eBay.com roll out new Item Condition specifics

It looks like eBay are done consulting on their new ways to list item condition and are about to start the roll-out.

The eBay Developers’ Blog is often a good way to find out what’s coming next to eBay sites, even before announcements are made for buyers and sellers. Third party developers of applications which interact with the eBay site need time to update their software when changes take place, and eBay are pretty good at giving them advanced warning. This week, they’ve posted a roadmap for the roll-out of a new set of more detailed “condition” item specifics.

These will move away from the current simple “new” and “used” options, with some categories having their own special set of options Will this be the last of “new” in Antiques? I hope not 😈

The default set of options, say eBay, will be:

• New
• New other (see details)
• Manufacturer refurbished
• Seller refurbished
• Used
• For parts or not working

Though I’m certain we haven’t finished discussing this as sellers, because we all have slightly different wants depending on what we sell and how optimistic our buyers are, this seems like a pretty reasonable compromise from the huge range of suggestions made by sellers. I particularly like “New other (see details)” – I think “Used” could use a “see details” too, because of all the options, it’s the one that covers the widest range of conditions, from “used but like new” to “frankly fit for the bin but let’s see if I can get 99p for it first”. CSA will have “new with tags” as one option, but there are currently no futher details on the specifics of non-standard categories.

The roll-out begins at the end of April, with a single .com category, Video Games (again, reasonable choice). In early May, all .com categories will get the new options.

It looks as though right now this change only relates to eBay.com, but as UK were testing too, it may be that all sites get the change at the same time. More news if/when we get it.