eBay

feathercraftshop · ‎09-25-2016

Last night I had a US buyer complain that he was unable to combine purchases for shipping. I have notice this as being a problem with my US buyers as I find myself often refunding shipping charges for multiple item purchases.

Anyway I did some investigating this morning and it turns out that my listings when shown on .ca have both a Buy it Now and Add to Cart option. However the same listings on .com have only the Buy it Now button which I believe forces the buyer to pay immediately.

As an example the listing on .ca

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/6-Undertaker-with-Jungle-**bleep**-Eyes-Atlantic-Salmon-Fly-/162210692742?has...

And the same listing on .com

http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-Undertaker-with-Jungle-**bleep**-Eyes-Atlantic-Salmon-Fly-/162210692742?ha...

Am I missing something. I have combined shipping chosen for shipping profiles for both Canada and the US.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Thanks!

momcqueen · ‎09-25-2016

No, you're not missing anything.

This is a well-known and long-standing issue. The ebay.com Shopping Cart, as well as the ebay.co.uk Shopping Basket, are incompatible with listings created outside their sites. The workaround is either to refund postage for multiple purchases as you have been doing and subsequently ask ebay to refund to you the Final Value Fees you paid them for shipping, or to ask your customer to log into ebay.ca to use our Shopping Cart which is global and compatible with listings from all ebay sites. (Unless your buyer is trying to use the ebay iPhone app where there is no shopping cart for ebay.ca.)

This is what I put in my Payment Information section of all listings:

If you are shopping from eBay USA or eBay UK, you will discover you cannot add items listed on eBay CANADA to your US Cart or UK Basket. Log into www.ebay.ca to take full advantage of our combined postage discounts and FREE SHIPPING promotions. You’ll be glad you did

momcqueen · ‎09-25-2016

I suppose the other option is to list directly ebay.com if that is where most of your buyers stem from, if having the ebay.com Shopping Cart work is the most important aspect of the sale.

feathercraftshop · ‎09-25-2016

Thanks for your response mjwl2006.

Wow! Is all I can say at the moment. Quite shocking that this flaw is acceptable to eBay.

This is a email from a buyer last night, "shipping refund? that's a lot of money to ship weightless flies. Also, the fact that you can't place multiple flies on one order is not very user friendly"

The buyer bought multiple items and obviously couldn't combine shipping.

momcqueen · ‎09-25-2016

No, he wouldn't be able to combine shipping at all if he was buying on ebay.com and your listings originated on ebay.ca.

Kindly explain to him this is not your fault, that it is a known technical limitation of the ebay.com Shopping Cart which accepts only ebay.com-created listings.

Welcome him to log into ebay.ca the next time that he wants to buy more than one time at a time from you. As far as your buyer will be concerned, this will allow him to use the Shopping Cart for a multi-item purchase. He will have to look at his total in CAD, and won't accrue ebay Bucks which are available on ebay.com only.

Ebay Canada staff is well aware of this limitation, and has worked to bring it to the pile of things to fix, but as far as ebay as a whole corporation is concerned, it's not that big of a deal to the entity or that high of a priority since it affects only the sellers like us on the small ebay sites like ebay.ca and elsewhere. ebay Canada's list of things-to-do is not that important against the mammoth ebay.com. Regrettably.

momcqueen · ‎09-25-2016

And if you combine all those orders into one box and refund the extra postages paid, call ebay Customer Service to demand your FVFs on Shipping back. They will hem and haw but it is your right, as far as I am concerned. The dotcom shopping cart is broken, you refunded that postage and didn't keep the shipping fees so therefore ebay has no right to keep the FVF on Shipping for it.

It is a waste of an hour to save probably three bucks but I always do it.

I figure the more times ebay.com has to refund FVFs on Shipping, the more questions will be asked about the reason for that, the higher the cart problem will fit into their list of things to fix.

femmefan1946 · ‎09-25-2016

feathercraft-- The best reason for listing on eBayCanada is to be able to use the Calculated Shipping option for bulky and heavy items that require parcel rates.

If your feathers can go LetterPost/LightPacket, which are Flat Rates (domestic/US/overseas) you may as well solve the problem by listing on dotCOM and using the Flat Rate from and international location option.

You could even move to Free Shipping -- don't panic.

Free Shipping just means putting the cost of shipping into the asking price for the lot.

Which is cheaper:

A $5 item with $2 shipping ?

A $7 item with Free Shipping?

If you get multiple sales from each customer, this requires a little more thought and massaging, of course.

feathercraftshop · ‎09-25-2016

Since being forced to switch to CDN dollars for listing currency I had considered switching to the dotCOM site to list in US dollars as I always had prior on the dotCA site...and this would also solve the cart issue. One downside though is the sales tax table for Canada provinces does not work on the dotCOM site.

With the cart issues for our US buyers who knows how much potential business we are losing but I am not sure switching to dotCOM is the best solution...not sure there is one other than eBay fixing the problem. Seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place so to speak.

I may just increase my prices some and offer free shipping...I will be interested in seeing if the ratio of US to CDN buyers change in my sales.