So I broke down and tried etscsv. They want $7 a month to load CSVs with images. After a about a hour of trial and error (You have hunt down internal shop id #s in url strings for your xls columns). I got it to work.
yes et.sy has always been good about dumping cash into advertising. more so than any other marketplace ive been on. paying fees sucks but at least i know my products get a lot more face time