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!
I knew there had to be one more question... 
This may put you on the spot, but can you confirm whether the currency of a listing (e.g. $USD or $CDN) has any relation to visibility. In other words, is currency considered in the mix that eBay algorithms use to display listings to buyers?
(Another concern in my dilemma of whether to return to listing on .ca).
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Two more things and then I am done for the day, I promise.
This is a question that arose from trying to help another member with an Answer Centre problem and I could not find a policy to say one way or another what to tell them. Can multiple buyers share a single account? If they are in the same household? Different households? Or are all buyers supposed to have their own account? Is there a policy? If so, what is it?
In theory, every buyer (or seller) should have their own account. In practice and unless we detect a third party accessing an account without the legitimate owner's permission or knowledge, we consider that any activity conducted from an eBay account is the responsibility of the owner on record. What this means is, for example, if many buyers are using the same account and that one of them fails to pay for items they commit to buy too many times, we will restrict or suspend the account even if the non-paying buyer wasn't the owner registered on the account. Another example, if a buyer leaves their account unattended and their underage child commits to buy an expensive item resulting in an unpaid item, eBay will not remove the unpaid item. The same goes for more egregious offences like buyer abuse, where an account can indefinitely be suspended. Most times there is more to lose than to gain in doing this.
The rule of thumb is similar for sellers by the way. It happens that larger seller accounts allow multiple employees to access the account, but the account and all the activity on it is always treated as it if was the actual seller using it.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
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.
This one still puzzles me a bit. I'm told by a Search expert colleague that both pages are supposed to be ranked under Best Match, but clearly the results are different, as you pointed out. To be fair, there's a running gag internally at eBay that no one in the company fully understands how Best Match works - just goes to show how complicated and evolving the algorithm driving Best Match really is.
The colleague I mentioned is working to figure this out. I'll share his findings as he relays them to me. For now I've added this to my list for tracking.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Okay, I lied. I'm back with one more thing. Canada Post recently expanded Xpresspost to several new countries which had previously only been served by Air Parcel. When will the Calculated Shipping Tool be updated to reflect that? And, also, when will Paypal Shipping? We've been waiting a year now for the last Tracked Packet destinations to be added to our ability to print via Paypal Shipping.
Expanding the reach of the Xpresspost™ - International service
We’re excited to offer Xpresspost - International to 19 additional countries. Effective October 24, you will be able to ship items to these destinations using Xpresspost - International instead of International Air Parcel, which is slower and lacks the features Xpresspost - International has to offer. The higher quality service offers:
- Faster delivery to your customers
- On-time delivery guarantee
- Tracking
- Delivery confirmation
- Signature
BELARUS JAMAICA MEXICO THAILAND COSTA RICA LATVIA ROMANIA TRINIDAD & TOBAGO CROATIA LITHUANIA SAUDIA ARABIA UNITED ARAB EMIRATES ESTONIA MALTA SERBIA VIETNAM INDONESIA MAURITIUS SLOVAKIA
I'm sorry but you said that your previous question was the last one, I can't answer this one now.
Who am I kidding 😛
This is 100% driven by Pitney Bowes (the rates and the available destinations, both on eBay and on PayPal). There is nothing to update on eBay per se, so all I can do is tell PB about this and ask how come they aren't updating their feed to reflect the changes made by Canada Post to their services.
@rose-dee wrote:
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".
Thanks for your kind words, Madame cart-disconnect 🙂 It has been my pleasure and honour to help you along with everyone else over the years. My new role, although not Canada-specific, is global, so in a way what I'll be doing should impact some Canadian sellers, hopefully for the better.
@rose-dee wrote:
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.
Allow me to start by sorting a few things out. Most importantly, it should be noted that it is not eBay's mandate to enforce the CASL law beyond our interaction with our own customers. In other words, it's not our place to tell sellers whether they can or can't contact buyers under CASL. With that said, we do have a fee avoidance policy which says a seller shouldn't be directly contacting buyers whom they met via an eBay transaction in an attempt to conduct business outside of eBay.
What I'm trying to illustrate is, these are two separate things and shouldn't be confused as being connected in any way. the Canadian government enforces CASL, eBay enforces its own policies. I hope that clears any contradiction concerns.
So, the question whether sellers are allowed to email buyers after a first transaction needs to be looked at from two different angles. From an eBay policy standpoint, it would be considered fee avoidance since the original connection was made via eBay. We would expect fees for the service of connecting the two parties in order to make a sale/purchase. From an anti-spam law standpoint, that's not eBay's place to regulate or enforce, so if a buyer had concerns that they are being spammed by a seller, they would need to report that to the appropriate authorities. I posted a link to the government website for CASL in my response to Maureen's post on this topic.
@rose-dee wrote:
I have a question about how the new and improved .com cart handles checkout where two currencies are involved, e.g. $US and $Cdn.
At the moment I have most listings on .com, some on .ca. I understand that if a buyer purchases one of each, they will see a message at checkout telling them that each currency has to be paid separately. I do get this, but what I don't know is what happens from there from the buyer's point of view.
Is the buyer taken to Paypal and then automatically looped back again to the cart to pay for the second item? I'd have to hope that's the case. Or does the buyer have to find his way back to the cart more or less on his own? Is one currency always dealt with first, or does that depend on the listing site and/or the site the buyer is purchasing from?
My concern is cart abandonment by the buyer part way through the payment process.
The updated US shopping cart works exactly like the CA cart has ben working since the beginning, and we haven't seen any issues with cart abandonment due to checking out with multiple currencies.
When there are more than one currencies in the cart, the buyer is taken through checkout once for each currency in the cart (the eBay checkout, which integrates PayPal - buyers no longer are taken to the PayPal site at all, it's been this way for some time). The buyer goes through the payment flow once for USD, and a second time for CAD, etc. until all items are paid for. Buyers aren't taken back to the cart, just to checkout. It's very easy and requires no unnecessary clicks or navigation. I think the actual click count is 1 or 2 per checkout (depending if you're already logged into PayPal.
A note about cart abandonment, that's a misleading metric. Buyers don't only abandon their cart because the flow is too complicated. The cart is a great tool for prospective shoppers who want to figure out the total cost of an order, shipping costs, etc. It isn't expected that items put in the shopping cart are actually purchased 100% of the time.
I can safely say that there are no worries to be had with checkout only being able to pay for one currency at a time (which as I mentioned last week, is a PayPal limitation, not eBay's).
@dustmite007 wrote:
Hi Rapael, I sold an older electronic item As Is & not working & for repair. No returns. Was honest in all the details. The item was in near mint condition. It was bought by a person in Canada. Should have listened to my radar as he was being unreasonable before he bought. Wanted it for half price & complained about the shipping cost. Then when he paid right away wanted it shipped even faster. My husband said this guy will find something wrong when he gets it & will probably return it. Sure enough, today I get a return request. He complained about everything. Just to keep the peace I will allow a return. I have already added him to my blocked list. I have never had to do a return before. How do you provide a return shipping label? Thanks So I asked the Community & received this comment: To do a return label in Canada you just create one in PayPal like usual (you already have yours & his info) and send it to the buyer's email address (which you already have) as an attachment. I was not able to do that so I phoned eBay Customer Service. Got someone from the Philippines again. She didn't know that the buyer & me the seller are in the same country. Tried to talk me through cross border return shipping. Didn't know anything about making a return shipping label through PayPal but told me to go to a Post Office to do that. I then phoned PayPal as I can find no way to send a return shipping label. I talked to someone in Arizona & she said it can't be done through Chrome browser. So I used Firefox instead. I then had to go into Shipping Preferences & click on Update & Click yes to Display Return Shipping Label Link For Buyer. Then the buyer has to go into PayPal & print up the label himself & then I have to refund him the money. I told my buyer this & now he is threatening me that he will not pay me any money for return shipping & I have a feeling he will put in a complaint to get the whole thing refunded. He told me that he has done returns before & never had to pay. Looks like he may be a chronic returner. Please advise. I am so stressed out & upset.
Hi dustmite007,
Sorry that you have to deal with this. There are two ways to provide for the buyer to return the item: either send them a return shipping label (basically just a shipping label with them as the sender and you as the recipient), or send them money via PayPal to cover for the cost of return shipping.
I'm really not sure about what the different CS teammates told you however. There are no on-platform return shipping labels on eBay.ca, so the second person you spoke to gave you wrong information. The first person you spoke to made a mistake that's very easy to make, to be fair, it was like that in both cases. When only a small fraction of the calls they get are not about US domestic transactions, it's very easy to relay erroneous information when you do get a Canadian seller on the line.
Best of luck with this. I hope you can put this behind you quickly.
@rose-dee wrote:
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?
All EDDs for items that go to US buyers are ruled by data gathered from all the eBay shipments that followed a similar route in the past. What the buyer sees depend on the item location, the buyer's location and the service used.
I have to leave it at this for the evening, family obligations and all. 🙂 I'll let you post more questions and comments and join the conversation again tomorrow. Good evening and night!
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