eBay

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-04-2015

Hello Canadian eBayers,

We're back again for our weekly chat. Please go ahead and start posting at your convenience, we will join you shortly around 1 PM Eastern.

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎02-04-2015

raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@rose-dee wrote:
Everyone here agrees that we need to get the US cart team to make the necessary modifications to allow Canadian items into the cart, but as Rodney explained, getting this prioritized has been really difficult.

I recall Rodney's explanation, and I'm sorry to have to harp on this subject, but what I don't understand about the .com/.ca cart problem is why the cart was introduced on .ca in the first place, before eBay was certain it would be fully functional.

Prior to the time when the cart icon began appearing on .ca pages, my U.S. buyers were happily making multiple/combined purchases, and I was able to see them as combined invoices at my end. Why can't eBay.ca remove the cart and return to the previous, functional checkout processes until they can be sure the thing will work?

My category of items relies on and attracts multiple purchases. The very few I get now are from U.S. buyers who are obviously resourceful and persistent enough to buy one item at a time, back out, then buy the next. Who knows how many others have tried and given up? This is a very serious issue from Canadian sellers' viewpoint.

Oh yes, and now, in addition to having made it harder for our U.S. customers to buy more than one item at a time from us, our competition within Canada will soon be made worse once the U.K. visibility change occurs. I'd call that a 1-2 punch, wouldn't you?
Hi rose-dee,

I sense some confusion here. Before I go any further: the shopping cart on eBay.ca works perfectly fine and any buyer from anywhere in the world can put any item from anywhere in the world in it. There are no problems with the Canadian shopping cart, in fact, it would be the perfect solution if all your buyers simply used eBay.ca and its shopping cart to buy your items.

The US shopping cart is another story. It was built to only take items listed on eBay.com. At the time, that didn't present any problems, it was a product designed to serve the US market only. In that regard, it sill works fine. The only people negatively impacted by the US cart limitations are sellers who list on other sites than eBay.com AND offer combined shipping discounts. Changing this to list on eBay.com would solve this problem, as we explained 2 weeks ago.

Lastly, I just would like to point out that even though the eBay.ca shop^ping cart works for all buyers for all items, buyers are still not forced to use it. The old checkout is still there for anyone to use.
So who is going to inform millions and millions of ebay users to purchase items from Canadian sellers though ebay.ca. They purchase through the site they are registered on.

Changing this to list on eBay.com would solve this problem, easy enough said. We don`t have the time to spend adjusting listings from calculated to flat rate. That would take us weeks of not months.

The old checkout results in the same errors with one item when left and returned to show unavailable and adding more than one item results in the first item to show unavailable and if left and returned to both will show as unavailable etc. Proceed to checkout does not function when one or more item shows unavailable.

rose-dee · ‎02-04-2015

raphael@ebay.com wrote:
The only people negatively impacted by the US cart limitations are sellers who list on other sites than eBay.com AND offer combined shipping discounts.

Aside from recommending that Cdn sellers list on .com rather than .ca as a "workaround" (which to me sounds like a completely absurd solution to the problem, and which I'm not prepared to do), are you saying that if, for example, I drop my automated shipping discounts, my U.S. buyers will be able to use the cart function perfectly?

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-04-2015

@rose-dee wrote:
1) I realize that eBay believes that buyers on .ca should be able to use the .ca shopping cart perfectly, but recent experiments showed that this is not so. It is apparently (no longer?) seamless with shipping discounts. I can provide you with examples when I have a moment.

If there is anything broken with the Canadian shopping cart, please, by all means send me your report. I use it every day and have yet to encounter any problems.

@rose-dee wrote:
2) Secondly, for many Cdn sellers, U.S. buyers are the biggest percentage of their business. Are you somehow saying eBay (or Cdn sellers) might be able to educate all those buyers in advance that if they're buying from a Cdn, they should log onto .ca? Is that really going to happen? Not a chance, I'd think. Further, how many U.S. buyers are going to bother contacting a Cdn seller if they're having trouble purchasing? No, the real problem occurs when U.S. buyers on .com try, fail, and give up and go elsewhere (to .com sellers no doubt).

I'm certainly not saying that. All I said was it would work if US buyers used the Canadian shopping cart.

@rose-dee wrote:
3) Thirdly, my experience has been that even U.S. buyers purchasing just 2 or 3 items have problems (my automated shipping discount only applies to 5 items or more purchased at one time). So I am dubious about your statement that: "The only people negatively impacted by the US cart limitations are sellers who list on other sites than eBay.com AND offer combined shipping discounts."

I can't speak to the behavior of all buyers on the site, but I know the eBay product well enough to know the statement I made above is true.

@rose-dee wrote:
4) Fourthly, as I said, for some reason both my combined item features and my discounts were working perfectly for a period of time, for both U.S. and Cdn buyers. Why did that stop?

I would need more specific details to answer this. Feel free to email me.

@rose-dee wrote:
5) Lastly, why should Cdn sellers have to list on .com in order to make the essential function of a commercial site work? It defies belief.

As stated above, only Canadian sellers who need US buyers to be able to combine their items for shipping and list using flat rate shipping would benefit from this solution. That's far from the majority.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-04-2015

@rose-dee wrote:

raphael@ebay.com wrote:

The only people negatively impacted by the US cart limitations are sellers who list on other sites than eBay.com AND offer combined shipping discounts.

Aside from recommending that Cdn sellers list on .com rather than .ca as a "workaround" (which to me sounds like a completely absurd solution to the problem, and which I'm not prepared to do), are you saying that if, for example, I drop my automated shipping discounts, my U.S. buyers will be able to use the cart function perfectly?

No. My statement above should only be taken at face value. I was merely stating which group of Canadian sellers are impacted by the US shopping cart limitations.

If you dropped all your combined shipping discounts, US buyers still wouldn't be able to put your items in the US shopping cart, but it would make no difference, because you wouldn't be offering them combined shipping discounts even if they could put your items in the shopping cart.

rose-dee · ‎02-04-2015

raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@rose-dee wrote:
5) Lastly, why should Cdn sellers have to list on .com in order to make the essential function of a commercial site work? It defies belief.
As stated above, only Canadian sellers who need US buyers to be able to combine their items for shipping and list using flat rate shipping would benefit from this solution. That's far from the majority.

I can't believe that such sellers would not actually make up a majority of Canadian sellers.

This statement seems to completely contradict what we've been told previously, i.e. that the majority of sellers now use flat rate shipping. And I would think that the majority of Cdn sellers would like to have multiple purchases that can be combined for shipping!

I'm sorry, I'm just shaking my head in disbelief at this point.

When I have some time I will send you what examples I still have of the problems I mentioned above.

rose-dee · ‎02-04-2015

raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@rose-dee wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
The only people negatively impacted by the US cart limitations are sellers who list on other sites than eBay.com AND offer combined shipping discounts.

Aside from recommending that Cdn sellers list on .com rather than .ca as a "workaround" (which to me sounds like a completely absurd solution to the problem, and which I'm not prepared to do), are you saying that if, for example, I drop my automated shipping discounts, my U.S. buyers will be able to use the cart function perfectly?
No. My statement above should only be taken at face value. I was merely stating which group of Canadian sellers are impacted by the US shopping cart limitations.

If you dropped all your combined shipping discounts, US buyers still wouldn't be able to put your items in the US shopping cart, but it would make no difference, because you wouldn't be offering them combined shipping discounts even if they could put your items in the shopping cart.

Huhhh???

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎02-04-2015

Buyer purchases one item leaves "cart" and returns on ebay.com...

Buyer purchases one item continues shopping adds and additional item on ebay.com...

Buyer purchases one item continues shopping adds and additional item leaves cart and returns on ebay.com...

We are paying fees for listing items that are unavailable!!!

rose-dee · ‎02-04-2015

raphael@ebay.com wrote:
No. My statement above should only be taken at face value. I was merely stating which group of Canadian sellers are impacted by the US shopping cart limitations.

If you dropped all your combined shipping discounts, US buyers still wouldn't be able to put your items in the US shopping cart, but it would make no difference, because you wouldn't be offering them combined shipping discounts even if they could put your items in the shopping cart.

I appreciate your attempt to answer my questions, but I think we're getting even more tangled up.

Are we talking about automated shipping discounts or the ability to combine invoices? Please understand that I'm not even currently able to combine an order for a U.S. customer who purchases 2 or 3 items (my automated shipping promo is for 5 or more items purchased at a time). This problem is relatively recent, i.e. a few months ago I was able to combine orders at my end.

Truthfully, I have little idea of what's happening at my U.S. buyer's end now. The only thing I can say is that they're not making multi-item purchases on one order anymore, and almost no 5-item discounts.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-04-2015

@rose-dee wrote:

raphael@ebay.com wrote:

@rose-dee wrote:

raphael@ebay.com wrote:

The only people negatively impacted by the US cart limitations are sellers who list on other sites than eBay.com AND offer combined shipping discounts.

Aside from recommending that Cdn sellers list on .com rather than .ca as a "workaround" (which to me sounds like a completely absurd solution to the problem, and which I'm not prepared to do), are you saying that if, for example, I drop my automated shipping discounts, my U.S. buyers will be able to use the cart function perfectly?

No. My statement above should only be taken at face value. I was merely stating which group of Canadian sellers are impacted by the US shopping cart limitations.

If you dropped all your combined shipping discounts, US buyers still wouldn't be able to put your items in the US shopping cart, but it would make no difference, because you wouldn't be offering them combined shipping discounts even if they could put your items in the shopping cart.

Huhhh???

Sorry, I know it's complicated 🙂

Removing your combined shipping discounts wouldn't solve anything.

Currently, US buyers need to use the shopping cart to combine items into the same order. Canadian items with combined shipping discounts cannot be put into the US cart, as a result, US buyers cannot combine Canadian items.

If you removed all combined shipping discounts, US buyers wouldn't see any difference and still wouldn't be able to put your items in the cart.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎02-04-2015

@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:

Buyer purchases one item leaves "cart" and returns on ebay.com...

Buyer purchases one item continues shopping adds and additional item on ebay.com...

Buyer purchases one item continues shopping adds and additional item leaves cart and returns on ebay.com...

We are paying fees for listing items that are unavailable!!!

Items that are put in the cart but not actually purchased should incur no fees except the insertion fees (the fees to put items up for sale. Buyers can still purchase your items without using the cart, or on eBay.ca.