Reselling News: Amazon Ties Insurance to Your Category on November 2 and eBay Matches Your First Livestream

Most marketplace rules wait until you are big enough to notice them. Three items landed yesterday, and the first one stops waiting.

Amazon will stop using your sales volume to decide who needs insurance

Amazon is changing when commercial liability coverage becomes mandatory, and EcommerceBytes reported the seller notice on September 10. Starting November 2, 2026, if you list anything in one of Amazon's enhanced safety categories, you need coverage of 1 million dollars per occurrence and in aggregate, regardless of how much you sell. The old rule stays in place for everyone else: cross 10,000 dollars in gross proceeds in a month and you have 30 days to carry the same 1 million dollar policy.

The affected categories are the ones you would guess if you thought about who gets sued. Amazon's notice names children's products, cosmetic and ingestible products, and lithium battery products, and points to the full list on its own site. A second piece of the same announcement says sellers based in mainland China will have newly submitted policies rejected unless they run through the Amazon Insurance Accelerator.

What to do about it: open your Amazon inventory and compare it against Amazon's enhanced safety category list before November 2. This is the change that catches small sellers, because a used Bluetooth speaker with a lithium cell inside does not feel like a regulated category until the rule stops asking what you earn. A policy costs less per year than one month of a suspended account.

eBay opened Live to self-signup and put cash behind the first stream

Also on September 10, eBay switched on self-service registration for eBay Live. Value Added Resource walked the sign-up flow, which asks about past livestream experience and what you plan to sell. You need a business account and business policies plus other requirements eBay declined to spell out. Accounts that qualify get Live Studio right away, and the rest land on a waitlist.

Attached to it is a promotion that is easy to miss for how short it is. For US Live sales between September 10 and September 16, eBay will match sales completed and paid during a seller's first public Live event, one for one, up to 100 dollars, credited to the eBay balance about two weeks after the window closes. Normal Live commissions and payment processing fees still apply. The match is only for sellers eBay had already approved for Live, not for anyone who registers this week.

What to do about it: check today whether your account is already approved, because if it is, the window closes Tuesday. One hundred dollars is no reason to build a livestreaming habit. It is a reason to move a first stream you already planned into a week where eBay pays part of the tab.

The Zelda console is a live demonstration of why presales go wrong

Nintendo says the Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Switch 2 console arrives October 29, with Ocarina of Time for Switch 2 following on November 5. Preorders sold out fast, and eBay filled with markups within hours. Value Added Resource found a bundle listed at 2,000 dollars plus shipping against about 720 dollars of combined retail for the same four pieces.

The price is the boring part. The delivery dates are the story. One US listing asking 1,700 dollars showed an estimated delivery of September 14 to 18 for hardware that does not exist until the end of October. Value Added Resource traced where that lands: with no tracking uploaded, an estimate that early puts the buyer's Item Not Received deadline around October 18, eleven days before the console ships. Buyers have been caught in that gap on past presales and had refunds denied for filing too late.

That is also a policy problem. eBay's presale listings policy requires the title and description to say the item is a presale, requires the available-to-ship date to be stated in the listing, and expects your handling time to cover the period before you actually have the item in hand.

What to do about it: if you sell anything before you hold it, set handling time to the real date and label the listing as a presale. A delivery estimate that expires before your supplier ships is not a formatting error. It is the buyer's protection clock running out while you still look compliant.

The takeaway

Two of these three are one lesson from different directions. Amazon is pricing the risk of what you sell, and eBay's presale rules price the risk of when you sell it. Neither asks whether you meant well. Knowing which of your listings carry that exposure, before a platform decides for you, is the sort of thing we work through in The Income Lab.

Hero image: Amazon's fulfillment center in Troutdale, Oregon, photographed by Tedder and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.