We’ve heard from several sellers over the past week who have been having trouble with eBay’s File Exchange function and we’d like to hear from you too to understand whether this is a wide-ranging problem.
The File Exchange is a facility eBay offers via its API that enable sellers to make bulk amendments to listings and also list items for sale and manage their inventory in general. If you want to know more about the File Exchange then check out this page.
Over the past week or so we’ve received several reports that suggest that updates are taking time to get through and even claims that it’s just simply not working at all.
Do you use it? Are you having problems?
One correspondent this weekend highlighted the impact that any File Exchange problems could have. And that was regarding making sure that all the new Product Identifiers info that are required of sellers by the end of the month. The seller in question is trying to update that required information via the File Exchange and not having any joy. Faiure to comply will likely dent their listing performance in a week or so.
7 Responses
File Exchange has been working just fine for me over the weekend. It’s great to have it there as an emergency solution when other stuff goes wrong.
Of course, the lack of tools for the Product Identifiers releases has been a massive pain for everyone — meaning that File Exchange etc have been pressed into service for purposes which they were not initially conceived as sellers scrabble around to find some way to get compliant.
That and all the slight and unannounced changes to the rules for Product Identifiers (did anyone else spot what broke last week?) mean that this really has been a case of sellers having to pick up the pieces for eBay’s spat with the big G.
I’ve been using it for EAN over the last week and it’s working fine so far.
I’ve found some third party solutions unprepared. The information is in the solution but not in the right place and causing errors so file exchange is the only way to go and is not ideal.
EAN info I have is matched to SKU, File Exchange template gives item number, no description just size and colour so it’s a pain. Luckily on this account there aren’t too many to put in as they’ve been going in manually over the last couple of months since the announcement.
I feel for those businesses who have large amounts of EAN to put in, especially those who aren’t prepared. It’s going to be a shock for some when their listings don’t relist on Monday morning.
nope, its largely dead.
created a download request on thursday, still not ready to download monday.
(usually SAYS up to 24hrs, takes about 5 mins, half an hour at busy times)
I usually only upload and it has been AOK. But one download I have done has failed.
yes we had an issue where we listed an item and due to their technical problem they listed it twice and later blamed us for listing duplicate items
Not working for us
We use file exchange to download orders and send addresses up to Royal Mails DMO portal. Requested a download at 1:30pm Tuesday and still waiting Wednesday morning.
The system may be getting overloaded with folks trying to sort out the product Identifier situation.
This is really hurting us. When download does not come through quickly we are left waiting and in the end can wait no more. Having to enter addresses manually on the DMO system manually against the clock (Royal Mail collection at 4:30pm) is not funny.
We are now unable to request a new download until yesterdays one clears.
Take several days to download recently.