eBay imposed a policy banning sellers from listing checks and money orders as payment methods in their item listings in October 2008. Due to the busy holiday shopping season, eBay gave sellers until January 15, 2009, to be in compliance. As the enforcement date approaches, we've heard from sellers who have questions about modifying their listings to be in compliance. Nathan Etter, Director of Product Management for eBay's Seller Platform, answered AuctionBytes' questions via email.

Can sellers bulk-edit listings to remove the reference to paper payments? (How difficult would this be, and which tool sellers should use?)

Yes, there are a number of ways sellers can revise their listing descriptions to remove references to paper payments. We actually held a workshop on this back in early October, which you can find here. The main mechanisms sellers can use are:

1) Turbo Lister: This tool provides a great way to edit listings in bulk. It also has the added convenience of having a search and replace function, which allows you to edit Descriptions in bulk as well - perfect for sellers who have consistent item description text that they used to describe their payment methods.

2) eBay Bulk Edit: Available for both My eBay and Selling Manager subscribers, you can edit listings in bulk using this tool, including the Description field. Even if you have very disparate listing Descriptions and need to edit each individually, this has the option to "Edit Listings Individually" - it creates a fast & convenient way to just scroll through each listing, making the individual changes, rather than doing each individually in the Sell Your Item form.

3) eBay Blackthorne: Like Turbo Lister, Blackthorne has great bulk editing features, including search and replace. It's a more advanced tool, though, so for sellers who don't already use Blackthorne but need search and replace, we recommend using Turbo Lister. But our existing Blackthorne users already have the functionality they need.

If sellers make that change to 30-day Fixed-Price GTC listings, do they have to actually end the listings first, since they are Good Til Cancelled?

If the item is either (1) a single quantity GTC item or (2) a multi-quantity GTC item that has not yet had a sale, the seller will not need to end the listing first. In these two cases, the description field is still editable, so they can just make the change directly on the active item. If the item is a multi-quantity GTC item that has had a sale, yes, they will need to end the item and alter the description as they relist the new item.

How would modifying those listings (whether or not they have to end and relist the items) affect the Recent Sales algorithm for those listings? Some sellers are concerned they'd have to start from scratch in search standing if they changed their listings to comply with the policy.

In all three cases I described above, the seller's item would retain its full Recent Sales history. In the situation where the item doesn't need to be ended & relisted, simply editing the Description field does not reset the Recent Sales history. For items that do need to be ended & relisted, the new listing will carry over the Recent Sales history from the original item. (Note that this presumes that the seller does not change Title, Category, Condition, or increase Price when editing or relisting the item - if they do any of those 4 things, then the Recent Sales history will be reset - these are the standard rules.)

Note that some sellers also include check/money order payment instructions in the "Additional Checkout Instructions" field. Similar to Description, if sellers update this field, their Recent Sales history is not affected.

If they do have to end the GTC Fixed-Price listings and relist them, will eBay waive the new listing fees they would incur?

In fact, we already provided this credit to sellers back in October, when we began enforcement of the new policy. In Dinesh Lathi's AB Post on October 21st, we stated:

"We will credit insertion and feature fees for all multiple-item Good 'Til Canceled listings that meet the following criteria as of October 20, 2008:

• Listed on eBay.com in categories covered by the Paperless Payments policy
• Have at least one sold item
• Offer check or money order as a payment option."

This credit was given proactively to sellers, because we did realize that they would incur additional fees from having to end & relist items that were created before the policy was in effect. (For those multi-quantity GTC items created during the "grace period" (after the policy went into effect) we will not be issuing credits - sellers should have been modifying items to comply with the policy before listing them.)

What will be the T&S (Trust and Safety) action taken on listings deemed to be in violation of the policy, and will eBay differentiate between those items listed prior to the October policy going into affect, and those afterwards?

Listings that are in violation of our Payments Policy will be subject to cancellation, similar to any other Listing Policy violation. We will not be differentiating between listings created before the policy took effect and those created afterward.

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