Issue two of the fee-change email. Same promise as last month: plain English, only when something moved, every figure read from the platform's own pages with the date we read it.
eBay's UK seller standards policy now carries this line: from 15 October 2026, eBay Live (livestream) transactions "will no longer be counted in your seller standards or service metrics calculations, including all transactions completed before this date." Read that last clause twice — it's retroactive, and most of the coverage we've seen skips it. eBay's announcement of the change also names Top Rated Plus eligibility as affected.
Why it's a fee story: seller standards feed Top Rated status (evaluated on the 20th of each month), and Top Rated status is what unlocks the Top Rated Plus final-value-fee discount. If Live sales have been propping up your volumes or diluting your defect rate, your status — and with it your fee line — can move when they're pulled out. eBay itself says some sellers may see an improvement; any reductions are deferred to the following evaluation.
What to do: if you've sold through the UK Live beta, re-check your dashboard's numbers with Live sales mentally removed before the 20 October evaluation. If you've never run a Live event, nothing changes. Full detail in our explainer, and this change is now entry #11 on the timeline.
Royal Mail's parcel, Tracked, Signed For and Special Delivery price rises take effect 5 October, and the seasonal Peak Surcharge for business accounts runs 2 November 2026 to 10 January 2027. Once the 5th passes, any Christmas pricing built on September postage is out of date — the repricing guide is the ten-minute fix.
Etsy rolled out a redesigned payment account in September: balances now show as Current / Pending / Total, payment reserves are folded inside Pending rather than shown as their own module, and transaction and processing fees now sit in Pending until the sale's earnings release (most other fees still charge in real time). Nothing about the redesign changes what you pay — but it changes where the numbers hide, and reserves are now easier to miss. If your available balance looks wrong, the reserve calculator will show you how much is held and roughly when it releases.
Trade press reports that Etsy is testing third-party print-on-demand physical prints of digital downloads — with digital sellers included automatically unless they opt out. If you sell digital art, printables or patterns on Etsy, it's worth two minutes in your shop settings to check whether you're in, and whether you want to be: a physical version of your file sold at Etsy's chosen price changes both your margin story and your rights position. We'll add it to the timeline with exact fee figures the day Etsy publishes them for the UK.
Open your eBay seller dashboard on or just before 20 October — the first evaluation after the Live exclusion — and screenshot it. If your status moves in November's evaluation, you'll want the before picture to understand (or dispute) the why.