eBay

itolduandso · ‎07-27-2022

Ebay allows to post the identical same fix-price listing to different Ebay sites as long as the ship-to countries are set so they don't overlap each other.

What I am not clear is how does it look on the buyer's end and how do I manage the orders.

Let's say I list a listing into US site Ebay.COM with US-only shipping and then list to Canada Ebay.CA with Canada only shipping.

If the Canadian buyer goes to Ebay.CA, it should show only the listing on Ebay.CA with Canadian shipping.

Buyers view:

What I am not clear is what happens if Canadian buyer goes to Ebay.com US instead and searches for the item. Will Ebay.COM show the "Canadian" listing based on the location of the buyer?

Google ads:

Another concern here is with advertising.

Do Ebay Google ads to Canadian shoppers show the Canadian listing?

With browsers now blocking cookies and location etc, I am not sure how well Ebay manages this.

Orders CSV:

EBay Shipping Order report CSV doesn't include the currency. So when I import, I need to make sure I will either manually add the currency column. That is another manual work I need to do in order to make the Ebay CSV useable, that is on top of removing all the other junk in Ebay CSV that is already there. The transaction report does include the currency but the transaction report is only to import the fees, it doesn't have order related information, so I will need to do the import twice, one for order CSV and one for transactions CSV, that means editing 2 CSVs and adding currency into one of the CSV.

Way too much work ebay for the money we are paying you on the fees. Poor service and confusion.

Inventory quantity:

On top of the above, I asssume ebay doesn't manage inventory quantity. So if I have 2 identical listings on COM and CA and a buyer in Canada buys on CA and then US buyer buys on COM, it could lead to overselling.

Mobile app:

Another question that is perhaps unrelated to my question but related to the same problem.

How does EBay mobile app handle multi-site listings? Do I see the completed listings mixed up USD and CAD in the same user name login in ebay mobile app?

Putting listings to COM and CA site takes a lot of effort so I don't want to waste it unless it actually works without flaws. (Background, I am looking at splitting the listings into COM and CA to better handle shipping cost calculator for Canada and US).

Yes, I can use 3rd party ebay service providers that handle inventory quantity management across sites and also handle the issues with ebay CSV reports, however, they all cost additional money on top of the dollars we already pay Ebay for the miserable service to sellers. Opps, did I say service to sellers? Sorry I may have insulted Ebay, I meant seller service to ebay.

marnotom! · ‎07-27-2022

This is sounding like a follow-up to this thread:
https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Any-news-when-is-ebay-going-to-merge-the-US-and-Canada-r...

Instead of listing on two different sites so that you can use calculated shipping on each site, have you considered just listing on .com for calculated shipping to the US and abroad and shipping within Canada using Canada Post flat-rate boxes?

pjcdn2005 · ‎07-28-2022

What I am not clear is what happens if Canadian buyer goes to Ebay.com US instead and searches for the item. Will Ebay.COM show the "Canadian" listing based on the location of the buyer?

If you have Canada blocked on .com a buyer located in Canada will not see the listing in US

dollars. Since the .ca version does not have shipping to the US it will not be visible on .com at all, regardless of the persons location.

Marnotom's suggestion of using flat rate box might work better for you for Canadian customers.

I don't know where you are located but I assume that most of my Canadian orders are going to Ontario or Quebec so on .com so I price shipping for those locations. It's not totally accurate but it's how I deal with it.

itolduandso · ‎07-29-2022

That's what I am doing now, only US site.

75% of my sales are US

15% are Canada

10% are Europe, Asia, Australia, South America

The issue is Canada rural areas. Shipping rates exploded. It may cost me 15 dollar to ship to most Canada and I eat the cost but it costs me 30-35 dollar to ship to rural areas. I can't eat additional 15-20 dollar because it breaks my margins.

As described in the other post, the issue doing this on the US site is I am limited in terms of what I can do with the Canadian shipping. Canadian shipping is merged into International. I need to handle these separately, Intenrational - flat rate and Canada Flat rate for urban and flat rate for rural. That is not possible if I am selling on Ebay.com. There is no rural. So it's either ship everything at urban rate or ship everything at rural rate, or to change to calculated shipping but that's what I didn't want for international shipping. So that's why I was looking into selling on two sites.

For many items sizes, shipping internationally and to US costs less than shipping within Canada.

That's why I kind of determined listing on 2 sites in the best way to go for me. For now at least I am trying to understand what doesn't work well with this approach. So far it seems the points above could mean some issues for me.

itolduandso · ‎07-29-2022

Okay, so that's important. So if a Canadian buyer goes to .COM, it will not find my item listed on .CA and shipping to Canada on .CA.

So that means this is not a viable option for me to split the sites because I may end up losing business.

So that means back to my shipping tables and try to find a work around.

Thanks,

marnotom! · ‎07-29-2022

@itolduandso wrote:

That's what I am doing now, only US site.

75% of my sales are US
15% are Canada
10% are Europe, Asia, Australia, South America

The issue is Canada rural areas. Shipping rates exploded. It may cost me 15 dollar to ship to most Canada and I eat the cost but it costs me 30-35 dollar to ship to rural areas. I can't eat additional 15-20 dollar because it breaks my margins.

I don't think that's what you're doing now. What I'm describing is the possibility of your using Canada Post's flat-rate boxes for shipping within Canada. They come in three different sizes and can hold up to 5 kg of goods. No need to make adjustments for rural rates versus urgan rates, etc.

https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/sending/parcels/flat-rate-box.page

You might find this thread of interest:

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/May-2-Canada-Post-fuel-surcharge-increase/m-p/477733

@itolduandso wrote:

For many items sizes, shipping internationally and to US costs less than shipping within Canada.

That's likely because you're shipping your items out of the country by what's effectively oversize letter. Small packets traditionally go into the letter post stream although that's starting to change as postal services try to find efficiencies where they can. As there's no such thing as a domestic small packet, those smaller items have to go as parcels, which have their pricing calculated differently, as you've found.

reallynicestamps · ‎07-29-2022

How important is it to you that your items be tracked?
I work in low fraud categories and have no trouble using Lettermail, which has fixed prices based on thickness (under 2cm) and weight (under 500 gr).

I could track domestic items sent LetterMail, by Registering them which adds $9.75 to the price.

And Small Packet USA, which is not tracked, often appears to be (don't count on it for anything valuable, though).