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- The selling database has been updated to reflect eBay's new fee structure which went into effect on February 20. Since there is no longer a charge for a Gallery picture, we recommend setting the value of Use Gallery? on the Defaults page in the eBay Selling database to "Yes".
- Updated the default templates to reflect the recent reduction in the rate of GST to 5% by the Government of Canada.
- AuctionGenie no longer lowers the start price of a new auction when it determines that doing so would maximize your net return when the item sells. This feature was removed because eBay has introduced category-specific listing fees; this makes it too difficult to perform the necessary calculation reliably.
- In the eBay Selling database, the Insertion Fee and the expected eBay fee for an item which sells are now approximations only, based on eBay's standard insertion and final value fee schedules. For some categories -- currently Books, Music, DVDs & Movies, and Video Games -- the actual fees may be lower. For items already listed, go to the Seller Account area of your My eBay page and check your account activity to see the actual fees charged by eBay for listing and selling your items.
- If a software update exists, when you quit AuctionGenie you will be asked whether you want to go to the download page to get it.
- The Add New Auction From Browser command now works once again -- it had to be fixed when eBay changed the format of the title of its auction pages yet again.
- The bid count is now updated as soon as you successfully submit a bid.
- A few minor bug fixes have been incorporated.
- When importing auctions into the eBay Selling database, AuctionGenie now imports the name of the site the item was listed on as well as the auction currency.
- Some of the selling database reports have been modified to include the auction currency.
- The Add New Auction From Browser command now works once again for eBay sites which include an item number in the title of the detail page for an item.
- Improved the bidding system to better conform with eBay requirements.
- Fixed a problem that arose when submitting auctions where full URLs were specified in picture fields.
- AuctionGenie once again supports bidding, this time using the new eBay-approved technique for submitting bids. Unfortunately, timed bids are prohibited by eBay, so bids are sent as soon as you click the Submit New Bids button. You cannot schedule bids.
- If you have an eBay Store, and you submit a regular eBay auction, the item will now appear in your store within the Store Categories you selected in the eBay Selling database. (Previously, all such items appeared in the generic "Other" category of your eBay Store.)
- The eBay Selling database has been updated to use the new insertion and final value fees set by eBay on January 30, 2007.
- AuctionGenie is now being provided as a Universal binary, meaning that it runs as native code on both x86- and PowerPC-based systems. (Previous versions ran in emulation mode on x86-based systems.)
- Font sizes in the database have been increased for easier viewing on high-resolution monitors.
- The ability to bid automatically has been removed in order to conform with eBay licensing requirements. You must now place all bids directly from the an item's listing page on the eBay Web site.
- The auction currency is now shown in the eBay Selling database. You can use the auctionCurrency tag to refer to it in templates. The tag for the country of the eBay site where you have listed an item is eBaySiteCountry.
- AuctionGenie now supports the eBay Web Services API and has been certified by eBay as an eBay Compatible Application. This means that AuctionGenie can now list auctions much more reliably and very quickly, and is much less likely to "break" even if the look of the eBay site changes. Read the eBay Authorization section of the new reference manual to learn how to authorize AuctionGenie to communicate with eBay on your behalf. (This is done on the eBay site.)
- AuctionGenie can now add inventory listings to your eBay Store. To indicate that a listing relates to store inventory (rather than a standard listing), choose an auction Duration of "30 [Store]" or "Until Cancelled [Store]".
- AuctionGenie no longer saves your eBay password to your hard disk, so you will be asked to provide it whenever you submit bids. This new policy conforms with eBay requirements for certified applications.
- Added a W (Watch Count) column to List view in the eBay Selling database. This field indicates the number of people who have added the auction to their watch lists. In templates, you can refer to this field with the watchCount tag.
- Added a Subtitle field for items in the eBay Bidding database. This field is automatically filled in when AuctionGenie adds an item to the database. In templates, you can refer to this field with the auctionSubtitle tag.
- Added a Comments field to the Result view of the eBay Bidding and Selling databases. This is where you can type in comments relating to the auction. In templates, you can refer to this field with the auctionComments tag.
- When you Import items into the eBay Selling database, the subtitle, listing duration, reserve price, and Buy It Now price are now also imported.
- On August 24, eBay made a subtle change to its system that prevented AuctionGenie from successfully submitting new auctions. This has been fixed!
- Payment instructions cannot be longer than 500 characters; AuctionGenie now automatically truncates longer text to this limit.
- Widened all Auction ID number fields to accommodate the longer numbers that eBay now uses.
- Added a Statistical Analysis form to the eBay Selling database that allows you to analyze sales data in a variety of ways. Select the Statistical Analysis command from the Auctions menu to bring up this form.
- Added a Gallery view to the eBay Bidding database. It is another type of list view that shows, for each item, the auction picture, title, description, start price, current bid, high bidder, close price, close time, and the time remaining until the auction closes. There also fields for entering the amount and timing of your next bid.
- Reorganized the layout of the Item Info panel of Detail view in the eBay Selling database for greater clarity.
- Moved the feedback-related fields to the Result panel of Detail view of the eBay Bidding and eBay Selling databases. This is a more logical place for them than the Seller Info and Buyer Info panels.
- Made a change to accommodate the new AppleScript syntax used by Fetch 5 to upload files to an FTP site.
- A recent change to the eBay system sometimes causes the bidder's information to appear where the seller's information should appear in the eBay Selling database. This has been fixed!
- Changes have been made to the eBay Bidding database to calculate eBay fees based on the new February 22 fee schedule.
- Improved the automatic handling of fixed price auctions in the eBay Bidding database.
- Added the ability to submit auctions in certain categories that were not previously supported.
- Relisting of closed auctions now works once again.
- The acquisition cost of an item (specified in the Inventory panel of Detail view of the eBay Selling database) is now included when calculating the Net Proceeds for an item that has sold.
- Postage & handling fees were not being properly submitted in certain circumstances. This has now been fixed.
- Fixed a problem that prevented AuctionGenie from downloading an updated category list.
- In List view, added a button (printer icon) on an item's line to make it easy to select the item and go to Print view in a single step.
- Also in List view (both databases), added four fields for showing the status of closed auctions that you sold or purchased. For the eBay Bidding database, the fields indicate whether a notification to pay has been received, payment has been sent, the item has been received, and feedback has been sent. For the eBay Selling database, the fields indicate whether a notification to pay as been sent, payment has been received, the item has been shipped, and feedback has been sent. When you click these fields to indicate that the corresponding event has occurred a check mark appears in the field.
- eBay recently made a change that broke the ability to import auctions from the Find Auctions by User ID dialog. AuctionGenie has been modified to make this work once again.
- eBay made another change that interferes with submitting new listings in some circumstances. AuctionGenie has been modified to adapt to this change.
- Note that multiple deferred bids can't be sent automatically if the screen saver has activated while AuctionGenie is waiting to send bids. The solution is to turn off your screen saver if making deferred bids (using the Desktop & Screen Saver preferences panel). And, as noted in earlier versions of the documentation, you must also ensure that your system will not go to sleep (using the Energy Saver preferences panel). The same requirements apply to Autopilot functions.
- On July 12, eBay made significant changes to its listing pages resulting in problems when AuctionGenie updates statistics or submits new auctions. These have been fixed in this release.
- If you have enabled the sound effects preference "When high bid increases", you will now hear the word "Outbid" when you update the bidding statistics in the eBay Bidding database and you are no longer the high bidder in an auction.
- Widened the Close Price field in List view of the eBay Selling database so that it can display prices up to $9999.99. Higher prices appear as "?" and the field must be clicked to see the actual value.
- The new Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) release caused one problem for AuctionGenie: the "Add New Auction From Browser" command stopped working because of a subtle change Apple made to the syntax of an AppleScript command. AuctionGenie has now been modified to make this command work once again.
- Added the ability to easily send an email to a buyer based on any one of a number of custom email templates you may create. See the "Custom Email Templates" section of Appendix I of the reference manual for details.
- Added a "Preview Auction Listing" command to the Templates menu of the AuctionGenie Panel to allow you to quickly see what the body of a new auction listing will look like before you submit it to eBay.
- Enhanced the default buyerStatus template to include sales tax information, where applicable.
- Added a "Set Category of Current Auction" button to the Category Chooser window for setting the category of the current auction selected in the eBay Selling database.
- Modified the Region popup menu in the eBay Selling database to include 12 regions in Canada.
- Modified the eBay Selling database to allow you to specify Border highlighting for an auction. eBay charges an additional $3 when you submit an auction using this feature.
- Updated the automatic fee calculation formula to reflect recent eBay price changes.
- Added an indicator after the Payment Received field in the Result panel of the Detail view of the eBay Selling database to indicate whether an email has been sent to confirm receipt of the payment.
- The Net Proceeds for a transaction is now automatically calculated and shown in the Result panel of the Detail view of the eBay Selling database.
- Added fields to the eBay Selling database where you can enter the actual PayPal Fee and eBay Fee paid. Since transaction records and reports now use these amounts, rather than the automatically calculated ("expected") amounts they used in previous releases, you will have to go through each auction in your eBay Selling database and complete these fields. To help simplify this, you can click on either field label to automatically enter the expected amount. Sorry for the inconvenience, it is the price of progress.
- The technique for identifying which auctions in the eBay Bidding database are to be sent a transaction status report has been simplified. To identify an auction to be included, place a check mark in the selection box that appears on the left side of the line of information in List view.
- Similarly, the technique for identifying which auctions in the eBay Selling database are to be acted on by the Update Bidding Statistics, Submit Auctions Not Yet Listed, Relist Closed Auctions, and Send Transaction Status to Buyers commands is to place a check mark in the selection box of each auction to be included.
- In the List views of both databases, click the Select All button in the column title area to place a check mark in all selection boxes for the auctions displayed; click the button while holding down the Command key to clear all the boxes.
- Added new database tags for use in templates: salesTaxAmount, salesTaxTentativeAmount, PHfeeExpected, amountDueExpected, myFullAddress, buyerFullAddress, and sellerFullAddress. See Appendix I of the reference manual for details.
- Once in a while eBay changes the bidding procedure in an attempt to improve security. They did it again on April 20, preventing AuctionGenie from making automated bids. AuctionGenie has been modified to adapt to the new procedure.
- eBay made a change that interfered with the ability to leave feedback in certain situations; this has now been fixed.
- If you Command-click the Auction ID field anywhere in the bidding or selling database, the default font, font size, font style, and font color for most fields will be restored to the defaults.
- AuctionGenie now supports the Firefox browser (see http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/).
- When you click the Show Buyer Bidding Page button (eBay Selling database) or Show Seller Auctions Page (eBay Bidding database) you ordinarily see a list of open auctions only. To include closed auctions in the list, hold down the Command key when you click the button.
- You can now enter a license registration code while AuctionGenie is running by choosing Enter Licensing Registration Code from the Apple menu.
- On February 7, eBay reduced its fee for auctions listed with a start price of less than $1 to 25 cents. AuctionGenie has been modified to reflect this change. AuctionGenie now also automatically reduces a Start Price of between $1.00 and $1.09 to $0.99 to save on listing fees when you submit an auction.
- eBay has changed the method used to find auctions listed by a person. AuctionGenie's Find Auctions by User ID dialog has been updated to reflect this.
- eBay made a subtle change to how auctions are listed, causing AuctionGenie problems. This has been fixed so you can submit auctions once again.
- You can now specify the minimum interval between consecutive listing submissions in the Preferences window. Use this feature to provide more time for bidders to get their final bids in on a group of related auctions.
- Added a Copy Address button to the Buyer Info / Seller Info panel of Detail View in the databases. Clicking this button copies the entire multi-line address to the clipboard.
- You are now asked to confirm after you click the Submit Auctions Not Yet Listed button.
- More information has been added to the Transaction Record form in the selling database.
- The Insertion Fee calculation in the eBay Selling database has been updated to reflect fee increases that will be made by eBay on February 18, 2005.
- Fixed a problem relating to fixed price auctions.
- You can now update just the currently selected auction in the bidding or selling database by holding down the Command key when you click the Update Bidding Statistics button in the Bidding or Selling tab of the AuctionGenie Panel.
- Adding auctions using the Find Auctions by User ID was not working in certain situations. This has now been fixed.
- eBay made a change that prevented AuctionGenie from retrieving data from an auction that ended with Buy It Now. This has now been fixed.
- A bug in eBay's redirection of URLs caused intermittent problems with AuctionGenie when updating bidding statistics. AuctionGenie has incorporated a workaround to fix this.
- Added a list of "Other items listed for sale" to the Seller Info panel of Detail view of the eBay Bidding database. Click on an item's line to go directly to the corresponding record in the database.
- Added a list of "Other items purchased" to the Buyer Info panel of Detail view of the eBay Selling database. Click on an item's line to go directly to the corresponding record in the database.
- Modified the list of "Where will you ship?" locations in the Selling database to match the options now provided by eBay.
- The U.S. Postage & Handling amount specified in the Selling database is now sent to eBay when you submit a new listing. On the eBay item page this amount is identified as the shipping cost for "Standard Flat Rate Shipping Service (within United States)". The Intl. Postage & Handling amount is also sent and it is identified as the shipping cost for "Standard Int'l Flat Rate Shipping" to those worldwide locations to which you will ship.
- Updated the Find Auctions by Keyword dialog to allow for keyword searching on closed auctions (recently allowed by eBay).
- Made a change so that once again AuctionGenie properly identifies when an item you're selling does not meet the reserve price.
- In some situations, AuctionGenie was not able to retrieve the auction currency and the current bid amount when adding an auction to the bidding database. This has now been fixed.
- Fixed a problem that prevented AuctionGenie, in rare situations, from updating the selling database correctly when submitting auctions.
- You can now specify a 278x68 pixel picture to be printed as the return address on a mailing label instead of a plain text return address. Go to the User Artwork view (provided in both the Bidding and the Selling databases) by choosing it from the popup menu that appears in the top left corner of the database window. If you have the desired picture on the clipboard, click the Paste button beneath the picture field to add it to the database. Alternatively, you can import a picture from a file by clicking in the picture field, then selecting Picture... from the Insert menu. You can also do this on the page where you configure the mailing labels just before printing them.
- Printing on a single 4" x 5 1/4" mailing label (USPS Priority Mail format - Label 228) is now supported in the Selling database.
- Updating of the bidding statistics has been sped up considerably. Uncheck the "When updating" sound effects box in the Preferences window to make it even faster.
- Enhanced the Result panel of Detail view in the eBay Selling database to display Shipping, Other, and Sales Tax charges. The Shipping and Sales Tax charges are calculated automatically; you can use the Other field to make fee adjustments. The Packing List now also includes references to these new items.
- Fixed an importing problem caused by eBay sometimes using location names that were very long.
- The Not Yet Shipping list in the eBay Selling database has been enhanced to provide more relevant information for the preparation of items to be shipped.
- You can now click the label for a date field in the Result panel of Detail view in the Selling or Bidding databases to automatically enter today's date in the field. This works only when the field is initially blank.
- eBay recently changed the format of its Bidding History page, preventing AuctionGenie from retrieving the information. This has now been fixed.
- Fixed a problem with updating the category list caused by another eBay formatting change.
- Removed "COD" and "Other" from the Payment Methods list in the selling database; these options are no longer supported by eBay.
- Turned off auto-resizing of database windows when switching to a new view. This was causing grief for users who prefer to set a fixed window size and who don't want to see it automatically changed.
- Made minor changes to the Find Auctions by Keyword dialog to reflect changes in the eBay category structure.
- Clicking on the AuctionGenie logo anywhere it appears in the selling or bidding database now brings the AuctionGenie Panel to the front.
- AuctionGenie can once again automatically retrieve the eBay User ID of the seller for an auction. This broke recently when eBay made a change to its item pages.
- Fixed a problem with updating the category list caused by another eBay formatting change.
- Fixed AuctionGenie's category updating code that broke because eBay changed the format of their category summary pages.
- Changed the Category popup in the Find Auctions by Keyword dialog to reflect eBay's new category structure.
- Updated the category list to reflect eBay's new category structure.
- Fixed a problem that interfered with listing of items for which eBay provides a Pre-filled Item Information option.
- Removed the Escrow field in the Item Info panel of the Detail view of the eBay Selling database. eBay no longer supports the escrow option.
- The minimum bid shown in the Item Info panel of Detail view of the bidding database is now accurate when the bidding currency is GBP or EUR.
- Fixed AuctionGenie's category updating code that broke because eBay dramatically changed the format of its category summary pages.
- eBay has recently changed the format of its item pages slightly, preventing eBay from retrieving the location of an item. This has now been fixed.
- eBay has recently changed the format of its Bid History page. AuctionGenie now supports the new format and will retrieve the correct information once again.
- In the selling database, changed Print Cover Letter to Print Packing List. A nice new document is now printed which looks more like a standard packing list than in the past.
- Effective February 19, eBay allows 55-character titles and subtitles. AuctionGenie has supported this higher limit since v3.1.
- Successfully worked around a bug in Mac OS X that required a Force Quit of AuctionGenie after submitting listings with very long descriptions.
- Fixed a problem which prevented a successful listing if the category name contained a number.
- A more robust check for bad category numbers is now performed. If an invalid category is specified in a listing, the listing will not be submitted and an invalid category error message appears in the Log.
- The buttons at the bottom of List view in the bidding and selling databases have been moved from the bottom to the top of the window to prevent them from being obscured on systems where the Dock is at the bottom of the screen. These buttons are used to show different subsets of auction records.
- Fixed a problem with importing fixed price listings from the eBay system into the selling database. Updating the statistics of fixed price listings in the selling database also now works.
- Fixed a problem where Gallery images were not appearing correctly unless they were present on your FTP site *before* submitting a listing. Pictures are now uploaded before a listing is submitted to solve this (assuming you have the Upload Auction Pictures via FTP preference turned on). If you don't use AuctionGenie to automatically upload picture files, be sure to upload any gallery pictures before submitting the auction they are to be used with. If you don't, you will see a generic "click here to see the picture" icon on eBay — to get the picture you really want, upload your picture, then revise your item on eBay and provide the URL to the picture to use for the gallery.
- When you import auctions into the selling database, the auction description is now imported as well.
- Added more extensive support for the display of dates in international formats.
- Fixed a problem when updating statistics in the bidding database so that now a fixed price listing with multiple items available is properly marked as a win if you have made a purchase.
- The default boilerplate template now generates no text in order to avoid confusing new users who often do not understand that the previous template would automatically add standard payment terms to a new listing. To use the previous template, whose behavior is described in Appendix 4 of the reference manual, move a copy of the file called "boilerplate" from the Templates (default) folder to the Templates folder inside the AuctionGenie Home folder.
- Note that AuctionGenie does not work well with "mature audience" listings because of the extra safeguards eBay uses to ensure people acknowledge they will be exposed to explicit content. We'll likely work around these issues in a future release of AuctionGenie.
- The widths of the auction title boxes in the detail views of the selling and bidding databases have been extended to 55 characters in anticipation of eBay allowing this many characters in an auction title or subtitle in mid-February. Until then, be sure a title you enter in the selling database is no longer than 45 characters or an error will occur when you try to submit the auction. This is a bit inconvenient, of course, but we wanted you to be ready to go as soon as eBay raises the character limit.
- The appearance of the detail views in the databases has been improved considerably!
- Fixed a bug that caused submission of auctions using the AutoPilot feature to behave unexpectedly.
- Modified the Find Auctions by Keyword dialog to reflect recent changes to the eBay category structure.
- Fixed a problem which prevented AuctionGenie from automatically determining the UserID of a seller in some situations.
- Changed the way AuctionGenie retrieves the email addresses for sellers in auctions you bid on and win because the eBay system now causes the old technique to fail. Because of this change, the "See email addresses when viewing User IDs" eBay system preference must be turned on as explained in the Configuring the eBay System section of the reference manual.
- Fixed AuctionGenie's category updating code that broke because eBay changed the format of their category summary pages.
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