Tuesday 5th May | #79 | Join Free
Good morning. Hope you made the most of the bank holiday weekend. One person who didn't get the long weekend memo? GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen, who lobbed a $56bn bid at eBay on Sunday. Also: new EU regulations landing in just six weeks that you'll want on your radar, Amazon handing customers more price data to chew on, and Shopify quietly changing how payment methods display at checkout. Plenty to get into - Mike (BtB Founder)
In the basket today:
đĒđē EU returns shake-up lands in six weeks - are you ready?
đšī¸ GameStop's CEO just made a $55bn run at eBay
đī¸ WooCommerce's subscription plugin gets a long-overdue glow-up
đˇ Amazon now shows UK shoppers a full year of price history
đ Shopify is auto-enabling local payment methods at checkout
+plus the community tab is open, answering the question Whatâs one metric you check every single day?
REGULATIONS
Selling into the EU? New returns rules kick in, in six weeks.
From 19 June, any retailer shipping to EU customers needs an on-site "withdrawal" function, a button that lets customers cancel their order in a couple of clicks, without logging in, without emailing support, without being bounced to a carrier page.
This comes from Directive (EU) 2023/2673, and it applies to UK sellers too. If an EU consumer can check out on your site, you're in scope.
A few things to know:
It's tied to the existing 14-day cooling-off right, so the button has to stay available for the full 14 days after delivery, not just pre-dispatch
It must work for guest customers without a login
The button label matters, it needs to say "withdraw contract" or unambiguous equivalent. Vague labels like "cancel" have been flagged as likely non-compliant.
Why it Matters: The risks stack up fast for non-compliance - regulatory fines (up to âŦ50,000 or 4% of turnover in some Member States), and consumers potentially being allowed to withdraw from contracts indefinitely until compliant procedures are in place.
Your Move: Audit your returns flow this week, then plug the gap with a ready-built tool. If you sell on Etsy or TikTok Shop, watch for platform compliance announcements, they'll likely build this for you, but the legal obligation sits with the seller, so don't assume. For your own site:
Shopify: Consider Revoq or EU Withdrawal Button from the App Store, five minutes via Theme Editor, no code
WooCommerce: Consider the free EU Withdrawal Button for WooCommerce plugin, handles guest checkouts properly, which is where most sellers will trip up
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đŗī¸ The Pulse
Where are you with the new EU withdrawal button rules?
TLDR: GameStop has gone public with an unsolicited $56bn bid for eBay, and eBay has confirmed it's considering the proposal.
Why it Matters: This is no longer a rumour but a live process, with Ryan Cohen pitching collectibles dominance, GameStop's stores as a fulfilment network, and $2bn of annualised cost cuts. For UK sellers, the $1.2bn reduction in eBay's sales and marketing spend is the number to watch, that's the budget driving buyer traffic to your listings, and a cut of that scale could soften organic demand even before any fee changes.
Your Move: eBay has acknowledged the bid but not yet responded to it, If the bid gains traction, work out which of your other channels, eg. Etsy, Amazon, or your own site, could realistically pick up the slack if eBay's seller terms change under new ownership.
Read More>
TLDR: WooCommerce has launched a Subscriptions Health Check tool at WooCommerce â Status â Subscriptions, giving merchants a clearer view of which subscriptions are auto-renewing, which aren't, and which have quietly stopped renewing altogether.
Why it Matters: The tool has two views, one surfaces manual-renewal subscriptions that could be moved to auto-renewal, the other flags subscriptions that should be renewing but aren't, often due to data integrity issues or past bugs. If you've had unexplained dips in renewal revenue, the second view is where to start looking.
Your Move: Update WooCommerce Subscriptions to the latest version, then run the Health Check at WooCommerce â Status â Subscriptions and review any flagged subscriptions before making changes, the tool surfaces info, it doesn't auto-fix.
Read More>