Hello everyone,
Welcome to our weekly chat. This week, the thread will remain open until tomorrow as usual.
Open issues:
- Browse pages and Search pages showing different results for same category
- "Apply my Combined Shipping Discounts" option unavailable on Revise
- Incomplete ID History
- Link to Community located on Feedback page points to eBay.com
- Some Search pages show watchers, some don't
- Items missing from combined invoice
- Request Total unavailable
Updates:
- Search results page shows shipping costs inconsistent with what's on the item pages - Shipping team working to fix
- Shipping Calculator returning erroneous rates - Report sent to Pitney Bowes and Canada Post for investigation
- RESOLVED - Economy Shipping from Outside the US giving wrong EDDs (7-14 biz days instead of 11-23)
- Selling limits live items count discrepancy - We are investigating further.
- Missing Tracked Packet destinations - still no update from PayPal and Pitney Bowes
- Combined shipping offers not shown to international buyers - ticket open
If anything is missing, please let me know. Thanks!
Hi again, I have another announcement to make. In 2 weeks, I will be leaving the eBay Canada team. I have been offered a super interesting job on a new team focusing on Consumer Selling and will be relocating to the San Jose area. As I plan my transition to my new role and prepare to relocate, I'll be away next week but I will be back to hole my final weekly session with you on December 7th. Following that final session, there will be no more weekly chats until Rodney selects a successor, who will be starting these again in the new year.
I'll keep my goodbyes for the December 7 session but for now, let me thank each and everyone of you who attend my weekly chats, whether you post of just read. It's be great getting to know you and hopefully help you as well.
Finally, harping again on the irregularity between Best Match within ebay and the Browse Page items brought to a potential buyer when he or she is coming to ebay via google. I raised this last week or the week before and you said you'd refer it to a colleague. In the meantime, I keep checking this search result to see when the two will align but there is honestly no correlation. Here is another example in my category. Obviously this affects me as a seller.
Browse Page results for the search Disney Cars Star Wars (it's a special sub-category crossover):
As you can see, coming into ebay from google, my stuff is nowhere to be seen. Yet doing that same search directly into ebay, this is what I get:
I have prominent placement. Not logged in just there. I am concerned as to the reason there is no correlation between the two. Is it because I am Canadian listing on ebay.ca? I certainly hope not.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Raphael, you will be sorely missed. Thank you for your tiresome service. I'm sure this was a wearisome role to fill at times.
Congratulations of your new position and best of luck to you in your future endeavours.
Thanks for your kind words. I will miss you guys too! I'll still be around though, just no longer exclusively focusing on Canadian problems. I'm sure that whomever takes the reins in my wake will be able to help you just the same, who knows, maybe even better.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Good morning, I have a few matters to question you with this morning but for clarity, I will limit one per post.
To start:
Do you have any word on Tracked Packet failing with the Calculated Shipping Tool? I raised this a few weeks ago. Buyers are being offered Tracked Packet as a service where the limit for Tracked Packet dimension (but not weight) is exceeded. As you may recall from the email I sent you earlier about this, this shipping tool error cost me $98 out-of-pocket because it sold an international buyer Tracked Packet where only Xpresspost would deliver. I'm hoping this will be addressed and fixed. I cannot be the only seller whose got listings of bulky items that are affected.
I had to take this to Pitney Bowes and Canada Post, because none of the data that drives these calculated rates come from eBay. I don't have a further update on this yet unfortunately.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
My next issue. Now this has been subject of some, ahem, vigorous debate.
Are sellers allowed to collect and utilize the email addresses of ebay buyers to subscribe those ebay buyers (without consent) to post-purchase newsletters for off-ebay website stores? http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Ebay-Feature-Request-Share-items-to-userid/td-p/357156
I say emphatically no (citing the ebay privacy policy prohibiting spam as I am interpreting it) but others disagree. I'm certain you will hear more about this today from (an)other member(s) so I will leave it at that. Please review the thread I cited above.
There are a few things I will say about this. First, sellers aren't supposed to use your email obtained via an eBay transaction to try and drive their sales off eBay. For obvious reasons however, this is very hard to enforce. Second, with regards to CASL (Canadian Anti Spam Law), while it's true that implied consent grants someone who has previously done business with you the right to contact you, that is only true for a certain period of time, while expressed consent grants the marketer the right to contact for a much longer period. Everyone should familiarize themselves with the CASL finer details and act accordingly, and complain to the authorities if they feel they are being spammed by a seller who isn't following the rules.
I'm so sorry to hear you'll be leaving us! I wish you the greatest success in your new position and want to thank you personally for all your assistance (and patience) in answering questions over the years. That comes especially from "Madame cart-disconnect". 
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I'd like to deal with the subject that 'mjwl' mentions in Post #5 above, but I think the question needs to be completely different. My concern is not in getting confirmation about whether eBay's own rules permit the use of buyer emails by sellers post-transaction or not. I think there was a lot of misunderstanding about this in the thread linked in Post #5.
My question is this: If such use of email communication outside of eBay is not allowed under eBay policy, how does eBay reconcile that policy with the current anti-spam laws of Canada, and under what legal authority? Is there a statute or regulation eBay relies upon to resolve this contradiction?
As you might know, a section of Canada's new anti-spam law deals with exclusions that constitute "implied consent", one of which is the occurrence of any transaction between the parties (among other exclusions). This may directly clash with the internal policies of sites such as eBay with respect to use of buyer emails.
I am not trying to be deliberately contentious, it's a real concern. If eBay prohibits the use of buyer emails for contact by sellers entirely outside eBay, then any seller doing so is going to be caught between eBay's rules and Canada's law, since the latter stipulates that there is no prohibition.
While asking this, I recognize that you may not want to have to answer. I realize it's likely not in the purview of your position at eBay. I'm not ever sure that eBay's U.S. legal experts are in a position to answer it properly. For that I think only an independent Canadian authority -- a court or legislature -- can properly resolve the question.
I've written to the OCA (Office of Consumer Affairs) to ask them to explain how the exclusion portions of the law and internal corporate rules (of any corporation, but specifically online selling platforms like eBay) interact legally. To put it simply, I asked which would take precedence in the event of a conflict. Unfortunately I'm still waiting for a response, so I can't say what the answer will be. However, I'm hoping they'll recognize that the question really needs to be referred to a legal authority for a proper answer, and I believe they have the mandate to do that. I'll update the thread on this issue once I have a reply.
One last question for today (I think it's the last, I've been saving them up 
).
I'm considering switching all my listings back to .ca now that the .com cart is fixed, maybe as a New Year's experiment for a few months to see if I do any better than I have been lately.
Although I have real concerns about the display and fluctuation of $CDN prices in relation to my U.S. competitors' prices if I list exclusively on .ca (95% of my customers are in the U.S.), that's something I might trade off in order to get proper access to Canada Post options and to save money on FVFs.
So my question is: do the eBay delivery time frames for items listed on .ca and shipping to the U.S. fairly reflect the actual Canada Post delivery estimates to the U.S. for the various services, particularly where the item is being purchased from .com?
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Canada Post recently announced it is suspending its service guarantees for the holiday season. Will ebay be following suit? There is now no possible way for sellers to ensure their packages are delivered on time so one would assume now that this means sellers can also expect ebay to forgive our Late Shipment defects?
As a result, from November 21, 2016 to January 6, 2017, Canada Post will only honour service guarantee claims for late delivery if an Expedited Parcel item is delivered two or more business days after the delivery standard, instead of one.
I think this sounds more alarming than it really is. When you boil it down, this is Canada Post padding their financial responsibility to honour claims for late delivery by one extra day and only for Expedited Parcel. EP being a tracked service, as soon as the item is shipped within the seller's stated handling time, there is no possibility of a late shipment defect. This should have zero impact on a seller's metrics.
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