w~~_7.JPG "pjcdn2005"){kind=avatar}
Sorry, I couldn't get the image sized properly up above and ran out of editing time. Here's the result I got (you may not be able to see it as the print is so small, but there's no discount/free shipping for the 5 items):
I'm puzzled here... I do not have to pay extra fees if I receive a payment from a Canadian buyer in USD... and all my items are in USD. I only have to pay 3.9% + $0.30 (instead of 2.9% + $0.30) if I receive a payment from buyers outside of Canada and USA.
Look to your Sales Reports. On the months where I have multiple sales overseas, my paypal fees jump an additional one per cent. (See below.)
| Net PayPal fees as % sales | December 4.5% | January 3.7% | February 4.6% |
That is on money coming in but what about how you spend it? When the USD lands in your paypal account, how do you use it? If you withdraw it to a CAD account, you lose percentage in the conversion. Any time that you have to deal with the conversion of a currency, it costs you. You'd be losing valuable percentages on withdrawing the money to use it as Canadian currency. If you spend it as USD on ebay.com without taking it from your paypal account first, you might be okay.
To Rose-dee: I'm going to look through some other items in your cart to see if I can re-create your error. This whole thing with the shopping cart is most headache-inding, you're right. Americans were never my biggest buyers but people from overseas are. (Or were.)
Now, I had no idea how to post a whole pic right in the thread like you do so I always added it as an attachment below. Right beneath the place I'm typing right now, there is a boldface Attachments and Choose File button, between the text box and Cancel Post buttons. I hope you are not snowed under as I write.
Attachments
Choose File
"I'm simply going to remove my automated discount and do it manually if buyers purchase 5 items"
There is a much easier solution.
Make all extra purchases from the same buyer FREE (when combined on one payment).
Buyer pays only one shipping charge on the first purchase.
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
May I ask what these legitimate reasons are? I remember you saying something about the shipping angle but that would be fairly simple as you ship flat rate. If it is just because you feel you shouldn't have to...that's your decision. But since you are the most vocal on the problem and since you have stated numerous times that the majority of your buyers are in the U.S. and that you used to have many multi purchases, I would think that changing to .com would be best for your business right now. If it is a matter of the time it would take to change, well it would probably take less time than what you have spent posting on here about it, especially since we have no idea what the eta of a fix is. You have to do what you feel is best of course but I am curious what your reasoning is.
I don't think sarcasm is necessary to ask me a simple question, but I'll answer it as clearly as I can:
The vast majority of my buyers are American (well over 90%). This might seem to you to be a good reason for me to alter my business practices. However, I generally don't do things without looking at them rationally. I don't list on .ca out of mere loyalty to eBay.ca, but rather because it does in fact suit and support my business model. I'm setting out those reasons here not to convince you (since you seem to have decided you know best what might work for my business), but because it might help some other sellers to consider these factors before making the decision to list on .com or not.
So, I list on eBay.ca by choice and by preference because:
1) I am able to use Canada Post service options in my listings. There are several advantages to this for me:
(a) These display as such to my U.S. buyers in the Shipping tab on listings, as well as at the very top of the listing, where the shipping amount is displayed (reminding them where they are purchasing from);
(b) My US buyers receive Canada Post shipping updates on tracked items (another reminder that I'm not in the USA). Why is this important? Because I want to avoid defects as far as possible relating to shipping times and INR from my US buyers, who might otherwise assume they're buying domestically, or expect domestic shipping times.
(c) I'm able to pick and choose the different types of services I need on different listings, and where chosen, the premium services are displayed accurately in the listing, not simply as a generic "international shipping" amount. I quite often use Expedited USA and Xpresspost for larger, more valuable items, and I like my buyers to be reminded through the whole process, that their seller is shipping from Canada, and what service they are getting. This also serves as a "background" reminder that Customs may be involved.
(d) The Canada Post shipping designations follow through the whole process, from the Shipping tab, to the invoice, to the shipping label and in the follow-up on the eBay/Paypal transaction details. This not only serves as a reminder to buyers, but also makes my job easier when it comes to record-keeping, accounting and price setting on shipping.
(e) Although I do use flat rate, I subsidize almost all shipping to the US, and I adjust those rates at times. Having only the shipping amounts shown in my records is no help unless I can also easily see the associated shipping type/service used. This allows me to quickly and easily compare to the current Canada Post shipping rates from year to year for the various services.
(f) I've invested a lot of time fine-tuning my Canada Post rates -- a lot. I simply don't want to have to spend the same amount of time working out strategies for shipping rates on .com and adjusting to a whole new pack of issues.
2) There is no assurance that, having spent time re-doing all my listings on .com, that the Cart there will function perfectly. There have been reports on the .com boards about US buyer/seller issues using the Cart, just as we've found out with our Cdn/Cdn tests. Secondly, I don't want to switch all my listings and find out a month later than eBay has finally announced the problem has been fixed. I will always prefer to list on the .ca site for the reasons set out in 1) above, so I would want to return to .ca anyway, i.e. double the work.
3) I prepare a number of my listings using the French SYI form on the .cafr site in order to benefit from the subtitles. This is important for some of my products because it saves me money on items I want to highlight that are otherwise slower sellers. As far as I know, free subtitles aren't available on .com.
4) I actually prefer the whole set-up of the eBay.ca site - This may not be a good reason for a lot of people, but it is for me.
5) I sell some items in the media category - My understanding is that there are shipping limits domestically in the US that could apply if I were to list on .com. This is a minor consideration, but one more headache I really don't want to have to deal with after the fact.
6) I received a warning from a very experienced, higher-volume seller: Almost immediately after Raphael's suggestion of listing on .com, I got a message from a much higher volume seller than I, warning me that they had switched their tens of thousands of listings to the US site and were still encountering all sorts of checkout problems, and problems with shipping rate limits. His strong advice was not to do it, but to wait for eBay to fix the cart issues. Whether or not this seller's situation was comparable to mine, it was enough, along with my own already good reasons, not to take Raphael's cue.
7) Lastly, Raphael's recommendation was made on the basis of his belief that this "cart disconnect" issue was affecting a very small minority of Canadian sellers. In this limited context, i.e. if he believed only a few Canadian sellers would be impacted, then perhaps advising us to list on .com would make some sense, since in that scenario there seemed little hope of ever getting eBay HQ to resolve the problem simply to mollify a few Canadian sellers.
Since that time, by communicating on these boards, through various sellers' experiences and testing (and not ironically by getting further information from the eBay.ca staffers), I think we've come a long way to delineating and understanding the size and seriousness of this problem. If the "solution" is to shepherd all concerned Canadian sellers onto eBay.com, then clearly this problem will never get prioritized.
As far as: "[...] well it would probably take less time than what you have spent posting on here about it" -- I don't appreciate this caustic remark. I think you forget that many times it has taken sellers communicating on these boards to figure out the extent of issues, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
As I said above, I think this particular thread has been productive and illuminating, and I'm grateful for the effort and input of all the sellers who posted here. I think we have more information now to take to Raphael et al to permit him to also recognize how wide and critical this issue is. If we can convince him of that, he may be able to convince eBay HQ that their own bigger interests are involved. Simply disappearing (i.e. going away to .com) is not going to keep this issue top of mind anywhere).
Besides, I type 120wpm, so posting detailed responses is no problem for me. I'm not getting those multi-item orders anymore to pack up and ship, so I have more time anyway. 
@rose-dee wrote:
Besides, I type 120wpm, so posting detailed responses is no problem for me. I'm not getting those multi-item orders anymore to pack up and ship, so I have more time anyway.
LOL
Well said.
I too type about 100 wpm. I remember being out somewhere and saying I needed to get home because I wanted to list some items before the promo ended. Several people said -- you know your phone will do anything your computer will.
I replied: Can I type 100 wpm on it and change fonts and colours, have several tabs open to look for descriptions and to compare prices, etc., and list 50 or more items within a couple of hours. My sarcasm was wasted. They said "sure" -- that's easy!!
Featured Posts
