marketplace has been stable since Wednesday, April 29, and things should be back to business as usual.
I feel your pain on those acceptance scans—it’s incredibly stressful when that initial tracking doesn’t update. We are lucky to have what we consider the world’s best post office here; they scan everything promptly for us if we just leave it on the counter, which usually keeps things moving smoothly.
Even with that, I recently had an item get completely lost deep in the system. My buyer reached out to me first, and since I had an identical replacement in stock, I shipped it out promptly. The buyer was so happy they left great feedback!
I filed the USPS insurance claim online right away, and it was approved in just 2 or 3 days. Now I’m just awaiting the check. It’s a great reminder that even when the system fails, a quick recovery can still result in a win.
@IndySales: The address that eBay gives your buyers depends on your settings. It might be more information than what is on your shipping labels. See my second post for details and details about how to get to the settings including a link you can click to get there.
THE POTENTIAL PRIVACY PROBLEM: the federal INFORM Consumers Act
eBay is required to share the name and full physical address of high-volume sellers—those exceeding $20,000 in annual revenue—directly with buyers. By default, eBay uses your primary registered address for these disclosures, which is the same address they have verified against your banking information for payouts and tax reporting.
If you have not opted out or requested a formal exception, your home residence could be sent to every customer in their order confirmation emails and displayed online in their order details. Because your home address is tied to your payout verification, simply having a separate business shipping address is not enough to protect your privacy.
To see the “worst-case” address that eBay currently has on file to send to buyers, go to ‘Account Settings’, click ‘Personal Information’, and look for the ‘Owner name, address’ details in the ‘Personal Info’ section.
SOLUTION: Double-lock your residential privacy with these two steps.
First, set a separate business address for product returns. Under the law, if you provide a specific physical address for returns, eBay is permitted to display that address instead of your registered home address. You can update this by going to ‘Account Settings’ and selecting ‘Addresses’ to ensure your return address is a business location or PO Box.
Second, you must proactively request a formal exception to hide your residential street address entirely. To do this, login to your eBay account and visit the eBay INFORM Consumers Act resource page and scroll well down the page to find and click the link to ‘request an exception’. By certifying that you operate from a primary residence, you trigger a provision that allows eBay to only disclose your state and country to the buyer, rather than your full street address.
Compliance is an ongoing responsibility. Federal law requires you to electronically re-certify that your information is still accurate at least once every 12 months. eBay will send a notification for this review, and you must respond within 10 days to avoid account holds or suspension of your selling activity.
@ChristineR: Thanks for posting. Some of us are still reading.
Great find on those Costco racks. Professional pickers know that the best deals don’t just land in your lap; you have to put in the time and sort through a lot of junk to find the real winners.
@ChristineR: Your store looks awesome. Thanks for sharing the link. There are no specific improvements to recommend. If you have changes in mind, you can try to schedule time periodically to keep it fresh. Perhaps a quarterly review after that since you have seasonal items.
As to my store: eBay is pushing visitors there so my intent is to make sure they have a better chance to find an item to purchase.
I followed your lead and knocked out some store category updates, switching the whole storefront over to my custom categories. I also took the time to refresh the billboard image, my About me statement, and the marketing banner along with all the category images. I decided to skip the video for now too. So, it is still a work in progress, but the plan is to jump back in and review everything periodically to keep it from getting stale.
Paraphrasing: eBay recommends regularly updating store content for relevance and search visibility, even if the core brand story remains consistent. This includes refreshing branding and descriptive elements such as seasonal store descriptions to reflect current inventory or promotions. Reviewing the About tab and the first 160 characters of the store description periodically ensures the use of current keywords, as this content is indexed by Google. Updating the billboard and logo is also suggested if they no longer align with the brand or current items being sold.
Hey forum! I decided to pause my store with Time Away for the weekend due to the messy weather here in the southeast—I’m worried about getting those Monday scans on time and don’t want to risk my shipping metrics.
I’m making the most of the downtime by creating new custom categories to give my store front a more curated feel. My stats showed 50 visitors on Friday, and I need to take advantage of this traffic and turn those views into sales. It’s definitely time to take things up a notch!
Has anyone else found that better category organization helped boost your sales?
This is near the end of the email message that I received from email from eBay:
“We believe in fairness and accuracy when it comes to feedback, and we understand how important that is to sellers. That’s why we automatically remove certain feedback for you within 72 hours. But we’re here for you—if you ever think something was missed, don’t hesitate to reach out.”
I discovered a new neutral feedback on my profile this morning from a buyer who never contacted me regarding any issues.
The feedback comment read: ‘Arrived early class on time as described’—which doesn’t make much sense.
Good news:
I used the reporting link I shared previously to flag the feedback to eBay, noting that it appeared to be an error and would be confusing to potential customers. eBay removed it within an hour and sent an email confirming that the comment ‘doesn’t follow our feedback policy.’@ChristineR: Thanks for the store info
To check your store traffic, go to ‘My eBay’, find ‘Store’ at the top, and select ‘Traffic’ from the dropdown.
A quick look at my traffic report showed some surprisingly good numbers—about 50+ views per week. It’s a bit of a bummer that the history only goes back 31 days; hopefully, eBay improves that and offers more history soon.
With those numbers in mind, it might be time to put some work into the storefront instead of just doing the bare minimum. Switching from standard eBay categories to custom store categories would make sense too. I wonder how many categories we can use that way?
Does anyone have a link or a name for a fantastic-looking store? Some high-quality examples would be great to review for inspiration.
Following up on my previous post about the link for removing feedback—has anyone here used it successfully yet?
I also found an eBay seller-help link where sellers can specifically ask for the removal of defects. It allows you to submit requests for things like transaction defects and/or late shipments.
Here is the link: https://www.ebay.com/sellerhelp/defect
Should be worth a try if you have any defects.
@ChristineR: I almost forgot how much grief my post office is saving me with their good service. Sorry not all post office locations are this good. We are way past due to drop off some treats or donuts.
It seems that eBay has cycles and we seem to be in a grumpy buyer cycle right now.
One other thing that I do promptly for each order is send a ‘ship notification email’ thru eBay that has the tracking number. My Sixbit software (highly recommended) makes this very easy. This cuts way down the number of buyer inquiries about shipping, etc. Yes, I know eBay sends buyers some emails about this activity too.
@Sharon: As far as the ‘self-service’ scan, I would definitely try that as well. It seems that I heard somewhere that the scan is not as good as an ‘acceptance’ scan and that not all seller platforms consider it to be such. So it depends if eBay likes it or not. In any case, it should help with the grumpy buyers.
