Ebay Canada telling USA customers that I do not ship to USA

[mroparts]

Hi there,

I've been experiencing this issue for over 24 months, especially moreso now that the online tax collection for the US came online. I was promised a fix by July 1st, but it is still happening and I am massively losing out on sales.

I offer shipping to the USA from Canada on all of my listings - Currently most of them are free express, or free economy. Ebay is telling my US customer base that "This seller does not ship to your location", even though I do (trust me, I've double checked and had it verified by eBay). I had this problem previously with Calculated shipping costs, so I switched everything to "Free shipping" but this issue still occurs.

Furthermore, when a US customer does purchase and requests a total, I get this message:

"There was a Technical Error, please try again in a moment"

The invoice will still send but I am completely frustrated and tech support has been terrible. Nobody ever calls back with an answer as promised. I estimate that I've lost out on tens of thousands of dollars in sales over the past year, which means eBay is also not collecting. Why is this issue not a priority and how do I make it one?

I'd like to see some sort of resolve, but it looks like I'm going to have to switch to my own platform very soon.

[mroparts]

Those listings do have shipping options to all regions, it's just not showing up on your end.

[mroparts]

Hi tyler@ebay

My issues still persist and I've used flat rate shipping for many months with the same issues presenting themselves. There is not a single shipping option where I do not experience this problem with USA buyers. I just posted and sold a listing today with the same issues: Item 133063045155

[pjcdn2005]

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@mroparts wrote:
Those listings do have shipping options to all regions, it's just not showing up on your end.

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@mroparts 
I'm sure that they do have shipping options but the fact that they are not showing on the listings means that there is a problem. If you go into one of the active listings and change your location in the shipping tab and click on get rates..I would guess that you don't see a shipping cost either.

  The listing that you just mentioned to Tyler also does not have shipping costs for outside of the US.   The most common reason when this happens is due to the service being used or the dimensions. What are the dimensions for item 133063045155 ?   Which service are you using for the US and which service for other countries?  If you give us that information we can either help fix the problem or know that the problem is not being caused the dimensons or service.

[mroparts]

Hi tyler@ebay

I just lost out on a 900 Dollar sale today because of site issues. My Shipping policies are perfect and I've checked them dozens of times. I'm all for suggestions from the community, but this is beyond community support at this point. I keep getting suggestions to check my shipping policies, but I assure everyone that they are indeed OKAY, this is an internal issue that requires investigation.

[pjcdn2005]

Your buyer stated that they were trying to pay with Am Ex but according to the list under payments in your listing, Am Ex isn't an option.  I do see it as an option if the seller is not in Managed Payments.

tyler@ebay  Is there a reason why MP sellers do not have American Express on their payment list. Will Managed Payments sellers be able to accept American Express in the future?

[pjcdn2005]

You could very well be right that the community can't help you. When the majority of sellers are not having problems with their shipping cost showing on their listings but one seller is, the problem usually (not always) is that the listing shipping information is not matching with CP minimums. 

Many of the missing US shipping costs are for seals and other small packages. For example, your 19606 seal is 65mm x 50mm x 8mm

According to Canada Post standards, the minimum dimensions for USA services are:

Small Packet; Tracked Packet  - 140mm x 90mm

Expedited and Xpresspost - 210mm x 140mm

If any of the first 2 dimensions are smaller in your listing, the ebay calculator will not work.  That might not be your problem and I won't mention it again since you have made it clear that the problem is with ebay  but I thought I would do one last post on this subject just in case it is the problem.

Even though the ebay calculator assumes that if the parcel is smaller than the minimum dimensions that service can't be used Canada Post does accept packages if they are smaller which makes the whole subject confusing for some sellers.  The price never goes  lower than what they charge for those 'minimum' packages so Canada Post's 'minimum' seems to be more about price than actual size.  It has always worked like that as long as I have been selling and since ebay seems to have no inclination to change it, sellers need to use the min. dimensions on their listing page even if the package is smaller.

[pjcdn2005]

One last note...

If your smaller items are light in weight..you might want to consider using Tracked Packet instead of Expedited as it can be quite a bit less expensive for lighter packages.

[collectingsmiles]

I don't think that this problem exists for just one seller.  I have had many customers wanting to purchase something listed on ebay.ca, the Canadian site, but, when they go to pay, an error message appears telling them that they cannot purchase "because seller does not ship to your location".  After two years of dealing with ebay on this issue, I am fed up and am now listing on the US site, ebay.com.  Although the Canadian site got a new Head Honcho fairly recently, I don't think he is doing much to satisfy his sellers....and this impacts new buyers as well!!  We all are losing in an economy that cannot afford to lose any more business!!!

[femmefan1946]

@collectingsmiles 

From my quick testing using a Canadian postal code and a US zipcode, many of your items do not have shipping given for the other country.

If this was your plan, that's fine.

But if you want to ship to the USA, and are listing on dotCA, you have to specify a shipping cost to the USA or the listing won't show on dotCOM.

And if you want to ship to Canada, and are listing on dotCOM, you have to specify a shipping cost to Canada  or the listing won't show on dotCA.

It is possible that these are listings that have been relisted fairly often and have had slippage in the specifications.

Take time to review the listings from the Revise Listing link.

[pjcdn2005]

@collectingsmiles 

There are definitely glitches on both .ca and .com and I have heard of a few different problems lately specifically with checkout. But for listings originating on .ca using the shipping calculator the majority of problems are caused because the dimensions entered on the calculator do not match the minimum dimensions posted by Canada Post for that service....mainly  expedited parcel USA.  

The last time you posted you indicated that you were having problems and I suggested that we look at one listing  and see if we could figure it out.  Perhaps the dimensions aren’t your problem but there is no way of knowing for sure unless you check.  I do know that the customer service reps have very little knowledge about how the .com calculator works and zero knowledge about the .ca calculator so they aren’t going to know if it is an user input problem or a system problem.

I see that you still have some listings on .ca but none of them have a shipping cost other than for Canadians.  Do you have a US service picked out for your .ca listings but the calculator is not working?  Most of us sell more to US buyers than to Canadians so if you do not want help seeing if it is a calculator problem you might want to list a flat rate like you do on your US listings.   Some buyers are not going to want to contact a seller and wait for a cost so not having a shipping cost can result in losing sales.  

jmo but I think that for items like yours that vary on size and weight using calculated shipping is best as then buyers anywhere that you ship to know right away what their shipping cost will be.  If there is a shipping cost listed and then buyers can not make the purchase it probably is a system issue but unless there are a lot of reports about specific problems, it’s best to look at the information being inputted before assuming that the problem is on ebays end.

[pjcdn2005]

Since the listings do specify that they ship to the other country those listings should show on the other site but in sone cases listings without a shipping cost show at the very end of search.

ebay seems to change their settings...for a while items without a shipping cost were unlikely to show on another site but I have noticed lately that they are being shown.

[collectingsmiles]

Hi there!

I've had problems with this "error message" for over a year now, so don't hold your breath!  I don't know why ebay.ca does not seem to care---they should just eliminate this message entirely as I don't know why they would ever need to use it anyway.  I've just had 2 sales from US customers die because they could not go through the Canadian check-out and, when I relisted their items on the American site, they did not follow through on purchasing for whatever reason.  One reason may be that they could not access my items by going to ebay.ca/collectingsmiles.  When I've referred potential customers there, they could not see any of my listings.  I cannot even estimate how much revenue I've lost because of ebay and you would think they would want their cut of our sales (which is another matter altogether!).  How do you direct your potentials to view your listings?  Any suggestions would be appreciated as I approach fiscal ruin!!

[ypdc_dennis]

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@collectingsmiles wrote
...  they could not access my items by going to ebay.ca/collectingsmiles.  When I've referred potential customers there, they could not see any of my listings.  ...

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The link should be:

https://www.ebay.ca/sch/collectingsmiles/m.html

or https://www.ebay.com/sch/collectingsmiles/m.html

[pjcdn2005]

@collectingsmiles 

You have some very cool items for sale!

None of your .ca listings appear to have a shipping cost showing to US buyers so that is why they are unable to check out.  It might be an easy fix but we need some information from you first.  

For item 133121131125 what service have  you selected for shipping to the US?  By service I mean tracked packet USA, expedited parcel etc...

What service for other international countries?

What are the weight and dimensions that you’ve entered for that listing? 

[mroparts · Accepted solution]

Hey neighbours! I found a solution that worked for me and I hope it works for you! When shipping with Canada Post, especially stateside, there must be a minimum parcel size or this error message that you do not ship to your buyers may occur. Previously I had some parcels registering at 15x15x15cm and this was too small. I used the bulk edit tool to change the parcel size on eevrything in our store to a default of 21x21x21cm and we have not had the errors for buyers since we made this change. If you are concerned that this may increse the shipping cost to buyers, you can add a shipping discount to blanket either domestic or international orders. In our case, setting the domestic discount to 20% seemed to balance the rates with our current discounts with Canada post.

I hope this helps you! It took me a few years to find this solution so please let me know if this works for you.

Happy selling!

Bulk Edit ToolEdit package details