Hello Canadian eBayers,
We'll be holding our weekly chat today as usually scheduled. Please start posting at your convenience, we will join you at 1 PM Eastern.
Here is the eBay/FedEx offer link:
https://www.fedex.com/fcl/ALL?enrollmentid=eb16566114&country=ca&language=en
Good morning
Policy questions for you today.
1) Once upon a time, eBay had a very specific rules against sellers contacting buyers to question or discuss DSRs left by buyers. This morning I looked and looked and looked but could not find the written policy. Could you please confirm and post a link.
2) Also could not find the written policy against sellers charging eBay and PayPal fees to buyers. Could you please confirm and post the relevant link.
@rockp5233 wrote:
Hi,
Few questions about the FEDEX offer received from ebay yesterday ;
If we sign in with this offer, can we select under which carrier (CPC or FEDEX) item shipping will be offer ?
If we sign in with this offer, can we still offer buyers shipping choice, i.e. FEDEX, CPC, or others ?
... try to go over the Q&A but it still not clear.
Thanks !
Hello rockp5233,
Joining the FedEx program simply allows you to use their special eBay pricing. You can still offer any shipping service(s) you like on your listing.
Hi Raphael, and belated Happy New Year! I have a couple of questions (to start) 
1) This question may have been asked and answered previously, but I can't seem to find it. Can you confirm whether the "Ship to 34 Countries Worldwide" seller protection applies fully to Canadian sellers as well?
2) Is there any hope on the horizon with respect to the .com/ca cart incompatibility problem? I am still seeing my U.S. buyers picking items one-by-one on a multiple item order, and I'm still unable to "combine" them on my end. This results in time-wasting shipping refunds, and is doubtless losing many Cdn sellers a lot of potential multiple U.S. sales. I'm really getting dismayed that this has not be dealt with as a priority (i.e. making checkout work properly - this is after all, an online selling venue).
3) Related to the above, it appears that sometime in the past few months my pre-set automated shipping discount rule stopped working (around the time the "cart" icon appeared on .ca). In recent tests with it, it appears it isn't even working properly for Cdn buyers. It was working perfectly, for Cdn and U.S. buyers up until the summer of 2014, as I had quite a number of customers taking advantage of it. Since then, nothing. I realize you may not know the underlying programming issues, but I'm sure this must be affecting other Cdn sellers who use the automated shipping discounts. We really could use some help here.
Hi rose-dee,
rose-dee wrote:1) This question may have been asked and answered previously, but I can't seem to find it. Can you confirm whether the "Ship to 34 Countries Worldwide" seller protection applies fully to Canadian sellers as well?
Confirmed!
@rose-dee wrote:
2) Is there any hope on the horizon with respect to the .com/ca cart incompatibility problem? I am still seeing my U.S. buyers picking items one-by-one on a multiple item order, and I'm still unable to "combine" them on my end. This results in time-wasting shipping refunds, and is doubtless losing many Cdn sellers a lot of potential multiple U.S. sales. I'm really getting dismayed that this has not be dealt with as a priority (i.e. making checkout work properly - this is after all, an online selling venue).
Unfortunately I don't have any news on this topic. What we need to keep in mind is that this is not a small fix. What is essentially needed is a full rebuild of the US shopping cart if it's going to be able to handle items listed on eBay.ca or from any other eBay site. The US team knows this needs to be done, we just don't have a date committed to yet.
If this is something you can fit into your business model, one thing that would work in the meantime would be to list your items on eBay.com. That would mean you couldn't use calculated shipping however, but if that was an acceptable trade of for you, you may want to consider doing this. Perhaps moving to a free shipping model might work? You seem to already be offering this on some of your items.
@rose-dee wrote:
3) Related to the above, it appears that sometime in the past few months my pre-set automated shipping discount rule stopped working (around the time the "cart" icon appeared on .ca). In recent tests with it, it appears it isn't even working properly for Cdn buyers. It was working perfectly, for Cdn and U.S. buyers up until the summer of 2014, as I had quite a number of customers taking advantage of it. Since then, nothing. I realize you may not know the underlying programming issues, but I'm sure this must be affecting other Cdn sellers who use the automated shipping discounts. We really could use some help here.
I'm going to need a bit more info here. Are you able to drop me an email with what rules specificly aren't working, and add any details you might have on real life cases (buyer and item IDs would be a great start), what the expected site behavior was versus what actually happened, etc.
Thanks!
EDIT: Forgot to add Happy New Year!
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@rose-dee wrote:3) Related to the above, it appears that sometime in the past few months my pre-set automated shipping discount rule stopped working (around the time the "cart" icon appeared on .ca). In recent tests with it, it appears it isn't even working properly for Cdn buyers. It was working perfectly, for Cdn and U.S. buyers up until the summer of 2014, as I had quite a number of customers taking advantage of it. Since then, nothing. I realize you may not know the underlying programming issues, but I'm sure this must be affecting other Cdn sellers who use the automated shipping discounts. We really could use some help here.
I'm going to need a bit more info here. Are you able to drop me an email with what rules specificly aren't working, and add any details you might have on real life cases (buyer and item IDs would be a great start), what the expected site behavior was versus what actually happened, etc.
Yes, I can certainly do that. My eBay friend 'pj' was experimenting with trying to put various items in the .ca cart and wasn't getting the expected results. I'll try to find the specifics and will be in touch. I've just assumed that because the .ca/.com cart disconnect still exists, my promotional shipping won't work for U.S. customers. Unfortunately they make up 90% of my sales, so fixing the automated rule functioning on .ca won't make much of a difference for me. 
Listing on .com is, I suppose, the only real answer for the time being, but it would involve a huge makeover for my shipping (I use flat rate). It's taken me a couple of years to sort out shipping issues on .ca and I'm not keen to start all over again. I guess I'll just keep waiting and hoping.
@rose-dee wrote:
Listing on .com is, I suppose, the only real answer for the time being, but it would involve a huge makeover for my shipping (I use flat rate). It's taken me a couple of years to sort out shipping issues on .ca and I'm not keen to start all over again. I guess I'll just keep waiting and hoping.
The work you did to figure out flat rate for your .ca listing is 100% transferrable to .com. There will be some small adjustments required, but we can help you with this offline if you would like. What would have been really complicated is if you had been using calculated shipping.
@pocomocomputing wrote:That can be said for many issues with eBay.ca that have never been fixed (for example, checking for shipping dimensions in the SYI for calculated shipping).
It certainly can, 'poco' ! Which begs another question -- why has it taken so many years to get a major site whose primary purpose ostensibly is to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers, actually do that properly?
My view is that far, far too much focus, and time, has been wasted on making things look "new" and pretty, and dreaming up new policies every few months, that could have been spent making the site actually function reliably.
Hardly a day goes by when there isn't some sort of essential issue mentioned on the boards or elsewhere.
I'm afraid my frustration level is getting pretty high. I'd better stop now or I'll say something I'll regret later. 
@rose-dee wrote:
@pocomocomputing wrote:
That can be said for many issues with eBay.ca that have never been fixed (for example, checking for shipping dimensions in the SYI for calculated shipping).
It certainly can, 'poco' ! Which begs another question -- why has it taken so many years to get a major site whose primary purpose ostensibly is to facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers, actually do that properly?
My view is that far, far too much focus, and time, has been wasted on making things look "new" and pretty, and dreaming up new policies every few months, that could have been spent making the site actually function reliably.
Hardly a day goes by when there isn't some sort of essential issue mentioned on the boards or elsewhere.
I'm afraid my frustration level is getting pretty high. I'd better stop now or I'll say something I'll regret later.
Hi rose-dee.
I hear your frustration loud and clear. There are days when your friendly neighbourhood pinks get frustrated too.
For transparency, when we learn of a problem that is bothering buyers or sellers (or both, as in this case), my team finds the team that owns that particular part of the site, and we make them aware of the problem. On a larger problem like this, we also size the impact, share customer stories (like this thread), and work with our developer counterparts to figure out what it would take to fix a given problem and where we might be able to get that work done.
While my team is doing that, if it's a big issue and not immediately on track for resolution, then I bring it to senior management in the US as well. If it is too big to address easily, we find a project touching the same code that we can slide our fix into.
For things that are large and difficult to fix like the need to upgrade the .com cart, they get prioritized against other needs and opportunities until they get to the top. We keep at it until we are successful. That's what's been happening here.
The prioritization process doesn't pit making the site work vs. making it pretty, though I can appreciate it looks that way at times from the outside in. Projects get prioritized based on how we think they can best accelerate the process of connecting buyers and sellers and to create more global ecommerce transactions. In other words, we do things based on how we think we can best serve our customers and our shareholders with the resources we have, as best we can.
Do we get it right on any given planning cycle? Heavens no. We try things that fail, and launch improvements that are more like "enworsenments" from time to time. But no one is running away from fixing real customer issues so that we can make the site pretty - there's a lot more complexity to running the world's first, largest and most venerable ecommerce site.
I don't blame you for being frustrated though. I work very hard to make sure that decision makers at headquarters understand Canadian needs and issues and the business cases attached to them at all times. Just no luck on this one yet.
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