eBay confirmed a bug related to its shipping calculator. Some sellers had been reporting that it was removing the less expensive Priority Mail option and leaving only the Express Mail option showing. Some said the problem had a negative impact on their sales due to buyers being turned off by the high postage cost displaying on their items.

On September 19, a thread entitled "eBay Shipping Calculators Not Working" was posted on the eBay Technical Issues discussion board complaining of problems with the calculator (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000562086).

Another post was added on October 2, "Attention eBay! you have a MAJOR Shipping Calculator Glitch," that includes screenshots of the problem (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000569868).

eBay spokesperson Nichola Sharpe told AuctionBytes on Thursday, "It turns out that when some changes were rolled out to the site recently, a bug was introduced in the View Item Page, potentially causing calculated shipping services to not be shown if the buyer's zip code was not known and the service was zip code dependent. In these cases the service should have been shown, and buyer should have been asked for their zip code in order to display the shipping costs for all services. This should have affected only a very small percentage of listings and users, because in most cases the buyer's zip code is known when they are on the site."

Sharpe said the issue was expected to be addressed Thursday evening and Friday, which should correct it. She said the shipping team has started a discussion thread on the shipping board for people with additional questions.

Addressing another complaint involving Selling Manager Pro sending out shipping notifications even when seller preferences specify not to send them, Sharpe said, "Our teams are already aware and working on rolling out a product fix to address this which we aim to have in place by the end of the week."

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