Reselling News: eBay Stops Counting Live Sales Toward Top Rated Plus, and Etsy Fights EU Packaging Rules

A seller scorecard is supposed to describe the whole business. Starting next month, one slice of eBay gets carved out of yours, and the sellers most affected are the ones who leaned hardest into the newest thing eBay asked them to try.

eBay Live comes out of your seller scorecard on October 15

eBay's seller levels and performance standards page now carries a line that changes how a chunk of the marketplace gets graded: beginning October 15, 2026, eBay Live transactions will no longer be counted in seller standards or service metrics calculations, including all transactions completed before that date.

Value Added Resource reported on September 15 that eBay sent the same message by email to Live sellers, spelling out the three things it touches: Seller Level, Top Rated Plus eligibility, and Service Metrics. eBay's stated reason is that Live is a fast moving and interactive selling experience whose transaction patterns differ from the rest of the marketplace, so grading it separately is the more accurate measure. Live orders still show up in order history, reports and payouts. Live performance gets its own evaluation under a program eBay has not published yet, and eBay was clear that consequences can still land on your Live selling.

Read the retroactive part twice, because that is the piece with teeth. This is not a clean break going forward. Live sales you already made get pulled back out of the math, so your Seller Level and Top Rated Plus status on October 15 will be calculated on a different set of transactions than the one you have been watching all year.

That cuts in both directions. If a run of Live buyers left you with late shipments or item not as described cases, that weight comes off. If your Live volume was quietly carrying your numbers, the support comes off with it, and a smaller transaction pool means every remaining defect counts for more of the percentage.

Your move: before October 15, pull your Seller Hub metrics and work out what share of your transaction count came through Live. Then ask whether your fixed price and auction sales alone still clear the Top Rated Seller thresholds. If they do not, you have four weeks to add clean non Live transactions rather than four weeks of not knowing. Nobody can tell you what the separate Live standards will require, because eBay has not said.

Etsy is asking sellers to push back on EU packaging rules

The European Union's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation began applying on August 12, and it reaches past the factory to the person taping the box. Etsy told sellers on September 9, through VP of Customer Operations James Ossman, that it wants signatures on a petition asking EU policymakers to harmonize Extended Producer Responsibility rules across member states and to build a simplified path for low volume sellers, as Value Added Resource covered on September 11.

The obligations behind the petition are the real story. Depending on the country, a seller shipping into the EU may need to register there, hand an EPR number to the marketplace, appoint an authorized representative, report packaging quantities, and pay into a local recycling program. Etsy already collects EPR registration details for France, Germany and Spain, and expects to add countries as national registers come online.

Your move: most people reading this sell used clothing to buyers in the United States, and for them this is a headline, not a task. The task only appears if international shipping is switched on. Go look at where your orders actually shipped over the past year. If the EU is a real part of your sales, start reading your obligations now instead of during Q4. If it is a rounding error, turning international off is a perfectly respectable answer.

The takeaway

Both stories are the same story told twice. Platforms keep moving the line between what they grade and what they hand to you, and they rarely move it on a day you were paying attention. eBay changed a scorecard that already contains your past work. The EU changed who files the paperwork on a cardboard box. Neither arrives as a warning in your dashboard.

Sorting a headline that touches your account from one that does not, and acting on it before the date instead of after, is what members practice every week in The Income Lab.

Hero image: a phone filming a live shopping stream of packaged tea products at the China International Fair for Trade in Services, photographed September 10, 2026 by N509FZ, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.