Hello Canadian eBayers,
As usual, we will join you for our weekly chat at 1 PM Eastern. Please go ahead and start posting your questions at your convenience.
See you in the afternoon!
Good afternoon Raphael.
A month ago, following many inquiries over several months. you advised on the Selling-Central board:
"We have discovered an issue impacting Legacy Members (Canadian users who registered on eBay.com before there was an eBay.ca) which prevented the email to be sent to them for this promo. I'm working with the Promo team to find a solution.
Please keep in mind that there are other things that may prevent a promo email to reach you or may delay its delivery, for example many members have opted out of promo emails from eBay entirely (this setting can be changed in your Communications Preferences). Also, free email providers such as Gmail or Hotmail sometimes experience delays in receiving emails sent by an automated process like the ones we employ for these promo emails.
I would like to thank you all or reporting these issues and for your patience and understanding as we work to resolve them."
OK, a month later the same problem seems to exist. Not only for "legacy members" but for Canadian sellers registered on eBay.ca.
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Looks-like-there-s-a-new-promo-eh/m-p/268623#U268623
First question today: What has been done to identify the problem and correct it?
Second question today: When will it be fixed?
@ecgt wrote:
Hi Raphael and all,
I have been having an issue this past week in regards to some of my items being removed by mistake. For some reason, eBay has been removing complete video games that I have listed with their strategy guides, claiming that I have been listing them in the wrong category. I have been listing them in the video games section, which is the status quo on the site, but when they are removed I am being told to list them in the strategy guide section. The strategy guide category is where sellers list strategy guides without games. Since the complete game is the main item and the guide is a bonus item, all sellers list games with guides in the video game section. This is the way it has always been. Please take a look for yourselves.
I had three listings removed on Friday. I called eBay CS on Saturday and they agreed that the listings were removed by mistake. I received an email from eBay apologizing for the error that instructed me that it was okay to relist the items. I did so Saturday night. When I woke up Sunday morning, the items had been removed again for the same reason I note above (despite me getting the go ahead from eBay in writing to relist them). I called CS on Monday and they told me that it was a technical issue and that the "bots" are getting confused.
I made a post about this on the Discussion Forums earlier this week and somebody suggested that I contact you guys about this and I hope you can help me out. Here is the link:
I received another email from eBay this morning saying that the listings had been removed by mistake and that I could now relist them. I am worried that if I do relist them that they will get pulled again. Every time that my listings get removed by mistake I receive a policy violation and the people at CS do not know how to remove the policy violations, despite eBay's error. I am worried that if I relist the items in the correct category that my account will be in big trouble. Already, my items have gone from the top to the bottom of best match. I have not made any sales on eBay since the listings were removed the first time and there is definitely a correlation.
My questions for you folks are as follows: Is there a way for you to check to see if the "bots" are malfunctioning or confused and fix them? Secondly, am I safe to relist my items or will they be removed again (even though I have now received two messages from eBay saying it is okay to relist them?). Third, how can I get the policy violations removed from my account now that eBay has admitted that the listings were removed (twice) by mistake.
This incident is really hurting my ability to sell on the site and is compounded by the three major eBay outages that have happened this month. I just want to get back to selling as usual. Any help you folks can offer will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, brian
Hello Brian,
It was actually me who flagged the issue with some of my trusted contacts in the CS org, and they all agreed with my assessment that this was, in fact, repeated human error. The person who made the error will receive appropriate coaching to ensure this mistake isn't repeated on you or any other member. If it was to happen again however, please send me an email asap so measures can be taken.
You can safely relist your items now and the violations have been removed from your account. Apologies for the inconvenience this has caused you.
@lukey9 wrote:
Hi Raphael and all, Has there been any Progress on getting the Shopping Cart working on ca.. I am getting tired of Customers asking about it and giving Refunds on shipping to others. Thanks
Hello lukey9,
I'd like to start by confirming that we are talking about the same problem, which is to say that US buyers are unable to add eBay.ca items to their shopping cart on eBay.com, thus rendering the practice of combined shipping impossible for BIN items since these now require immediate payment. The shopping cart on the eBay.ca site, as far as I know, works without issues.
At the time I write this, we still don't have a date for a fix on the eBay.com shopping cart for this particular issue. This is an unfortunate situation that was created by the implementation of the immediate payment requirement on BIN items coupled with the way the US shopping cart was originally built (it doesn't support any listings that weren't created on eBay.com). We are working with the appropriate team to get the necessary upgrade work prioritized and we will announce as soon as we get confirmation on an ETA.
In the meantime, if US buyers get in touch with you to ask how they can benefit from your combined shipping offer despite this issue with the US shopping cart, you can suggest they go to eBay.ca and use the shopping cart there, this one should work. If anyone has a use case where a US buyer was unable to do this, please let me know.
"on eBay.com, thus rendering the practice of combined shipping impossible for BIN items since these now require immediate payment."
Hi Raphael
This raises the question: why?
eBay offers sellers of fixed price listings the option of asking for "immediate payment" at time of listing if they want.
Why does eBay.com in fact ignore the wish of sellers who do NOT want to ask for immediate payment but prefer to let buyers pay at a time convenient to them or take more time to browse their other listings.
Why?
Who benefits of a program forcing immediate payment in instances when neither seller or buyer want it?
@pierrelebel wrote:
"on eBay.com, thus rendering the practice of combined shipping impossible for BIN items since these now require immediate payment."
Hi Raphael
This raises the question: why?
eBay offers sellers of fixed price listings the option of asking for "immediate payment" at time of listing if they want.
Why does eBay.com in fact ignore the wish of sellers who do NOT want to ask for immediate payment but prefer to let buyers pay at a time convenient to them or take more time to browse their other listings.
Why?
Who benefits of a program forcing immediate payment in instances when neither seller or buyer want it?
Hello Pierre,
Why was required immediate payment on BIN items introduced? Simply put, it's better for business. This is a measured & observed fact. It dramatically reduced the amount of unpaid items and the amount of time lost by sellers relisting those unpaid items.
You have to keep in mind that eBay.com is designed and run first and foremost for the US business, and that for the US business, the US shopping cart works fine, even with the immediate pay rule on BIN items. Only items not listed on eBay.com are impacted by this issue, and items listed on eBay.ca, sadly for all of us Canadian sellers, represent a tiny fraction of the US core business.
What we have here is an unfortunate situation created by circumstances from good ideas implemented on eBay.com for the US business. It's far from ideal for Canadian sellers, but we are working actively to fix that.
"sadly for all of us Canadian sellers, represent a tiny fraction of the US core business."
That may be true but that same amount also represents a huge fraction of Canadian sellers business.
"Why does eBay have a .ca site at all? "
A former eBay.ca country manager answered that question a long time ago.
A .ca site allows sellers to list and get paid in local currency (Canadian dollars). It also allows GST/HST registered sellers to collect taxes and allow sellers to use domestic shipping options (Canada Post).
Other than that, .ca is an American site which explains why GST/HST is not charged on fees. All other Canadian based auctioneers must collect GST/HST on their fees and many have complained that the situation is grossly unfair.
@rose-dee wrote:
You know, Raphael, Pierre's comment above inspires me to ask a question that I've not seen anyone ask before, but that always runs through my mind when we see the "we are a small part of the US business" explanation: Why does eBay have a .ca site at all?
It seems to me it would be far more functional to have us all listing on .com (as I believe was the case at one point long ago), but offer different shipping options to Canadians. Many Cdn sellers already list on .com anyway. I know, a big question, but any thoughts?
Hello rose-dee,
Are you trying to put me out of a job? 🙂
I honestly think having eBay.ca is far better for e-commerce in Canada than it would be if Canadians had only eBay.com to use. Think about it: even if we killed off eBay.ca and made implementations to eBay.com to accommodate Canadians, we still would be the same tiny fraction of CA users in the ocean of US users. Things would end up being the same.
With a fully Canadian site, even if the resources are sometimes thin, we can at least put programs together that are Canadian-specific, for example like shipping services that make sense for Canadians, appropriate tax tables and homegrown programs like our yearly Entrepreneur of the Year award.
raphael@ebay.com wrote:Hello rose-dee,
Are you trying to put me out of a job? 🙂
No, Raphael, you're far too efficient and knowledgeable to ever be out of a job -- I'm sure they'd pull you over into the big pond if this one ever dried up! 
It's just my wish, every time I see more "designer" changes to this site, that they'd focus just a wee bit more effort on making things work between the US and Canada.
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