Opened a store on the wrong site

[littlemisswise]

So I mistakenly opened a store on ebay.com instead of .ca and it's causing nothing but headaches. I have all my listings on ebay.ca and as a result, now every listing I make is being charged insertion fees. I have chatted with support 3 times now and finally on the 3rd person it was discovered what happened. So due to the fact that the store was on ebay.com it glitched and was charging me every time for insertion. So I cancelled the store today and it states that I have to have the store until December 1st. Say what? Why can't the cancellation take into effect immediately or at the very least until the end of this month? I don't even care about the loss of the store fee for this month, but now I have to pay an additional month, all while still incurring insertion fees every time I list on ebay.ca although I am well below the listing limit. I'm so frustrated I am considering not even going forward with listing more items. 😞 Has anyone else been in a similar situation? I am sure there must be someone...

[femmefan1946]

Yeah.

That really doesn't make sense.

Without a Store you should be able to list 200 items on dotCA for Free.

And it's my experience that the 200 dotCA listings should be matched by 200 Free listings on dotCOM.

There are even more with a Store.

My dotCA registered Stores generally have more dotCOM listings than here because... reasons.

And all for free.

I'm not even sure how a member with a Canadian address could open a dotCOM Store.

Go to your Seller Hub through dotCOM and look for the number of free listings you have and how many you are allowed.

Then do the same for dotCA and see what is available there.

Because you only have 52 listings at the moment-- so even on one site you should have another 200+ available and the same on the other.

tyler@ebay 
Can you see where the problem might be and how to switch the Store to the appropriate site?

The Stussy tee (used) is priced in loonies, with a conversion to U$. on dotCOM. And all your current listings on dotCOM look like they were originally listed on dotCA because the asking prices are the odd amounts that come from currency conversion.

Again on your Seller Hub, what does your current invoice look like?

How much does it say you owe so far this month?

[femmefan1946]

BTW- If you are shipping magazines from the USA, you are not allowed to use Media Mail, which is the cheapest shipping but doesn't accept anything with advertisements.

But no such rule exists with Canada Post.

So you don't have to charge $20 to ship a $6 magazine - if anyone would even buy it with that disparity in prices.

Use Letter rates for both countries.

There will be no tracking. It's okay.

Our American friends are.... peculiar.... about tracking which they can buy for a quarter.

We go commando.... and make enough more sales to cover the very very rare time an item goes astray, either lost (vanishingly rare), delayed (in these plague times too common, but still unusual) , or lost to a false claim of non-delivery.

Search the Boards for Cookie Jar Insurance to see how it works.

[pjcdn2005]

I have to agree that what you were told by customer service doesn’t sound right so there must be another reason that you are being charged for each listing. A store is allowed the same amount of listings on .ca and .com so If you had a basic store you could list 350 fixed price listings per month on each site regardless of which site the store was opened on.

What level of store do you have?  If it is a starter store then it was definitely opened on .com since .ca doesn’t have a starter store level.   But even then, I don't understand why you would be charged for listing on .ca since a non store owner would receive free listings on both sites.  Hopefully Tyler will be available to share some insight on this although he seems to be mia the last couple of days so he might not reply until next week.

If I were you, I would sign into .com and start a mock listing there similar to one that you have already done to see if there are any listing fees.  You don’t have to actually post the listing...you just want to see if a listing you got charged for on .ca is charged for on.com.  If there is no listing fee, then perhaps there is an anomaly with the starter store.  If that is the case and you can’t get the store closed before Dec 1, you could list on .com for now.  

[littlemisswise]

I did exactly what you said between when I originally posted this and when I just read your reply now and did a mock .com listing. Surprise surprise it's free. Ebay still can't answer me why if I have 36 used free listings on their site, why I am being charged for each and every one hereafter. And I am still waiting for that support email stating they have fixed my problem. Which means they obviously have not.

So my strategy has changed and I am moving to .com for the time for any new listings going forward. I use flat rate shipping so I'm ok with the PITA that is outside of US options, but are there any drawbacks to .com then? I used to sell on .com back in the day and I have a US bank account, but so much has changed I'm just not sure if it's worth it to continue on there past Dec 1.

[littlemisswise]

It's funny when you mention using media mail because back in the early 2000's I used to ship from a post office in the USA as I was right near the border and I routinely used media mail to send magazines. Big no-no but I stopped that altogether when I wanted to track my items for my own knowledge.

Some people have purchased my magazines with $20 cad shipping but it's because the magazine is so rare that they will purchase factoring that in. I am thinking about changing my strategy though to free shipping and doing the lettermail option. Although some of my thicker magazines are past the 2cm limit and don't qualify.

For my clothing, I originally had listed on poshmark where all clothing had a flat rate of $15CAD and people knowingly buy at that rate. I understand that I'd be eating profits selling at that cost, so that's why I set my shipping rates to at least cover those items.

I'm going to check the cookie jar insurance, thanks for the info!

[tyler@ebay]

Thanks for the tag @femmefan1946!

Hi @littlemisswise - this is definitely interesting, but I think I can help unravel at least a few of the strings.  

As to why you can't immediately cancel, you are within the 'mandatory subscription period' required in the Store Terms and Conditions for .com (link here, section 2). This agreement stipulates that the earliest you can cancel a subscription is the first of the month following one complete month from when you opened the subscription. For example, if you opened the store on the 2nd of February, the earliest you could cancel would be the 1st of April ( Rest of the current month, plus one complete month - March -). 

As to not seeing the same promotion from one site to the next, that would make sense to me if you had opened a Starter store (because the subscription tier doesn't exist on eBay.ca). If you opened a Basic Store please let me know. 

Why the 200 listing promotion isn't taking on eBay.ca is a mystery to me. I have a suspicion as to why but will need to get it confirmed. Give me a day or so and I'll see what I can sort out. 

Thanks!