Retirement of USD from eBay.ca Selling Flows

[raphael@ebay.com]

Hello Canadian sellers,

This thread is open for discussion regarding the recent announcement about eBay Canada retiring USD support from its selling flows. Myself and other employees will come visit this thread and do our best to answer any questions on this topic.

[rainbow71113]

I changed over as soon as they started charging the new subscription amount, had I known that I could have been paying the same amount for years without the exchange rate I would have changed years ago

[rainbow71113]

so ebay has sent out a message saying for us NOT to put our stores on vacation that they will alert buyers as to the postal disruption.

That answers the questions about whether or not we would suffer defects however it puts a damper on sellers who have a back up service like chitchatexpress in place to handle US and international sales.  I'm concerned that I'm going to lose buyers because I can't make them aware that I will still be able to ship.  Any ideas anyone?  Currently I have my store on visible item vacation and have a note on the store page about my service to the US/international destinations but if I take my store off vacation I lose that notice as well

[alison333]

Hi Rainbow.  Yes, I got notice re Can Post 'service disruption' too.  Been a worry.  I know they are saying here that they will 'let buyers know' about it, no penalties for Cdn sellers re slow shipping... so hey gang, don't worry be happy!

BUT, I don't care, sorry.  Will US/any buyers outside of Canada care and/or read it all/understand Can Post strike??  (I've had 2 buyers give me 4 stars re 'slow shipping' lately... when I've sent out their packages Air Fast/within 12 hrs of their payment.  Good grief!)  So somehow I doubt it 😞   Shudder to think what they'd rate if it took ages to get to them?!?

So I'm going to err on the side of caution and not list anything until this is all sorted out, in July I guess/hopefully!  Even though I don't have a big store or anything as other posters may, I fear the consequences of a slew of negative fb or low star ratings, even tho' completely outside of my control.  And 'explained' by eBay.

My two cents to you for what that's worth nowadays, lol  🙂    Have a great weekend and best regards,  Alison

[rainbow71113]

you won't have to worry about defects, I had 6 removed at Christmas for the same reason-Canada Post said they couldn't  handle the amount of mail.  I've put all my listings at 3 day handling time and use small packet/light packet for US/international for the longest duration of shipping time and most of my feedback mentions how fast it came, of course they see probably a week of travel time more

than actual now...but any bit helps.  As for buyers reading it, I suspect a lot have since I've gone from 7 sales a day to 1,,,,!!  I was wondering why my sales were so low...I wish ebay would say to the buyers....please contact the seller to see if they have any other arrangements in place, lots of Canadian sellers live near the US border and can travel across.  

[sleco69]

Again, Ebay don't help us by putting these estimated delivery time tonight friday July.1st at 11hpm:

Calculated on my own postal code, like if I ship to my neighbour.  I am in Montréal. H1G

Expedited shipping Estimated time delivery 12 to 18 business days  (should be 1-7 days)

Regular shipping  Estimated time delivery 13 to 21 business days (should be 2-8 days)

Xpresspost shipping  Estimated time delivery 12 to 14 business days (should be 1-4days)

[pierrelebel]

I suspect eBay has already made some changes to delivery times to take a postal strike into account.

See the announcement board for details.

[sleco69]

A 9h25 smaedi matin le 7juillet, les opérations de CPC fonctionnent.

Current CPC operations are working, as of 9h25 july.02nd.

[pierrelebel]

Yes but eBay does not work for the Post Office.

They are taking steps to protect sellers by giving longer delivery times.

See their announcement.

[sleco69]

It's a pain !!

When I create item ad on .com, item location should be in the US.  Putting Canada will block automatically shipping calculator.

However, for international shipment, I can not use the same flat rate to ship to Canada than Australia....as both destination are considered as International....Rate for Australia and for France, are differents.  How can I put a flat rate when cost varies from location to another.  Packadge size:  50x36x26cm, weight: 5.41kg.

[sleco69]

This is not protecting buyers, this make buyers run away from our items....with BOLD mention:  Item delivery is over 15 business days....

There is no strike or lockout for now....

Why applying this restriction on our items, just "in-the-event-of"....

Due to this another move of restriction, Ebay should delayed the update of USD/CAD items to Januaray 2017.

[rick31797]

This was not a surprise, you could feel it coming, most listing on the CA site were in USD funds, Ebay says it was 50/50 which i have never seen..Nearly everything i search for was in USD, why would anybody list in CA at 30 % exchange, doesnt even make since.

   So Ebay is trying to look after there buyers, the hell with the sellers.., i doubt very much i will be using Ebay.ca again..as pretty well all of my sales were USA..

One thing about Ebay, once they make a change, thats it no matter what happens they will stick with it, look at the Global shipping, i have yet to buy anything that has that listing....its still there.....

Ebay can do what they like the Canadian site will not get any better with the changes..

There will now be less Canadian sellers, so that means it will be harder to find a specific item, it was hard before....so now what will happen is sales for US sellers will increase and sales for Canadian sellers will decrease...even more....

All the Ebay thinkers sitting around the table cannot fore-see this, incredible lack of vision.. 

[pierrelebel]

"why would anybody list in CA at 30 % exchange, doesnt even make since."

I am a very experienced eBay seller (over 106,000 transactions) and have been listing on eBay.ca in Cdn$ for fifteen years (and on eBay.com in US$).  Both sites/currencies work about the same.

The exchange rate is largely irrelevant if a seller knows what he is doing.

If an item is worth US$100 (for example) on a worldwide basis, a Canadian seller listing in Cdn$ would list at Cdn$ 130.  It is that simple.

A British seller would do the same in Sterling on eBay.uk while the German seller would do the same on eBay.de in euro.

Nobody in their right mind ever suggested that Canadians should sell their products with a 30% discount (based on current exchange rate differential).

Take a look at all your listings (in US$) in the last three months.  How many actually sold?  Do you think it would have been worse if they had been priced in equivalent Cdn$ (US$100 = Cdn$ 130)?  I think not.

[gs44444]

Hello,

I used to sell 2000$ to 4000$ each month for the past five years. I haven't sell anything since that announcement!

Am i the only one in this situation?

[pierrelebel]

A quick look at your sold listings shows sales of about $3,000 since early May.  All of them in US$.

[my-june]

No, you're not alone!

Over the past year and half my sales have dropped off considerably.

I don't know why ~ I gave up trying to find the answer.

I've lowered prices, tried to keep low shipping, nothing works.

But it is what it is ~ I haven't as yet migrated my listing to .com as I'm just taking a short break to recoup my thoughts.

Right now I have some 'leftover' usd listings and a few cad listings ~ just "testing the waters"

My sales were never as high as yours per month as I list on a smaller scale but I noticed a drastic change about 1.5 years ago.

Wish I knew what caused this, but you're not alone ~ there are many of us in the same situation.

Perhaps some of the decline is due to so many 'other' sites popping up for sellers?

Hang in there!

[pierrelebel]

"Wish I knew what caused this"

Maybe I can help.

I took a quick look at your recent listings (last three months)

256 auction style listings = 12 sales

252 fixed price listings (Buy it Now) = 68 sales

This pretty well summarizes what has been happening on eBay (and other similar sites) over the last many years.  With a few exceptions, buyers have generally moved away from auction style listings and prefer the ability to buy and pay immediately for what they want.  That is how e-commerce works today.  This is how eBay works today with over 90% of all listings offered at fixed prices, not auction.

If you were to concentrate on listing at fixed price only (buy-it-now) your sell through rate would definitely be higher, based on your experience of the last three months.

Good Luck

PS - I should add that if you want to list using auction style, use a ten day duration, not five days.  Listing fee is the same.

[arkh_angel]

Same here.

Doubled number of items for sale (thanks to their 1-quadrillion free listings offers) and still struggling to even be on par with previous months since the announcement.

Plus, there is some tendency that go completely against their "studies":

- Before the announcement: 90% USA buyers, 9% Canadians, 1% International

- After the announcement: 66% Canadians, 33% USA

Starting in April, the more listings I converted to CAD, the more the shift in sales was obvious.

As everyone knows, expensive things won't be bought by Canadians (or very, very rarely). So even though I sell more item to fellow canucks, the sum of their purchases doesn't make up for the losses in USA purchases. Not at all.

And I'm not even talking about the Canada Post conflict that literally brought sales to an halt (if people are not scared because of the strike, they are because of the extreme delivery delays).

The bottom line is I have more work maintaining more listings that doesn't sell in the end, to see only small and inexpensive things sold in Canada and the sum of my monthly sales slowly going down the drain.

I may well go in the hassle of converting my listings to .com in the near future, seeing how well it went selling in CAD in the past months *GRIN*.

[pierrelebel]

arkh_angel  -

Congratulations on reaching 1,000 feedback rating!

[arkh_angel]

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@pierrelebel wrote:

@arkh_angel

Congratulations on reaching 1,000 feedback rating!

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Thank you! Never thought I would ever reach that point someday when I started as a buyer 13 years ago.

[sleco69]

As of July.13...first try of the tool....19items to convert to .ca

1st time I click confirm & save, nothing happens.... I refresh the page, reselect items, click confirm & save again, new draft listings have been created.  when I follow the link to go into draft listings, nothing appears.  Do it 2 times, nothing more.  

Still nothing after 10-minutes...

any idea?  may be Pierre ?