Whatnot Adds Free Pickup Option, Updates Card Breaking Experience

Liz Morton
Liz Morton


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Live selling platform Whatnot continues product updates with new Free Pickup option and enhanced card break experience.

Free Pickup is now available to all sellers globally and once enabled, it will be offered as an option by default for all shows. Sellers can also toggle the feature on/off per livestream by going into the show settings and tapping ‘Free Pickup’ under shipping.

Currently, Free Pickup is only available for Buy It Now and Auction orders placed during a live show, but support for marketplace orders, pickup-only listings, and discovery filtering will be added soon.

It's also currently only available via the iOS or Android apps, but not through the desktop web experience.

Whatnot offers the following tips for sellers using Free Pickup:

  • Talk up the feature to your buyers. Mention that you are offering Free Pickup throughout your streams, and on social media.
  • Make sure you have DMs enabled. Buyers will likely message you to help coordinate pickup.
  • Buyers will need the latest version of the Whatnot app (iOS or Android) to see the Free Pickup feature. The feature is not currently available to buyers on the Web.
  • If you have Early Payout, you’ll be paid when you generate a pickup label. Otherwise, you’ll be paid when the order is marked as picked up or seven days after the order was placed (whichever occurs first).
  • Pickup orders will not be counted toward your average shipping time.
  • If you are not able to complete the pickup order, please contact sellersupport@whatnot.com who can help you ship the order instead.

More info about Whatnot Free Pickup here.

Whatnot is also updating the trading card breakin experience on the site, with a new Breaks feature.

Breaks are a group buying activity in which a seller purchases a box or pack of cards and then invites others to purchase spots in the box, with each spot representing a specific portion of the cards being opened.

The new Breaks feature on Whatnot offers the following: 

  • Streamlined Breaks creation: Say goodbye to tedious spot creation with our new tools. Batch-generate spots, copy/paste from your spreadsheets, and customize descriptions with ease. Create a Break with hundreds of spots in just seconds.
  • Frictionless Breaks management: Take control with pinned spots, support for Pick-Your-Team and random formats, Buy-It-Nows and Auctions, and clear tracking of spot assignments so buyers always know what’s available.
  • Built-in randomization: Automatic spot assignments with support for popular formats like stash-or-pass and pick-two-choose-one. Watch those Breaks fill in record time!
  • Fulfillment made easy: Export spots and assignments directly to a spreadsheet and your packing slips.

Sellers who are interested in signing up for the beta version of Breaks can fill out a form to be put on a waitlist.

The product team at Whatnot has been busy with other updates and improvements as well, like a Seller API, improved discovery, new ways to refer new sellers, tools to help new sellers get comfortable going live and non-live Auctions and Video listings.

Whatnot Expands Non-Live Shopping Options With Auctions & Video Listings
Whatnot is expanding non-live shopping options with Auctions & Video Listings offering 24/7 bidding & browsing convenience.

What do you think of Whatnot's ongoing product improvements? Let us know in the comments below!

Whatnot

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Liz Morton is a 17 year ecommerce pro turned indie investigative journalist providing ad-free deep dives on eBay, Amazon, Etsy & more, championing sellers & advocating for corporate accountability.


Recent Comments
Avatar PlaceholderConcerned2 days ago
It is Slowwwwwww and is more expensive to the buyer. In the past items I have ordered will sit at the hub for around 2 weeks. I avoid ebay unless I cannot get it elsewhere.
Avatar Placeholdermarks30472 days ago
Hi, I have a friend who had an interesting experience recently that fell under this issue. They sold an item, packed and dispatched to the UK Ebay hub, this was midway through the period as the pause occurred. They then received a message from the buyer that they had checked tracking and discovered that the item had disappeared on ebay, no advice. It then turned out that the tracking had been fudged and the package was with them but not forwarded on to the USA. A few hours of to and fro to get the answer that it was due to the tariff dilemma. NO fault of the buyer(who had paid) or the seller ((who had been paid) and a strange response that the item could not be delivered. The buyer would be refunded in full, the seller would keep payment and the item would not be returned. Strange, Ebay must be hurting paying our both sides of the deal+
Avatar Placeholdercwi3 days ago
  1. Start building out the brand and promoting the heck out of Canadian sellers to our domestic market. Work with Federal/Provincial level governments in the push to build a strong presence here in Canada.

  2. Add other calculated shipping options than Canada Post UPS/FedEx for domestic shipping - partner with couriers nationwide, leverage agreements and software integrations with courier reseller platforms such as Stallion Express. Build out a crowd sourced network using national/regional retail locations as drop points for rural regions, leveraging transport networks to move packages to courier pickup points, akin to the UK courier model but adapted to the Canadian realities.

  3. Create a centralized international shipping clearing house to aide micro businesses with affordable shipping rates and customs clearance to avoid pitfalls and complexities (akin to US eIS).

  4. Bring features forward to the platform from other localizations, such as prepaid best offer acceptance, etc.