w~~_7.JPG "pjcdn2005"){kind=avatar}
Welcome to the 2015 Fall Seller Update discussion thread. Myself and other eBay staff will read all your comments and do our best to respond as our schedules permit.
Thanks!
Good morning Raphael and Rodney
Question for you this morning.
Based on your data, what percentage of transactions by Canadian sellers - shipping from Canada - are shipped with "tracking" (as reported on your site)?
Is there a substantial difference in the ratio of tracking between Canadian listing on eBay.ca and eBay.com?
@Anonymous wrote:Hi PIerrelebel.
Where there is no tracking, there is no acceptance scan we can use to see if the seller shipped within stated handling time. In these cases we will rely on the buyer's answer to whether the item arrived on or before the delivery estimate. This is the case no matter which site one lists on.
As a lettermail or oversized lettermail/packet seller, you still have some options, regardless of listing site.
Delivery estimates are a function of two things: The shipping services you offer on a listing, and the handling time.
If you offer a longer handling time, the date estimate the buyer rates you on will be later.
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With the utmost respect, Rodney, I think you have just outlined a classic Catch-22* with this answer, actually a double-Catch-22 (Joseph Heller would be impressed).
What this amounts to is that if a Canadian seller doesn't use tracking, the chances of holding on to a top seller rating are next to impossible. However, as I'm sure eBay is aware, using tracking virtually 100% of the time is next to impossible for Canadian sellers. And round and round and round....
On the other hand, you are suggesting we extend our handling time in order to have some hope of defeating the new policy. Doing so however will make it impossible to hold onto TRS, which for many Canadian sellers is the only thing that keeps us viable in the sea of sellers on eBay.
Incidentally, in case eBay hadn't thought of this, for those of us Canadian sellers who can survive long enough using tracking to the U.S., this policy will pretty much spell the end of international sales. What seller can afford international tracking? Oh yes, American sellers can, with the GSP. Yet Canadian sellers are by and large far more effective in, and comfortable with, selling abroad than our U.S. counterparts. EBay does realize they will be losing a whole lot of FVFs on those lost sales?
First the "cart disconnect", now this. Do you think we Canadians have any future on eBay? Seriously.
*Catch-22 (for those not familiar with the novel): "A situation or predicament from which it is impossible to extricate yourself because of built-in illogical rules and regulations."
"today the suggestion is to extend handling time to work around a policy that is essentially unworkable for Canadians. "
From my perspective eBay-Canada is not really suggesting a "work around" but telling Canadian sellers they should offer misleading information in their listings to minimize the risks of being penalized by eBay for a policy meant to reward American sellers and totally ignoring the Canadian reality.
I simply do not agree. Why should Canadian sellers knowingly mislead buyers by telling them they will take a week (five business days) to ship when they usually ship within a day? Why lie? Why suggest a seller is a slow shipper? It does not make any sense.
Looking at threads on eBay.com and based on reports from sellers attending the 20th Anniversary Party in San Jose, most American sellers seem pretty happy with the change of policy removing many causes for "defects." As stated earlier, the changes seem to work for most American sellers. However, asking Canadians to give their worldwide buyers 99.5% level of satisfaction on on-time shipping when the only option - Canada Post - provides 96% to 98% is ill advised.
With over 106,000 transactions on eBay in seventeen years (more under my other selling ID), I feel my worldwide buyers are generally satisfied with the quality of service I provided. Why create a new system asking some of the buyers if they feel (very subjective) that their purchases arrived on-time? Based on Canada Post record of late delivery (2%-4%) I will fail! 
And eBay-Canada thinks they are giving sellers more control? You guys know better than that.
PS - All my comments on this thread refer very specifically to transactions shipped from Canada without tracking (a very large percentage of eBay-Canada overall business) as there is no economical way to do it differently within Canada for millions of transactions.
Just thinking....
A few years ago eBay changed TRS on eBay.com requiring 90% tracking. That became TRS-Plus.
Accommodations were made for Canadian sellers. We could keep our TRS status using "Global" standards, still be eligible to the 20% FVF rebate with the TRS badge shown on eBay.ca but not on eBay.com (you can't win them all!).
Just thinking...
From the FAQ: "These updates impact how seller standards are calculated, but we expect there will be no significant changes in the number of Top Rated sellers. Our intention is to make eBay a more fair, consistent, and predictable marketplace where sellers are recognized for delivering great service."
Between now and the scheduled implementation of the new policy next year, is there a possibility the folks at eBay.ca will somehow manage to convince their bosses in San Jose that the Canadian reality with Canada Post makes it impossible to use the same 99.5% standard.
Maybe they heard about the big fun party in San Jose (open bar) and decided to make it a long weekend! 
@dutchman48 wrote:
If we cancel a transaction due to an address issue, will that count as a defect now?
Hi dutchman,
Only cancellations due to the seller being out of stock or simply refuses to ship will be counted as a defect. If you ever get a wrong address, the best course of action is to request the correct address via eBay Messages and if the seller doesn't respond or fails to provide the correct address, you can safely cancel since the situation is documented in the messages.
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
Defects -
1.How will Paypal inr and nad claims work? Will we get a defect in those situations only if they have to escalate the claim through Paypal?
Customizing returns section
2.Sellers are still responsible for return shipping in a not as described situation...correct?
3.Is this going to allow us to provide a return label for international buyers?
4.I see that there is a restocking fee option but will it be possible to hold back original shipping costs when the return
is a buyers remorse return and original shipping was not free?
Hi pjcdn,
1. The policy says if the case is escalated and decided upon against the seller, the seller gets a defect.
2. Correct.
3. At this time, the eBay.ca platform doesn't support eBay-provided shipping labels for returns, domestically or internationally. You are, however, able to provide the buyer with a return shipping label if you can acquire one.
4. I think the restocking fee works in terms of a percentage of the original item price rather than according to the original shipping.
@jt-libra wrote:
A couple of years ago, sellers were told that if they reduced their handling time to 1 business day and increased their return time to 14 days, we would receive higher search placement.
I'm presuming then if we increase our handling time to offset uncertain delivery dates, our search placement will be affected?
The Search algorithms are in constant evolution and a lot more than handling time and return policy factors in items' ranking. For instance, a seller's performance has more weight so it should be considered more important.
@pocomocomputing wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@amya4295 wrote:
So to understand this correctly, if I don't ship with tracking, which 90% of the time I don't because of Canada Posts astronomical rates to the U.S, Ebay will judge me based on the feedback question presented to buyers "did your item arrive by a certain date". The concern is, many of my feedback come weeks after an item has been received. How is that buyer supposed to remember if it arrived by a specific date. Many U.S buyers think that shipping from Canada takes way too long as they are comparing it to U.S shipments.My listings clearly state that I am shipping from Canada and I correspond to each buyer when shipping what the Canada Post standards are. Even stating this, I have customers that contact me after 2 days looking for their goods. When it comes time for them to leave feedback, i'm concerned that will be on their mind. With no tracking to defend ourselves we are basically relying on the whim of buyers to remember if the goods were on time or not. That concerns me especially since many of my buyers are newbies with under 20-50 feedback and don't fully understand cross border purchases and truthfully many are surprised that they even bought an item form a Canadian seller! Because I so rarely ship with tracking and the allowable defect rate % has been significantly reduced, it could impact many Canadian sellers swiftly and remove our TRS status in short order. Am I missing something? Are we protected in anyway from mindless clicking on "no the item did not arrive on time"?
Hi amya4295
We believe this is a much better system than a completely subjective question about rating the shipping cost and shipping time.
For sellers who use tracking, it is fantastic.
For sellers who don't or can't use tracking, this is a much more objective question for us to use. We believe this will work out much better for Canadian sellers, since the delivery estimate is based on real cross border data, and not on the buyer's perception of when they think it should arrive.
Just a minute. Real cross border data? For years eBay Canada said that delivery time estimates were provided by Canada Post for each of their services and eBay Canada had to use those estimates as required by Canada Post. We were told they could not be changed and to use handling time to pad the estimate.
As far as I know, the only eBay.ca shipping services where eBay.ca uses "real cross border data" are the Flat Rate generic shipping services eBay provides - economy, expedited and express.
As for using handling time, years ago eBay 1 day handling time one of the requirements for getting Global TRS. Is that still in effect? If so, the suggestion for padding handling time into delivery estimate will disqualify a seller from TRS.
I always thought the suggestion to use handling time to increase delivery estimates was absurd. Using a workaround to fix a problem should not be done. Fix the estimates and solve the problem correctly.
Last, eBay should provide a table of the delivery times estimates used for each Canad Post service as well as the generic services. I had to create temp listings and change the service and country in the listing to see what delivery estimates eBay has and compile a table of the results.
This new seller rating may work for ebay.com USA sellers using USPS but it does not fit eBay.ca Canada sellers using Canada Post services.
Hi pocomo,
It once was true that the shown delivery estimates came from Canada Post data. For about 1-2 years now, for the Canada-USA channel we have slightly tighter estimates based on actual cross border data from real eBay shipments. eBay.com has even tighter estimates domestically because of their more granular shipping zones, something we don't yet have in Canada but are actively working to get.
1 day handling time was never a requirement for Global TRS. This was only for US TRS, and Canadian sellers are exempt from it. I agree it isn't the best solution to pad your shipping estimates with your handling time, but until we can get better shipping zoning in the system, that's really the best solution to safeguard your performance rating.
The delivery estimates as they are shown to the buyer are visible when choosing a flat rate service. For calculated shipping, providing such a matrix would be impossible (or at least, very hard) because the estimates depends 100% on the buyer location.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Adding insult to injury, receiving the wrong answer to The Question is one of only three fatal offenses left on eBay. Sloppy service? No problem. Wrong item? No problem. Negative feedback? No problem. Send lettermail? Defect. Small packet? Defect. Simply because a buyer may have NO idea when they received it by the time they leave feedback.
Essentially, under these new rules, a seller has blessings from eBay to mail a buyer the wrong item as long as it's tracked and arrives on time but heaven forbid that it has the right item sent via Small or Light Packet but DELIVERED LATE by the post office. In Canada, we have only Canada Post to choose from for internal lettermail; we cannot be held accountable to the postal service standards uses by Americans.
This reeks. It literally stinks. eBay needs sellers like me more than I need eBay. As a company, you have just opened the door wide to a pile of thieves and pirates operating without consequence of punishment by defect for anything except untracked lettermail or parcels. It's ridiculous. I am livid.
mjwl2006, with all due respect, you are 100% wrong that sellers are free to ship the wrong item. I understand that this may be frustrating for those who ship without tracking, but let's be serious here. A seller shipping the wrong items will be out of business way faster than one who ships late, tracking or not.
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