Hello Everyone,

Over the last week, many of you have been having problems printing PayPal shipping labels. On Thursday evening, November 3 we released new functionality for label printing. Since that time some sellers have had issues with labels that have required them to void labels, reprint labels or find alternative methods of shipping their eBay items.

We have been working to resolve these errors, and today most eBay sellers should be able to print both domestic and international shipping labels from PayPal with no problems. A small number of sellers and transactions may still experience problems with label printing. We will be releasing new fixes over the next few days to hopefully address all potential known issues. We will update this status of this issue on this thread.

Known Workarounds to Existing Issues

If you happen to experience any error message (‘Cannot connect to’, 3005, etc.) while trying to print a PayPal shipping label, try one of the following known workarounds. Many of these known areas for failure are related to amount of text that can be placed on the shipping label or customs form entry fields.

While these solutions may not help every error condition until we make improvements, they do address many of the situations that our sellers are experiencing.

Thanks,

Shane Menchions
Product Marketing, Shipping



-Possible Issue: Destination address cannot exceed 40 characters, destination city cannot exceed 25 characters, destination address cannot be blank
-Possible Fix: Shorten the address using reasonable methods such as “Boulevard = Blvd”. This will not affect Seller Protection Policy eligibility.

-Possible Issue: Destination state must be 2 characters long. It may not be apparent that the state is longer than 2 characters when read.
-Possible Fix: Select the destination state from the dropdown list. This will not affect Seller Protection Policy eligibility.

-Possible Issue: No fields can contain the special characters &, < or >.
-Possible Fix: Edit fields to remove special characters.

-Possible Issue: “Ship From” or seller zip code must be 5 digits.
-Possible Fix: Sellers may change their zip code to 5 digits from My eBay or edit the label field.

-Possible Issue: When logging onto PayPal after selecting to print a label from eBay, the seller receives an error.
-Possible Fix: 1)Log onto you PayPal account 2)Click “Profile” in upper right 3) Click “Shipping Preferences” 4) Ensure box for “eBay Items and Auction Goods” is checked.

-Possible Issue: For international shipments, customs item description cannot be longer than 45 characters & customs “Package Content Type” additional information field cannot be longer than 20 characters.
-Possible Fix: Shorten customs fields to meet length requirements.

-Possible Issue: For international shipments, “Ship From” phone number cannot be blank.
-Possible Fix: This field must be filled in with a valid U.S. phone number due to international customs regulations.

-Possible Issue: For international shipments, the “Ship To” name and company cannot be greater than 45 characters.
-Possible Fix: Shorten the field to be below 45 characters. This will not affect Seller Protection Policy eligibility.