We have been listing on ebay.com for seven years now and over the years we have got the idea that maybe ebay does not really want us there.
Yesterday I read "A Message from Kristina Klausen - Shipping Update" located in the announcements page of the .com site.
This states that in the next few months all sellers will have to specify shipping costs in each listing.
Now this would not be a problem if you live in the USA but as Canadian sellers this does not work.
I phoned power sellers and talked at length about this problem as it relates to Canadian sellers.
As we all know the shipping cost varies greatly depending on what zip code a parcel is going to.
I was told that we should quote the shipping at the most expensive rate in the shipping cost area and in the description I could give examples of cheaper rates to closer locations in the USA.
Then I was told that with the new Best Match that takes into account the shipping cost that we with a higher shipping cost will be bumped down the list on the search.
I was also told that this would likely result in lower DSR ratings on shipping costs.
Now we know that doing this would be busness suicide so there other suggestion is that I and all Canadian sellers should list on ebay.ca and stop listing on the .com site.
Then we discovered that I and I am sure many of you also have an ebay.com store. This is not transferable to the .ca site so you would have to end your store on .com and open a new one on the .ca site.
And yes you will have to change the name of that store but you can make it very similar to the old one. Well similar names will not search and all the costumers that we have built up over seven years of hard work will be gone. We have also been told that our store has an amazing amount of subscribers and yes we will lose all of them as well.
No there is no way for ebay to flip a store from one site to another we will have to do it manually one listing at a time. We have over 1000 store listings.
About two weeks ago we designed a new format for our listings that you can see in any of our auctions. I phoned power sellers and had them review it so that I would only have to revise all of my items once.
They looked at it and had trust and safety look at it and we passed with flying colors. So we started to change all the listings. Now they tell me that we will have to change it to meet with the new shipping cost specified requirement.
We only charge actual cost for mailing an item. No handling charge whatsoever.
We loose money on every shipment we make after you take into account the paypal fees, cost of packing materials, time and on course the sales tax that we have to pay Canada Post that is not included in the sticker price. Still we have a shipping cost DSR of 4.7. But that is not unusual because if you search "free Shipping" and check the DSR of those that ship for free you find that there DSR on shipping cost vary from 4.1 to about 4.9 I did not find one that had a 5 for shipping even when it is free.
Some how this is all supposed to make sence but I cannot figure out how.
At the end of my talk with power sellers they sent me to a voice mailbox of a manager to see if they could come up with a way around loosing my customer base for my store. This person was going to call me back with some help but as you have probably guessed we have not had that call.
I am hoping that an ebay rep will read this and come up with some suggestions or a way around this new looming problem.
Telling all Canadians to quit listing on .com is not the answer but it looks like it may be ebays answer as it was there suggestion.
And no there will be no credit for the cost of ending a 1000 item store and starting a new one. All the listing fees in the old store (for the month you end your store) will just be gone and you will have new listing fees for the new store. This means that you will be charged twice for one month, loose all your costumers and the years of work you have put into your store. Now that is the way to go.
We have no intention of stopping using ebay as it has always been good for us. We have even been featured in two books on how to do ebay the right way (check our ME page. Recently we have opened an ebay drop centre and are in the process of expanding our busness on the strength of the ebay.com site.
I just do not think it will work on the .ca site and our sales #'s will go down.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and could someone offer any help???
Ron Walker Beansantiques
