Facebook Marketplace Ends Pre-Paid Shipping Labels For New Listings
UPDATE 9-28-25
Facebook appears to have quietly re-instated the ability to purchase prepaid shipping labels through the platform, but says it is only available to "select" sellers.
The help page regarding prepaid shipping now says:
About access to prepaid shipping labels
Prepaid shipping labels are offered by Marketplace to select sellers.In some cases, we may remove a seller’s access to prepaid shipping labels, as per our Seller Agreement. This may happen when a seller has shipped a high volume of orders with prepaid shipping labels that incorrectly state the weight or size of an item sold.
This may occur when:
- The weight of the shipped package was more than the weight entered when creating the listing. Be sure to enter the accurate weight of an item when creating a listing.
- For USPS prepaid labels, the package dimensions are larger than USPS allows (greater than 12in x 12in x 12in in size (L x W x H)).
If you lose access to prepaid shipping labels on Marketplace, you can continue to ship items using your own labels or you can arrange for local pickup with buyers.
Facebook will no longer allow new listings with shipping to use pre-paid labels provided by the marketplace, leaving sellers with short notice and more questions than answers.
The update was posted and the help page about offering shipping on items listed on Facebook Marketplace, saying the change will go into effect for new listings starting February 24th.
As of February 24, 2025, you will no longer be able to buy and create prepaid shipping labels for new listings on Marketplace. Existing listings with prepaid labels remain unchanged and you can still ship items using your own label. Please note that if you switch to using your own label, you cannot revert back to a prepaid label.
Meta did not provide any explanation for the sudden change but the help page points to one possible factor - the pre-paid shipping option relies on sellers entering accurate weight and dimensions and while it does say they can lose access to the feature if too many package end up underpaid, it doesn't provide any explicit terms saying sellers will be charged for any shipping adjustment overages.
Those shipping adjustments can rightly or wrongly be significant - sellers on eBay, Mercari and other marketplaces often complain about being billed outrageous amounts due to apparent errors in automating screening by the carriers and even when the adjustments are correct, they can add up quickly.
It's important to note this change only currently applies to new listings created on the marketplace, existing listings will still have access to the pre-paid label function - for now.
Sellers discussing the change across social media say they are concerned about how to handle the change, with many pointing to Pirate Ship and other label providers as a possible solution.
Others speculated the change could be related to the recently announced partnership between Meta and eBay which will allow eBay listings to be shown on Facebook Marketplace with all aspects of any eventual sale happening on eBay.
However, that is unlikely to be a factor here since theoretically those sales will be happening on eBay and thus likely wouldn't have had access to pre-paid Facebook labels any way and so far, we still haven't seen any evidence of eBay listings actually going live on Facebook.
Liz Morton
Most likely this is simply a cost cutting measure - just like the real reason behind the layoffs Meta announced this week - as the company turns their focus and resources to the great AI race.
How will Facebook getting rid of pre-paid shipping on Marketplace impact your buying and selling there? Let us know in the comments below!
