Hello Canadian eBayers,
Welcome to our weekly chat. Please start posting at your convenience and we will join you at 1 PM Eastern, as usual.
I have some follow-up questions from last week:
1) Re store categories: Has there been any further word on when the missing store category panel will be reinstated?
2) Re .ca cart issues vis-a-vis discounts: Were you able to look into why my automated shipping discount didn’t get picked up by the eBay.ca cart for .ca buyers? (See my March 11 post with screen shot). Do you know yet if this is a bug and if so, whether it will be fixed?
Doing more tests last week, I found the discounts were still not being applied (for a .ca buyer on .ca) when 5 items were chosen at random, with and without free shipping already listed. However, another seller who was testing found that by purchasing 2 of each of the items that already had a shipping cost, she was able to get the free shipping to properly display for the whole order (see screen shot below - please ask me to re-post if it's too small to read).
Does this mean the automated shipping rules are not working if items are already listed with free shipping domestically?
3) Re the .com "cart disconnect": Were you able to follow up with the person you referred to last week concerning the examples I posted of a buyer on .com getting routed to a non-functional Cart when attempting to buy from a Canadian seller? (See post #7 of March 18; I’ve your reply here for easy reference: “We've already engaged with the cart team to see what can be done here. My colleague who is leading this is away from the office today unfortunately, I can only ask about it tomorrow. Please come back in a couple of days to see what he's told me.”)
One last post, and then I'll cede the floor. 
I have a few comments and questions in follow-up on the .com “cart disconnect” issue:
1) You’ve said that the .com Cart problem affects a very small minority of Canadian sellers. In view of the screen shots I posted last week, showing that .com buyers are being deliberately routed to a Cart that doesn’t function, isn’t it conceivable this will have a far wider impact than originally envisaged? If this goes on for months, will it not begin to affect how buyers regard eBay itself?
EBay based its whole defect system on the concept of keeping buyers coming back. Given time, this cart issue will drive thousands away. Perhaps many will run from Canadian sellers to buy on “safe ground” from Americans, but many more will abandon eBay altogether.
It appears to even affect other eBay sites (e.g. UK). If I were a buyer, I would be confused and very upset to end up in the place shown on my screen shot below.
2) It appears that as things stand, anyone who logs onto .com and wants to purchase more than 1 item from a Canadian seller will be sent to the “dead-end Cart” if they follow eBay’s suggested prompts. There is some question as to whether even 1 item can be paid for once the buyer follows eBay’s recommendation to add it to the Cart. Don’t you agree that this creates a far bigger issue than one involving just a few isolated Canadian sellers? We’re not concerned simply with discounts, but with the ability of buyers to check out and pay at all. Every time a potential buyer runs into this brick wall is another potentially lost buyer from eBay itself.
3) You mentioned that eBay.ca was having trouble “getting this matter prioritized” at eBay HQ. Can you not use the above factors to argue for a much higher priority for this issue with eBay HQ? Obviously if they're hearing it affects a very small part of the market, and believe that to be the case, or if eBay.ca can’t demonstrate otherwise, they won’t treat it with any urgency.
4) Maybe I should ask the most important question – have you in fact been presenting the argument for priority on the above basis, or have you been reporting on to eBay that the “cart disconnect” is a problem limited to just a few Canadian sellers? If you have, can you accept the argument for treating this as a wider issue and advocate on eBay.ca's behalf to eBay HQ on that foundation?
Quite a few questions, I realize. However, as a long-time eBay seller (and buyer), I’m very concerned about the effect this ongoing cart disconnect on .com will have on discouraging buyers from coming back to eBay.
I would be grateful for direct and complete replies to these important questions, as I’m sure will many others.
Sample of where .com buyers end up after following eBay's prompts:
@rose-dee wrote:
I had a message in my eBay inbox today inviting me to take advantage of the new fixed-price listing promotion. When I clicked on “Activate”, I got the screen shown below. I’m posting this so that you might be able to look into this error. Luckily the promo did show up on my “Summary” today, and I was able to activate it from there using the “Get Offer” button.
Hi rose-dee,
I have the Promo team looking into this. Thanks for the report.
@rose-dee wrote:
I have some follow-up questions from last week:
1) Re store categories: Has there been any further word on when the missing store category panel will be reinstated?
2) Re .ca cart issues vis-a-vis discounts: Were you able to look into why my automated shipping discount didn’t get picked up by the eBay.ca cart for .ca buyers? (See my March 11 post with screen shot). Do you know yet if this is a bug and if so, whether it will be fixed?
Doing more tests last week, I found the discounts were still not being applied (for a .ca buyer on .ca) when 5 items were chosen at random, with and without free shipping already listed. However, another seller who was testing found that by purchasing 2 of each of the items that already had a shipping cost, she was able to get the free shipping to properly display for the whole order (see screen shot below - please ask me to re-post if it's too small to read).
Does this mean the automated shipping rules are not working if items are already listed with free shipping domestically?
3) Re the .com "cart disconnect": Were you able to follow up with the person you referred to last week concerning the examples I posted of a buyer on .com getting routed to a non-functional Cart when attempting to buy from a Canadian seller? (See post #7 of March 18; I’ve your reply here for easy reference: “We've already engaged with the cart team to see what can be done here. My colleague who is leading this is away from the office today unfortunately, I can only ask about it tomorrow. Please come back in a couple of days to see what he's told me.”)
1) This is still being worked on.
2) As we've confirmed last week, it does seem like items with free shipping aren't being counted as qualifying items against your rule of "buy 5 items and get free shipping." I don't feel this is how it should be working and I've engaged with the Shipping team to figure this out.
3) This is being looked at as we speak but unfortunately I don't have more to report on this yet.
@rose-dee wrote:
One last post, and then I'll cede the floor.
I have a few comments and questions in follow-up on the .com “cart disconnect” issue:
1) You’ve said that the .com Cart problem affects a very small minority of Canadian sellers. In view of the screen shots I posted last week, showing that .com buyers are being deliberately routed to a Cart that doesn’t function, isn’t it conceivable this will have a far wider impact than originally envisaged? If this goes on for months, will it not begin to affect how buyers regard eBay itself?
EBay based its whole defect system on the concept of keeping buyers coming back. Given time, this cart issue will drive thousands away. Perhaps many will run from Canadian sellers to buy on “safe ground” from Americans, but many more will abandon eBay altogether.
It appears to even affect other eBay sites (e.g. UK). If I were a buyer, I would be confused and very upset to end up in the place shown on my screen shot below.
2) It appears that as things stand, anyone who logs onto .com and wants to purchase more than 1 item from a Canadian seller will be sent to the “dead-end Cart” if they follow eBay’s suggested prompts. There is some question as to whether even 1 item can be paid for once the buyer follows eBay’s recommendation to add it to the Cart. Don’t you agree that this creates a far bigger issue than one involving just a few isolated Canadian sellers? We’re not concerned simply with discounts, but with the ability of buyers to check out and pay at all. Every time a potential buyer runs into this brick wall is another potentially lost buyer from eBay itself.
3) You mentioned that eBay.ca was having trouble “getting this matter prioritized” at eBay HQ. Can you not use the above factors to argue for a much higher priority for this issue with eBay HQ? Obviously if they're hearing it affects a very small part of the market, and believe that to be the case, or if eBay.ca can’t demonstrate otherwise, they won’t treat it with any urgency.
4) Maybe I should ask the most important question – have you in fact been presenting the argument for priority on the above basis, or have you been reporting on to eBay that the “cart disconnect” is a problem limited to just a few Canadian sellers? If you have, can you accept the argument for treating this as a wider issue and advocate on eBay.ca's behalf to eBay HQ on that foundation?
Quite a few questions, I realize. However, as a long-time eBay seller (and buyer), I’m very concerned about the effect this ongoing cart disconnect on .com will have on discouraging buyers from coming back to eBay.
I would be grateful for direct and complete replies to these important questions, as I’m sure will many others.
Sample of where .com buyers end up after following eBay's prompts:
1) First off, no one is deliberately creating horrible experiences for any users. When such a thing happens, it's unfortunate and we work as best as we can to remedy the situation, usually with success.
Secondly, the eBay.com shopping cart works perfectly for the vast majority of transaction that happen on eBay.com, keeping in mind that the vast majority of transactions on eBay.com happen between a US buyer and a US seller. This may help explain what I mean when I say that the group of seller impacted by the eBay.com shopping cart limitations is rather small in the grand scheme of things. By the same logic, US buyers are facing this problem only when they attempt to buy an item from a Canadian seller who listed on eBay.ca. To that Canadian buyer, this impacts 100% of their US buyers, but to that US buyer, it only happens when the item they attempts to buy happens to be offered by a Canadian buyer.
2) This is due to the same issue you've raised 2 weeks ago and which I said is being looked into in my last post. Once again, this will only affect items that were NOT listed on eBay.com. If you are able to list on eBay.com, you'll be side stepping this problem as well.
3) and 4) As I've stated many times now, we've made our case as thoroughly as possible with the Cart team, exposing all aspects of the problem. I assure you that everyone involved completely understands the scope of the issue, and that even with that, it's hard to get the required work prioritized. I remind you that we've cut a lot of jobs recently, just to put the whole prioritizing of work in context. The work required to change how the eBay.com shopping cart works is far from trivial.
Side note, it might be a good idea to stop calling this a "cart disconnect." Might we call it "cart limitations" just for sake of being more accurate?
Thanks!
@lady_goth** wrote:
I have a problem in my account with the newsletter. When I go to marketing tools and I look at my newsletter it is set to duplicate and I try to change it and it won't edit. Right now I have 10 pending emails set to duplicate and I click on edit and it just goes to duplicate. I've clicked on all the edit buttons to find out where to change it, but nothing is editing or changing. Thank god I do not have any subscribers. I sent my newsletter to myself to see what it looks like and since Oct 2014 I have gotten 82 emails. It shows that I have it set to bi weekly on Sun. Bi- weekly is only once every 2 weeks right? So 2 emails every 30 days? That's what I want. On March 4th I got 8 newsletter emails On March 5th I got 10 On March 6th i got 2 On March 9th I got 1 When you look in my account you see I get them almost every day. I don't know what to do on my end. Thanks.
Hi lady_goth**,
I recommend taking this issue to Customer Support. I don't know enough about seller newsletters to be able to help you adequately. CS has all the expertise to address this. Sorry I couldn't be more of help with this.
@lady.stark wrote:
Last March 11, I asked the following question that was not answered by an eBay staff person:
---------------------------------------------------------
Hi lady.stark,
All I meant by "a while ago" was "sometimes in the past." 🙂
I really can't promise to have the required pull to get that feature brought back. Probably not what you what to hear, but have you considered just printing the page from your browser? If you really need to edit, why not copy-paste the page into an editor, make your edits and then print? Not as elegant, I know, but it might help solve your problem. Another option would be to go paperless and just take a full page screen shot of any listing you want to keep, save it into a folder and voilà!
I tried another test today, as I was curious to see how the .com cart problem might be affecting major eBay Canada retailers, who presumably would be a lot more worried than we “little people” about buyers being unable to check out and pay for purchases.
Can you explain why, when I logged onto .com and attempt to buy from a major Canadian retailer, I am not running into the “.com cart disconnect”?
You will see in the series of screen shots below that I started on .com, then was automatically jumped over to .ca when I clicked on a store item. There I was presented with the Canadian cart, and had no problem putting items in it.
If eBay has done this for major retailers, why can’t it do the same for all sellers, or even all store owners?
This is rather shocking. I would appreciate some answers. It looks as if big sellers’ buyers are getting routed to a place where no problems will happen in checkout.
This would certainly explain a lot – such as why eBay isn’t interested in a quick fix. It also explains why no one has been forthcoming with any updates or answers on the .com cart issues. Your most important sellers are already immune. It would explain why there has been no pressure for a solution.
Did the eBay.ca people know about this separate treatment of large retailers? Of course they must have.
Don’t misunderstand me, there is no problem with the concept of paying money to get special treatment. What is disturbing is that after months of seller complaints about the “cart disconnect”, nobody at eBay.ca has admitted that the “disconnect” only applies to a certain group!
I hope I’m entirely wrong and that this one major seller’s site is an anomaly. How can any of us ordinary sellers have faith in eBay’s bona fides after seeing this? How can we believe anything we’re being told? It appears we’ve been either left with, or – even worse -- handed, a deliberate handicap. I’m completely aghast. I will be doing more tests to see if this is the only big Canadian retailer who has no issues with the .com car, by design.
Step 1: Large Canadian retailer store home page. Note I am on the US eBay site -- URL is .com, not .ca (I’ve blacked out parts that are personal info):
Step 2: Clicked on an item category (lighting). Note I am now on an eBay Canada (.ca) site.
Step 3: I clicked on an individual item and attempted to purchase – the Canadian cart is available, as you can see:
Step 4: I added a couple of items to the Cart. No messages of “Not Available” or “Gone to Auction” appear, as with the tests on individual sellers. Note that I am on a URL page marked “cart.payments.ebay.ca…”. Unlike the previous tests I’ve done, I’d have no problem checking out here, even though I started on .com.
@decal-fx wrote:
Hello Raphael, I have a question about feedback revision.
Yesterday I the following Negative from a buyer "I bough a $45 with free postage, expedited $9.95 additional I was billed $80 WHY"
The client had saw the commercial invoice in the shipping paperwork which was in Canadian Funds & included my cost of shipping incase of loss during transit to the customer.
He admits it was an error on his part , and said he would change it, so I sent them a feedback revision request that evening.
Today I sent them a friendly reminder that they only have 6 more days to respond to the the request. Ray say he responded to and change his feedback to positive , yet it still remains.
My question is twofold, if this revision comment subject to removal by eBay because of the actual contents? There is no way for me to charge his credit as payment was received through PayPal.
Can you check to see if He has responded to the revision request or at least tried. He admits he is not very computer literate.
Thanks For Your Time Greg
Hi Greg,
Unfortunately, even though I can check whether your buyer has or hasn't acted on your revision request, I am not at liberty to tell you whether they did.
As whether eBay can remove the comment on the basis, that's something I'd rather let CS handle, as they have the most recent updates to such policies front of mind.
@rose-dee wrote:
I tried another test today, as I was curious to see how the .com cart problem might be affecting major eBay Canada retailers, who presumably would be a lot more worried than we “little people” about buyers being unable to check out and pay for purchases.
Can you explain why, when I logged onto .com and attempt to buy from a major Canadian retailer, I am not running into the “.com cart disconnect”?
You will see in the series of screen shots below that I started on .com, then was automatically jumped over to .ca when I clicked on a store item. There I was presented with the Canadian cart, and had no problem putting items in it.
If eBay has done this for major retailers, why can’t it do the same for all sellers, or even all store owners?
This is rather shocking. I would appreciate some answers. It looks as if big sellers’ buyers are getting routed to a place where no problems will happen in checkout.
This would certainly explain a lot – such as why eBay isn’t interested in a quick fix. It also explains why no one has been forthcoming with any updates or answers on the .com cart issues. Your most important sellers are already immune. It would explain why there has been no pressure for a solution.
Did the eBay.ca people know about this separate treatment of large retailers? Of course they must have.
Don’t misunderstand me, there is no problem with the concept of paying money to get special treatment. What is disturbing is that after months of seller complaints about the “cart disconnect”, nobody at eBay.ca has admitted that the “disconnect” only applies to a certain group!
I hope I’m entirely wrong and that this one major seller’s site is an anomaly. How can any of us ordinary sellers have faith in eBay’s bona fides after seeing this? How can we believe anything we’re being told? It appears we’ve been either left with, or – even worse -- handed, a deliberate handicap. I’m completely aghast. I will be doing more tests to see if this is the only big Canadian retailer who has no issues with the .com car, by design.
Step 1: Large Canadian retailer store home page. Note I am on the US eBay site -- URL is .com, not .ca (I’ve blacked out parts that are personal info):
Step 2: Clicked on an item category (lighting). Note I am now on an eBay Canada (.ca) site.
Step 3: I clicked on an individual item and attempted to purchase – the Canadian cart is available, as you can see:
Step 4: I added a couple of items to the Cart. No messages of “Not Available” or “Gone to Auction” appear, as with the tests on individual sellers. Note that I am on a URL page marked “cart.payments.ebay.ca…”. Unlike the previous tests I’ve done, I’d have no problem checking out here, even though I started on .com.
The reason why this works was that you ended up on eBay.ca, where as I always said, the cart works fine 🙂
If you view the same items on eBay.com, you will see the same limitations at play as for any other items that were listed on eBay.ca.
EDIT: Let me add some depth here. Lowed Canada have a custom storefront where the category links are hard coded to point back at eBay.ca. I'll spare you the details of why or how that works, but you'll see that happen when a large retailer has an eBay store that looks significantly different than the normal eBay design.
@forester_studios wrote:
Hi - I'm just wondering how I can get a defect removed. I had a buyer recently open an "Item not as described" return and shortly after that he closed it and sent an email apologizing that after closer inspection the item was as described and he was very happy with it. The defect is still on my account even though he admited in his email it was a mistake on his part. How can I have the defect removed? Thanks.
Hi forester_studios,
For the same reasons stated in a previous post about feedback removal, please take this to eBay CS. As much as I would like to, I don't have the capacity to remove defects. Sorry for the inconvenience.
@rose-dee wrote:
No, Raphael, I was automatically routed back to .ca just as soon as I clicked on one of the store's categories. I didn't start there, I started on .com.
This is programmed routing of customers to the proper place so they can check out.
Sure, but you still were using the .ca cart, even though you started on .com. As I said, try the same items on eBay.com (grab the item number and search for it on eBay.com), then try the cart trick.
BTW, can you tell us how much it costs to have a store like this that will actually allow .com customers to check out through .ca?
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