would it be better to only put 100 items on e-bay and nothing more

[vtwinparts2015]

i am looking for some advise from other Ebay sellers In Canada

i am thinking of shuting my store down and taking the 1800 plus items I have on E-Bay. Due to the lack of any support Ebay offers to a Canadian seller. the descrimination E Bay places on Canadian sellers is completly awful.

I was think of stepping up our Web sites preasence   and start adverising on Face book and Google. and start working more with Amazon.

you thoughts would be greatfully respected 

thank you

Joe 

[ricarmic]

These are my thoughts.

I can see that you've been here for at least 7 years.

I can also see that you're very upset by being burned by a buyer from this and other recent threads.

We are ALL upset when we get burned by buyers, but if you sell enough stuff it is going to happen. You've done very well to not have this problem before now! Friends in the brick and mortar world tell me their lives are sometimes a LOT worse than ours for theft etc.

My opinion is to separate the facts from the emotion and don't over-react.

If you haven't already, build a small percentage into your price margins to account for problem buyers, same as you would for lost or damaged shipments (this is often referred to as cookie jar insurance on this board). It should not have to be a large % based on what I see of your sales volume.

Simple math, based on guesses, if your item(s) lost were $100 each and you lost both of them (I can't tell for sure what you actually lost in the other thread) this still only represents just over 3% of your sales this last month to date.

Based on how you've reacted to this situation, I'm making the assumption this hasn't happened often to you.

If that's correct a one month ding of 3% isn't really a good reason to shut down a business.

The support from the CSRs shows up as quite erratic and sometimes incorrect as you'll see in other threads. If you spend some more time here reading what others have experienced it will help you avoid repeating mistakes in situations like this that cost $$$. You now know that checking here is probably a good way to try to figure things out as well as the online support, taken with a grain of salt as  you now know.

For sure you now know how to picture "multi item" listings to avoid this happening again, but it is worth noting that if the person had it in their mind to burn you, they could have used a number of different "reasons".

The hard part in these very frustrating and discouraging situations is to disassociate oneself from how one feels about the situation and simply minimize the time, effort, and cost it takes to "resolve it", which includes of course professionally dealing with (and blocking) the buyer.

Selling in multiple locations/venues is a prudent business decision of course but they all have their own problems, costs and frustrations, at least every one that I've used/tried in the last 20+ years has....

[femmefan1946]

It's never a bad thing to have  multiple venues, as long as you are very conciencious about inventory control.

FB Market has the advantage of being local and cash, and the disadvantage of being only local and cash buyers often indulging in excess haggling.

I haven't found AZ a good venue, and they do charge higher fees, but their name recognition is excellent.

[flipistics]

Are you even ungated to sell those types of items on Amazon? Also, if you think being forced into a questionable return is bad on eBay, Amazon's return policy is basically Walmart.

There's really no harm in setting up a website. I think if you use something like Shopify you can even link it to your eBay listings (not positive). That could give you an idea of whether or not doing it yourself is feasible without a lot of extra cost.

When I looked at your listings, I did notice that the quoted shipping costs seem a little high. That's something you might want to look into. It could be costing you a lot of sales.

[vtwinparts2015]

thank you for noticing the shipping cost. ever since E Bay changed the shipping meathods in Canada the pricing in Canadian dollars has seen a rise in cost. what we do is when we ship the item and find the cost lower than Ebay we refund the customer the difference. we have called E Bay 3 Times but no luck in talking to a person the even understands the issue. 

thank you

[vtwinparts2015]

thank you for your advice. i think the reason I am upset is talikng to the useless E Bay customer support. they are not trained and just read from a computer screen. and always side with a buyer. 

[vtwinparts2015]

very good points thank you. I will look into your great suggestions. I do blook buyers. i would really like to block all buyers less than 3 Stars. It seems if i will have a issue it is from very low star buyers. I think E Bay shoud do a better job when setting up buyers and explane the procsess Better. thank you again 

[vtwinparts2015]

every shipment i sent out on E bay we place a card in the box letting them know they can shop on our web site.

It has worked due to some stating we saw you card in a box. So now we are going to place a coupon in the box for there first sale on our web site this way we can track our new customes that would have purchased our product from ebay. I do relize we will still sell on ebay and offer the great service and comunication to the sellers as usual. your note has inspired me to work harder to promote our web site on all venues

thank you

[reallynicestamps]

Tallking?

The phone reps don't work for eBay. They work for a subcontractor in Utah and are poorly trained and have no authority.

The eBay employees who cover social media are much better trained. Most of them understand that Canada is not part of the USA, for example.




https://www.facebook.com/eBayForBusiness/ — Message button in upper right on landing page.
https://twitter.com/askebay?lang=en
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/How-do-I-contact-Customer-Support/m-p/32016431#M1783851 -> Automated Assistant, type AGENT -> enter. You will then get more options.

And you get a transcript so you can review to see if what you heard was what you were told.

ever since E Bay changed the shipping meathods in Canada the pricing in Canadian dollars has seen a rise in cost.

Huh?

Canada Post changes its fuel surcharge every month, and it is possible that the private couriers do something similar, but there hasn't been a rise in base cost since last January as I remember. (I don't often use Parcel rates.)

Canada Post did drop Light Packet some years ago, which annoyed a lot of sellers, and added Tracked PacketUSA which is tracked unlike Small Packet.

Otherwise our costs have dropped by about 10c on the dollar with the rise of the USD.  When I buy in loonies, my costs are 68c on the USD but I am selling in USD which puts $1.35CDN in my pocket.

Neither of these has anything to do with eBay.

Do you mean our buyers now pay their local sales taxes ? That's a US Supreme Court decision, rapidly adopted by the governments of the UK, EU, and as of last year, Canada. Australia already was collecting sales taxes.  We do have the added cost of paying our fees on the customer's entire payment, which is not broken down by line item.

OTOH you are as a GST registered business,  you are no longer dealing with online tax remission. This will be true of any online sales whatever the venue.



[vtwinparts2015]

Thank you for the great information

i will use the chat and email you sent me to ask question to E Bay

and yes we have the GST  in Canada

thank you again 

Joe 

[ypdc_dennis]

You get 250 free listings per month as a non-store seller. No need to drop down to 100.

[byto253]

I am not sure if you are aware of it or not but chitchats set up a location in London this year.   I don't know if you have enough volume to justify the drive every 2-3 days, perhaps with sales from other venues, but they may have better rates for you shipping.

I notice you have a lot of larger and heavier items and I find chitchats can be hit and miss vs. Canada Post but more times than not have better rates and that applies for Canada as well.

For inside Canada the courier companies are often a much better deal than Canada Post for shipping.  That can be either directly or through a company like Sendle that provides high volume type rates for individuals and uses ICS Courier.  Where I am Sendle has not been good on pickups so I drop it off at the ICS Courier depot as it is convenient with other things I am running around for. 

Best of luck with the web site and other venues, great products.