eBay: managing eBay business policies

Set up eBay's business policies

To start selling on eBay you first have to set up several 'policies' at eBay, which are also necessary for ChannelEngine to list your products. The policies that have to be set up are Payment, Return, and Fulfillment/Shipping/Postage.

Business policies are important because they let buyers know how they can pay you, how long it will take you to ship an item, the delivery services you offer (including shipping and packaging costs), whether you accept returns, and who pays the costs for these.

Go to My account > Business policies in the eBay web interface to set this up.

• Payment: (mandatory) create a Payment policy. Its name is required to properly configure ChannelEngine, so make sure to write it down (or copy-paste it). It is recommended to choose an easy and specific name for ChannelEngine (e.g.: CE payment), preferably without special characters such as : ; and #. When allowing PayPal as a payment method, it is strongly recommended to enable Require immediate payment when buyer uses 'Buy it now' to prevent orders from remaining on a Waiting status for a long period.
• Return: (mandatory) Create a Return policy. The same naming advice is applicable to this policy as for the payment policy. E.g.: if you are selling in a different eBay country to where your own warehouse is located, International returns accepted has to be enabled, otherwise eBay returns errors.

  

• Shipping: (mandatory) Create a Shipping policy. The same naming advice is applicable to this policy as for the payment policy. Important: The shipping policy is where you set up the countries you want to ship to and as such in what countries the offer(s) are visible. Make sure you only enable countries you can and want to ship to.

Finally, you have to enter the previously created policies on the ChannelEngine setup page.

• The Payment policy name and Return policy name are the first settings available in the Setup section of an eBay plugin.

  

• The Shipping policy name is located in the Content mappings > All products section.

  

Also note:

• If you don't see the option for the business policies in the left side menu (in the 'Account' tab), it might be because they have to be enabled first. You can do this here. Replace .nl with another country code if it' not a Dutch account you wish to set up.
• In some cases (for example on ebay.co.uk) it might be that the business policies are hidden on the 'Seller Hub' page. You can always manage the policies here (replace co.uk with your desired country code).

Updating eBay's business policies

You can edit, copy, reassign, or delete your policies whenever you choose. However, be aware that eBay has some restrictions depending on what you want to change and when. E.g.: you can't change a fixed price listing into an auction listing.

• If you update a policy, any listings using that policy will automatically be updated with your changes.
• If you want to delete a policy that is currently being used in any active or scheduled listings, you need to reassign new policies to these listings first.
• If you use a particular business policy more than others, there is an option to set it as your default by selecting Set as default from the dropdown menu on eBay. The default policy is automatically preselected when you create a new listing, but you can always select a different policy before completing your listing.