How To View and Dispute Product Categories

This article walks you through key information on product categories, how it is determined and displayed, and the process of submitting a product category dispute.

1. What is a product category?

Categories (e.g., Beauty & Health, Computer & Office) help to generally define and group similar products. This is important as it allows customers to filter and quickly find what they are shopping for.

At Wish, when you add a product to your store, one of the first prompts is to assign the category. Wish, however, determines the final category to ensure it aligns with similar products shoppers search for, but if you believe the product is miscategorized, you have one opportunity to submit a product category dispute.

Product categories are also important because we use them to calculate each order’s commission (see Merchant Policy Fees and Payments) and to determine whether a product may need the merchant to provide a Responsible Person to comply with Market Surveillance Regulation European Union (EU) 2019/1020. 

2. Where can I view a product’s category?

There are three ways: via Merchant Dashboard, CSV, or API

1). Merchant Dashboard

There are a couple of ways to view manually:

a. Go to View All Products and find the Category column. (Note that newly uploaded products that have not released any orders yet show "--".)

• • Another way from this page is to scroll to the right of the product, click on the ellipses (three dots) and choose "Edit Listing" from the drop-down menu. Products category is the first listing that appears.

b. Go to Orders and choose either Unfulfilled Orders or History. On either page, scroll to the far right Actions column to View Details. Once the page opens, scroll down to Payment information (at the end); categories display as the “Basis for merchant commission fees.”

There can be multiple categories for a product. However, since a product’s category is also used to determine commission structure, only the one category that results in the lowest commission for each order is used to calculate commission (and displayed on order-related pages outlined below).

It is also worth noting that the Commission adjustment line item (as shown above) displays any commission changes made to this order after a merchant-initiated Product Category Dispute (see details below) is successfully resolved and results in a commission adjustment.

2) CSV file

At this time, only underperforming products can be downloaded via CSV. However, if you are editing products -- or looking to edit - you can download a CSV file by category (the file supports up to five categories). This is useful if checking your categories.

3). API

Use the following Products API endpoint: GET /api/v3/products/{id}

If Wish updates the product’s category upon further review, without merchant dispute, the updated product category will be displayed on the View All Products page and "Edit Listing" page; the updated category will be used to calculate the commissions of all orders released after Wish makes the update, but orders released before then will not be commission adjusted. Similarly, merchants may choose to dispute the updated category from here as well.

3. How do I dispute a category?

Once the first order of a product is released and the product category is displayed via any of the methods listed above, you may dispute the category.

IMPORTANT: You may only dispute a product category once. Also, you may only propose one new category, even though the product may be initially determined by Wish to fall within multiple categories

If you choose not to dispute, know that Wish may further review the product’s category and make one more update to the category within approximately 5-7 business days.

Note: An updated category is used to calculate the commissions of all orders released after Wish makes the update, but orders released before then will not be commission adjusted. Similarly, merchants may choose to dispute the updated category from here as well.

There are two different purposes -- and two different processes -- for disputing a category: commission adjustment or Market Surveillance Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 compliance.

• Commission adjustments: Go to the Merchant Dashboard View All Products page, locate the product, scroll to the far right and click on the ellipsis (three dots) to choose “Dispute Product Category” from the dropdown menu. Fill out the necessary information.
• Compliance: Go to the Merchant Dashboard Products > Product Compliance Center page. Click to "Enter" the section titled European (EU) Responsible Persons. Under Relevant Products, find the product and click “Dispute Product Category” to initiate the dispute process.

Once you submit the dispute, a pop-up box confirms a successful submission. On this box you can “View Product Category Disputes,” if you want to view all of your disputes.

Wish responds to disputes within several business days.

4. How do I view Product Category Dispute status?

After submitting a dispute, if you missed clicking on the "View Product Category Disputes" option via the confirmation of submission pop-up, then you can navigate to Merchant Dashboard Disputes > Product Category Disputes page. Here, you can click “View details” to see more information of each dispute.

5. What happens after a dispute is resolved?

Once a dispute is submitted and resolved by Wish, the disputed product category may or may not be changed.

If a dispute status is “Resolved - Unchanged,” it means that Wish has reviewed the dispute and determined that the disputed category should remain unchanged. In the dispute details page, merchants will see further explanation from the Wish team in the “Reason” line item as shown below:

If a dispute status is “Resolved - Updated,” it means that Wish has reviewed the dispute and determined that the disputed category should be updated to a new category. Note that the new category may or may not be the one that merchants proposed in the dispute process. 

In addition, if the category update results in a commission adjustment for the product’s corresponding orders, the commission fees of all orders released to merchants within the 14-calendar-day window prior to the dispute submission date will be adjusted. Merchants may view a list of all affected orders on the dispute details page, as shown in the Commission Adjustment section below:

If the category update based on the dispute does NOT impact the commission, the Commission Adjustment section will be blank.

The updated category is used to calculate the commission fee or amount for all applicable orders released after the dispute is resolved.