eBay

rose-dee · ‎02-14-2015

Hello all -

I think those of us who have been following the boards all know about the discussions and complaints concerning what I call the "cart disconnect" between eBay.ca and other eBay sites. I've had some very illuminating responses from Raphael in follow-up to this week's board hour (which wasn't terribly productive itself). Please see my Post #39 in http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/buyers-saying-item-is-unavailable-when-trying-to-purchase... for my summary of his comments.

Essentially, he finally made it clear that the carts are site-specific, were not intended to be universal across all eBay sites, and that a "universally workable" cart is not realistically feasible due to eBay's decades-old and complex site design. Basically, WYSIWYG.

However, eBay apparently believes the "cart disconnect" is not an issue for the vast majority of Canadian sellers. My view is that the reason for this is because we can't be aware of something we don't see -- how do you measure the number of buyers from other sites (e.g. eBay.com, eBay.UK) who may have tried making a multiple purchase using their own site's cart, failed and given up?

So, given the fact that we're stuck with what we have, I know my multiple orders were working fine before the .ca cart was introduced. Perhaps --- just maybe -- if enough Canadian sellers ask for it, I wonder if the .ca cart could be pulled completely?

It would be very interesting to hear from Canadian sellers on this thread as to:

1) Have you seen a significant downturn in multi-item orders from non-Canadian buyers since about mid-summer of 2014 (in comparison to earlier months or years)?

2) Have any non-Canadian buyers contacted you to tell you they're having trouble getting through the checkout/payment process when attempting to make a multi-item purchase?

3) Do you sell regularly to U.S. buyers?

A "yes" or "no" to each of the above would be enough -- I just thought it would be interesting to gather some numbers. Whether it will do any good or not, well...

Thanks!

rose-dee · ‎03-23-2015

@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:
Can`t stay long, have to spend the better part of my morning processing separate transactions and combining them. Even though, as mentioned, I have instructions plastered all over my listings, store front, and custom Q's and A's for .com buyers to purchase through .ca, which clearly is NOT a workaround at all. I love getting constantly screwed out of even more money time and time again, not like I feed ebays pockets enough all ready. Happy Monday!!!

It's ironic, isn't it, that this is supposed to be a venue to facilitate selling, when in reality for most of the last year or so I've felt like I'm selling in spite of eBay's apparent incompetence at their main purpose. It used to be called "providing a service".

Mind you, these days their focus seems to be on using their site as a paid billboard for commercial retailers. I notice HBC is now running advertisements here, with links to their site. Hmmm ... doesn't eBay have a policy against links? Oh, yes, well, not when it benefits eBay.

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎03-23-2015

Up until the last year or 2 I used to have so many packages, a very large majority of them were combined purchases, to take to the post office at the back loading dock on a daily basis, they all barley fit into the back of my long box pick up truck.

Now my daily visit to the post office consists of a small to medium size cardboard box with packages through the front door, sometimes only enough to carry by hand every other week there is a day where I don`t even have to visit the post office.

This is all due to .com buyers not being able to easily combine purchases as one.

Thanks EBAY !!!

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-23-2015

@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:
Up until the last year or 2 I used to have so many packages, a very large majority of them were combined purchases, to take to the post office at the back loading dock on a daily basis, they all barley fit into the back of my long box pick up truck.

Now my daily visit to the post office consists of a small to medium size cardboard box with packages through the front door, sometimes only enough to carry by hand every other week there is a day where I don`t even have to visit the post office.

This is all due to .com buyers not being able to easily combine purchases as one.

Thanks EBAY !!!

I do agree that the .com cart should be working properly but to be fair, none of us know for sure how much this is affecting sellers who list on .ca. The majority of my listings are on .com but in the last year or so my sales have also been down. If you read the .com boards...MANY U.S. sellers are complaining that their sales are down but the decrease in my case and in their cases cannot have anything to do with the .com cart vs .ca listings. I think that there are a number of factors that are involved and that the majority of them are out of our control.

michaelbb2 · ‎03-23-2015

I jhad a buyer from Greece contact me earlier today with the cart issue. He was forced into immediate payment as usual. Upon his shocking request for a "workaround", I have given him specific directions on how to use the eBay.ca cart instead......he has not completed a transaction as of yet. Maybe I lost him? How many others have I lost who did not ask?

I was curious so I checked back into the numbers.........

As for losing US or international business......my sales numbers over the last 2 years don't reflect a loss in my US or international buyers.

2013 = 26.8% US + INT buyers

2014 = 27.9% US + INT buyers

2015 = 28.0% US + INT buyers so far.

My product line was pretty much the same over the last 3 years. I don't think the cart disconnect problem is making me lose business......as least not a measurable amount.

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎03-25-2015

"cart limitations" bahaha. I gotta stop coming on here because it is just making me more and more furious. We are stuck with a piece of garbage cart, yet everyone but ebay.ca sellers benefit from a functioning cart. Lets pay for something that deosn`t work! Sounds like a great idea. List on ebay.com, another great idea, brilliant.

rose-dee · ‎03-25-2015

Hi 'merritt' -- You may have noticed the screen shots I posted today at the Board Hour. Through a random test on a major Canadian retailer, I found out that a buyer on .com will be automatically routed to the .ca cart and be able to pay, no problem.

The issue really is that eBay.ca staffers must have known this fact. Whether or not it was "custom-programmed" as Raphael claims is irrelevant.

The point is that it is possible to do, eBay knows it, and that that fact was never mentioned by the eBay.ca people over the months that ordinary Canadian sellers have been bringing up this issue. We "little guys" can come to our own conclusions as to why.

I am taking a much more jaundiced view of this whole problem and of eBay in general, based on today's exchange and the test I did. I'll be doing a few more tests to see if this was an anomaly, but I doubt it.

Incidentally, since Raphael cut the discussion off and I wasn't able to verify his last comment, I'll post it here for the benefit of any sellers who are following this issue:

"Raphael said

rose-dee wrote:
Actually, no, I was originally logged onto .com with my alternate ID. I didn't just change the URL, I in fact went out, and logged onto the eBay.com site separately, then searched by store name. Clicked on a store category, and voilà -- I had a cart. It was a thing of beauty!

Try again the same thing and take a close look at which account you're logged into on either site. On .com you will see your alternate account. On .ca you will see rose-dee."

He was wrong. When I went through exactly the same steps again that I had followed before, my alternate ID remained displayed through the whole process.

This is meaningless anyway -- the point was, the big retailer's store automatically routed me from my start on .com to the .ca cart so that I could choose and pay for as many items as I liked. If they (or they with eBay's help) can do it, why can't eBay do it for the rest of us?

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎03-25-2015

rose-dee

You are absolutely 100% correct that you are redirected to ebay.ca, I tried it myself. Sorry, some bad news. Lowes front page link are embedded to redirect, these are Lowes settings on their store front page. If you start out at a listing with.com url it won`t redirect. Interesting though, create a home page that with categories/items are visited/clicked on from that page it will auto redirect to .ca Thanks for the trouble though, it is possibility to customize your links to redirect to ebay.ca, just not from the listing itself. Soething to think about it for sure!

I need to fix my last post. Silly me, I should know better. There is nothing wrong with ebay.ca cart, it is the Cadillac of all carts on ebay, brand new and shiny. It is so new any purchases from outside of ebay.ca create errors and won`t work. Lets create a new fuel for vehicles that can`t be used on all vehicles that are on the road and not provide a conversion kit to make them compatible with this new type of fuel.

The "cart limitations" are only affecting sellers not buyers??? How does ebay expect buyers to voice their concerns to ebay? buyers should spend the time to call or ebay or submit our problems to support by email when they never answer?

rose-dee · ‎03-25-2015

@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:
rose-dee

You are absolutely 100% correct that you are redirected to ebay.ca, I tried it myself. Sorry, some bad news. Lowes front page link are embedded to redirect, these are Lowes settings on their store front page. If you start out at a listing with.com url it won`t redirect. Interesting though, create a home page that with categories/items are visited/clicked on from that page it will auto redirect to .ca Thanks for the trouble though, it is possibility to customize your links to redirect to ebay.ca, just not from the listing itself. Soething to think about it for sure!

Yes, I just tried testing with some other large Canadian retailers' stores and got the same results -- I was redirected to the .ca cart from .com.

I'm beginning to think these "redirects" may not be custom settings by the store owners themselves, but a feature provided by eBay to the bigger retailers. I have no way to confirm that, but it certainly would make sense.

My problem with this is that the eBay reps have said nothing about it being possible. They've never told us that some retailers have been benefiting from the ability to auto-redirect customers to the .ca cart. I'd rather have this feature than nothing at all. We should consider why it is they haven't been mentioning it.

You're right that it still doesn't solve the cart disconnect problem when dealing with individual item listings from searches. However, if such a "redirect" feature were available to all sellers (or at least all eBay store sellers) it would at least allow us to point our buyers to our storefronts, from where they would end up with the functional .ca cart.

Unfortunately, I don't have the programming skills to tackle that kind of feat.

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎03-25-2015

@rose-dee wrote:
@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:
rose-dee

You are absolutely 100% correct that you are redirected to ebay.ca, I tried it myself. Sorry, some bad news. Lowes front page link are embedded to redirect, these are Lowes settings on their store front page. If you start out at a listing with.com url it won`t redirect. Interesting though, create a home page that with categories/items are visited/clicked on from that page it will auto redirect to .ca Thanks for the trouble though, it is possibility to customize your links to redirect to ebay.ca, just not from the listing itself. Soething to think about it for sure!

Yes, I just tried testing with some other large Canadian retailers' stores and got the same results -- I was redirected to the .ca cart from .com.

I'm beginning to think these "redirects" may not be custom settings by the store owners themselves, but a feature provided by eBay to the bigger retailers. I have no way to confirm that, but it certainly would make sense.

My problem with this is that the eBay reps have said nothing about it being possible. They've never told us that some retailers have been benefiting from the ability to auto-redirect customers to the .ca cart. I'd rather have this feature than nothing at all. We should consider why it is they haven't been mentioning it.

You're right that it still doesn't solve the cart disconnect problem when dealing with individual item listings from searches. However, if such a "redirect" feature were available to all sellers (or at least all eBay store sellers) it would at least allow us to point our buyers to our storefronts, from where they would end up with the functional .ca cart.

Unfortunately, I don't have the programming skills to tackle that kind of feat.

It is a disappointment, you had me going for a minute, lol.

html and coding is of course no small task if you are not familiar with it at all. Their layout was provided by frooition.com

I am sure they paid a pretty penny for the layout. It`s definitely something I will be considering. All their links are embedded to redirect to ebay.ca, never crossed my mind once.

I am no computer programmer but if you need some help or suggestion if you are wanting to tackle the task, please let me know and I would be happy to help out. I have some above average html/coding skills

But like you said, if they land on the item through ebay.com directly it will stay at ebay.com.

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-25-2015

That is odd that you didn't have to sign in. I just tried it but I first signed out of .ca. Then when I went from .com to .ca through Lowe's cart, it asked me to sign in when I added an item to the cart. You might want to sign out of both sites, sign into just .com and then try it again. That would be representative of how a U.S. buyer would see things. I'm pretty sure that they would have to sign in to .ca as I know that's what I've had to do when I've accidentally changed sites. That's not a huge deal but it could be confusing.

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-25-2015

rose-dee - I know that you have already said that you do not want to putting links to your store right in your listing as a way of directing people to .ca but I'll mention it here in case someone else wants to think about doing it. It's not that difficult to set up and once set up, it can be copied and pasted to other listings. It can be done quite easily in Auctiva too.

I'm sure that it could be done a lot 'nicer' than the way that I have it set up on my listings.

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎03-25-2015

here is sample, i just did something real quick and simple... ill be removing it shortly

http://stores.ebay.com/merrittmotorcyclesalvage?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

here a good little video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0QGd-ShA34

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎03-25-2015

I added 2 items, started at .com, both were added after add to cart from .ca. It only asked to sign in when went to proceed to checkout.

Anyone notice the new layout on ebay.com for items. Once again they have time to screw around with something that isn`t broken. Similar to mobile layout in a way. You have to click on " See full item description" in blue now, from ebay.com, not ebay.ca that I can see yet.

canadianfootballcards · ‎03-25-2015

Thanks Rose-Dee for continuing to hammer away at this issue.

I'm glad someone is taking the lead and I'll continue trying to add my voice. I'm sorry I was too busy to post during the board hour, but you did fine work!

I'm still shaking my head over 'cart limitations.'

The implication from Raphael that this is a minor problem is extremely irritating.

I am wondering if Canadian sellers should band together to request some form of compensation.

I mentioned it in my letter to Raphael, but he never acknowledged it.

Still, I know eBay has issued compensation to me in the not-too-distant past for instances when listings weren't being shown on eBay.com (before the user agreement made that perfectly OK).

So I have personal precedent.

An eBay staffer is on record admitting there is a problem and admitting that eBay is not motivated to quickly fix the problem.But eBay remains motivated to keep collecting my full store fee every month, and I don't see how that is right.

Couldn't hurt to make this more of a financial issue for eBay.

Even if we're a small piece of the pie, any bites coming out of the bottom line should be impactful.

But like everything else, it requires some solidarity from Canadian sellers, getting everyone on the same page.

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-25-2015

@merritt-motorcycle-salvage wrote:
I added 2 items, started at .com, both were added after add to cart from .ca. It only asked to sign in when went to proceed to checkout.

Anyone notice the new layout on ebay.com for items. Once again they have time to screw around with something that isn`t broken. Similar to mobile layout in a way. You have to click on " See full item description" in blue now, from ebay.com, not ebay.ca that I can see yet.

It's a test on .com and only some people can see it. The listings all look as they always do when I look at them. Make sure you click on 'tell us what you think' and let them know what you do think. I think that it is a very bad idea.

A few weeks ago on the .com board during their weekly board time the ebay reps said that the test was being done because they thought it would be good to have listings work the same way on a pc as they do on a mobile. Considering the screen size is just a tab bigger on the pc, why on earth would they want things to work the same? Sheesh.

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-25-2015

I am wondering if Canadian sellers should band together to request some form of compensation.

Since the .com cart only works on .com, if they gave compensation to Canadian sellers they would then have to give compensation to sellers on every site other than .com. I can't see that happening.

momcqueen · ‎03-25-2015

I think we're hitting our heads against the wall by complaining to eBay.ca staffers that the eBay.com Shopping Cart doesn't work for Canadian sellers registered here. We need to complain loudly to EBAY.COM, no? eBay.ca knows it doesn't work. We're on their backs all the time; they can't do anything to fix it. We need to take our fight south. It'll probably be as effective as throwing rocks at a train but I think we're pelting the wrong people now.

canadianfootballcards · ‎03-25-2015

Makes it a more effective request.
I don't care how inconvenient or expensive it is for eBay.

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎03-26-2015

rose-dee

the link I put up for a sample. Click on the "TEST" link on the store pages on the left. Had to change it, originally used my storefront page. The possibilities are endless but it is just a simple example.

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎03-26-2015

@mjwl2006 wrote:
I think we're hitting our heads against the wall by complaining to eBay.ca staffers that the eBay.com Shopping Cart doesn't work for Canadian sellers registered here. We need to complain loudly to EBAY.COM, no? eBay.ca knows it doesn't work. We're on their backs all the time; they can't do anything to fix it. We need to take our fight south. It'll probably be as effective as throwing rocks at a train but I think we're pelting the wrong people now.

I know rose-dee mentioned something about posting on .com boards, not sure if she had chance to do so?