API Changes

Some upcoming changes at Auction Request that may impact you:

eBay will be discontinuing their old API on Dec 31st, which Auction Request has been utilizing. We've finished converting our code to the new API, which has necessitated some workarounds for features that are no longer available. While we were able to overcome most of the incompatibilities, a few remain:

• If you have a feed that searches a seller name only (with no keywords or categories), you will need to add a category to this search. While you can use the AR feed generator for this, you can also add "&categoryId1=" and a category number to your existing feed URLs. This is annoying, but thankfully most sellers' items will be covered within a single "root" category. If needed, you can add up to three separate categories to cover a wide spectrum of items.
• the filter for TopRatedSellersOnly has been removed. If present in your feed, it will now do nothing.
• the filter for "Buy It Now" auctions has been removed. There are now only three choices here: Auction, Fixed Price, or Everything. If present in your feed, it will now revert to Fixed Price.
• the filter for items that accept PayPal has been removed (as PayPal is no longer part of eBay, and they're trying to get rid of the payment option entirely). It has been replaced by the "Credit Card" payment filter, which we do NOT recommend you use as very few items on eBay are payable with credit card.
• the sorting option of "Most Watched" is still present, but it may not work correctly. In test searches we've run, no data has been returned that show a Watch count. This could be because the feature is broken, or that nobody actually uses the Watch function on eBay anymore.

So that's all the bad news. Some good news:

• Feeds will now return up to 400 items (increased from 100)
• Priority Listings (those items eligible for 50% higher commissions payable to you) will be displayed at the top of your results regardless of your sort choice. Within this group of Priority Listings, they will be sorted only if you selected as your sort option Highest Prices First, Lowest Prices First, or Most Watched (eBay does not return start & end times to us on most items now). Non-Priority listings will be listed after the Priority Listings, and will sort according to your choice (the option to sort via start & end times works for these listings, since eBay is doing it on their side). It's complicated and confusing, but the takeaway here is that Priority Listings will always be at the top, giving you an optimal chance to make a higher commission. With that said, only certain ePN members are eligible for this higher Priority Listings commission, though who is eligible is not made clear. 🙁

The new code will go active on Friday, December 31st, and the transition should be seamless (fingers crossed). If you experience any unusual behavior, please let us know immediately. The old code should work for a month or two longer, so we can swap it back in if problems are encountered.

Thank you for your continued support and patronage!