This case study has been created to highlight a few of the "nuances" in listing Variations in eBay. On occasion, you are going to run into some very odd eBay errors, that will take some research, eBay sleuthing, and some testing to resolve.

When trying to list Christmas tree lights, a client set up a template using the Attribute "Type" to refer to the different models of the tree as seen below.

And created a listing template to reference both Size and Type as the Variation Options

eBay gave the following error messages...which took quite a while to decipher...

"Error: The tags Type is/are disabled as Variant."

For the Christmas tree Category they were trying to list in, the values provided to eBay didn't make any sense, so eBay gave the error message.  It was expecting something like:

So for the solution - after much eBay searching, I modified the attribute name to "Tree" and passed that in as an Attribute, and used the Undecorated Tree option for the offending word "Type".

I created a new template for the "Tree" option - and resubmitted the listing.

Listing works fine.  It took a few hours of eBay research, and there are likely other ways to optimize this listings (you can always hire one of our consultants to help resolve these errors), but with a 1,000+ trees in stock, it's definitely an item worth getting listed!