Big problem when blocking the United States
Summary: chicweb expresses concern about their items disappearing from eBay.com when they block the United States, an issue that affects their ability to reach international buyers who primarily use the .com site. They shared a temporary workaround involving disabling U.S. shipping methods rather than blocking the country entirely, despite the complications it introduces. mrdutch1001 questions the rationale behind blocking U.S. buyers on a U.S.-based site, while phc64 and other participants highlight similar challenges and potential sales impacts tied to how eBay listings are managed and displayed internationally. The conversation delves into technical issues related to eBay's platform, with participants discussing visibility concerns, regional shopping habits, and potential solutions like raising U.S. shipping rates excessively to deter American buyers. Other contributors, including apmtrade and byto253, echo the difficulties faced by international sellers, emphasizing the broader implications for eBay's marketplace dynamics.
When I block the United States, my items disappears entirely from ebay.com, even if my address is in Canada.
@devon@ebay this is an enormous problem for canadian sellers. A LOT of people around the world uses ebay.com (canadian, european, etc) to buy. If our items are entirely removed from the .com, even for people in other parts of the world, this will kill any possibilities to continue doing business.
amphibolous
·11 months agoI'm based in the EU, and normally list on eBay.co.uk but pay additonal fees to make sure I'm also indexed on eBay.com. I also have a shop on eBay.com on another account. I recently blocked the US, for all the same reasons, but continued to pay for eBay.com inclusion, which did work when I tested it on the first day of the listings. It was only when the traffic crashed the following day, that I tried searching by item number only to find they were completely invisible on eBay.com, and then after a google search I was led to these Canadian forums.
Like others, I need to that extra traffic to reach countries and buyers that use eBay.com but aren't necesarily from the US, which is not an inconsiderate amount of potential buyers. Very disappointing to be paying for a service I can't get. eBay need to be more on the ball in light of these recent changes... In the meanwhile I think I will try unblocking the US but removing shipping options... It's really not ideal, but my income has gone off a cliff this month. The vast majority of my buyers are from the US.
flipistics
·11 months agoIf you're listing on the UK site, shouldn't your ads be visible on any other sites that use your eIS program (or whatever the UK version is called)? I don't think you should have had to pay extra for indexing with dot com.
People using dot com instead of the localized versions is definitely an issue and one that eBay needs to deal with rather quickly. Once the various eIS programs work for the USA again (or for the first time in our case), that should reduce the visibility issue considerably.
amphibolous
·11 months ago@flipistics Thanks for the reply.
I'm based in France, so whilst the UK has a global shipping programme, the only information I can find on EIS both on eBay and within the French forums refers to buying items from the US. I can't see any means to do that in the other sense. I've always sorted out my own shipping.
I mostly list auctions. If I unblock the US, but don't specify shipping, does it prevent a potential US customer from entering a bid unless they get in contact?
swiss_bianco_canada
·11 months agoAs of now, 2025-08-28 8:30 EDT, the problem (system bug?) still remains - when the US is excluded from shipping destinations, none of the items listed on eBay.ca show up on eBay.com regardless of buyer's specified shipping location.
In poking around, I discovered that this is also the case for other "country-specific" sites - I do not ship to Germany due to the perennial delays in their Customs and my items don't show up on ebay.de.
The "good news" is that for country-specific sites of the countries to which I do ship (eBay.fr, eBay.ch, eBay.es, etc.), the listing do show up. So, it seems that there is an incorrectly coded "hard filter" that forces listings to be suppressed if the shipping is not available to the country associated with the site, with ".com" requiring shipping to the US to be available to show listings.
I hope eBay will fix this issue (after all, it's in their best interest), but I am not holding my breath (they can declare that "it works as designed").
chicweb
OP11 months agoYes. The bug is still there and even worse, my temporary solution don't work anymore.
Now, a shipping method must be configured to the United States to appear on .com.
.com must be treated differently being the main and only hub for a LOT of countries in the world.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·11 months ago@swiss_bianco_canada
@chicweb Definitely in agreement in your observations regarding how a listing is configured and what displays.
@tavman
@phc64
In doing some random item specific searches with a large number of results, (searching on ca using the default on left side and my postal code) the repeating observations are the first volume of listings displayed are ALL USA. I had to check 6 pages of 120 results to find UK/France. Zippo for Canada. This search brought up 1500 + results. Updating to Canada only brought up 39 results. Closest 2600 km away.
Doing the same search on dot com brought up 1100 + listings. Because (in this case) there was no filter for country or region you are unable to search by distance or Canada only as examples. (That option seems to be hit or miss depending on category.) Updating to closest first listing displayed was USA 256 miles away. Zippo for Calgary/Edm as possible results. Filtering by Coo reduced results to half. Anything without a Coo is not included. Clicking on free intl shipping brings up mostly China, some UK and a tiny assortment of US. Canada "seems" to be almost invisible with most basic searches on dot com.
It is a current unknown as to how many Canadian sellers have US turned on or off but would be a good bet that for sellers playing along with Tariff Insanity - 2025 Edition, that many have.
From our testing and observations is this a built in glitch or how it was specifically designed as to how it works?
My current traffic report 5 days after turning off shipping to USA on Aug. 25.
dot ca:
dot com
itolduandso
·11 months agoI am getting used to the chaos so much that when there isn't going to be enough of the chaos, I will feel desperate to get more of it, like the Trump PSTSD sort of way.
chicweb
OP11 months ago@lotzofuniquegoodies @devon@ebay
Here's a few pictures. This is for the "Store" problem only.
First. USA Unblocked. Normal/default situation.
I configured my Pinback products to block United States in a business policy.
The three pinbacks disappeared from homepage. Even if I'm still set to Canada.
If I click on the Pinbacks category
If I switch to another country, "Nepal" as an example.
They are back. If I click my category, I see them too.
If we are set to be in Canada and we block the United States entirely from everywhere (all business policies/shipping), no items at all are shown in the store. The same message as the "No items in your area" is shown on the homepage with no categories at all.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·11 months ago@chicweb
As a test I have been running about 10 items on dot com with flat rate shipping. Last night I disabled shipping to USA. When I check my ca listings (store) it confirms NO listings available for shipping to USA. When I check dot com listings the 10 display with shipping to USA/Canada. (Double checked com settings and no way to exclude USA.) Next plan of attack to move those listings to ca. (There does need to be an easier way to move.) So this factoid is extremely important to remember for sellers that list on both sites.
Going forward as per your recent testing, added visibility may be entirely limited to debate and only based on where you list vs where you are.
PS. When I have checked traffic for those particular dot com listings the visits/impressions are miniscule . So again it appears the 2 sites are not super interconnected.
ilikehockeyjerseys
·11 months agoI understand the logic that .com is the US website - but I don't think your average consumer views it like that. There are some Canadians who arbitrarily use .com.
It seems like a major issue is that if you don't ship to the USA, your best match placement gets completely destroyed on .com. Meaning, your items might as well be invisible to Canadians who shop on .com because even if your item is the best offer by the metrics eBay uses on .ca, you get pushed to the last one of the spots on .com. This might actually be why OP thought their items weren't appearing on .com.
I think this represents a greater issue they need to address. They need to find a way to redirect both Canadian buyers and sellers to .com. While it is factual that eBay's Canadian market is very small, it ends up looking much smaller than it is because part of the userbase is on the .com website. In the long run, I think that we'd get a better rate of promotion and support if everybody was moved over to .ca so that there was a realistic depiction of the market that eBay has here.
musicyouneed
·11 months agoOn Friday, I blocked sales from United States on .ca and all of a sudden I don't have any sales from my Canadian buyers. I checked .com and my listings do not show up. Most buyers search on .com probably using an app. So I have unblocked US but no shipping indicated on Buy It Now Immediate Payment Required. If I get an email from a US buyer, I will explain.
chicweb
OP11 months agoThere's problems with .com when we block the United States.
Thats why I dont block the US and do not provide active methods to them, so they contact me.
The only problem with that is with offers.
I'm still waiting for eBay/Canada Post and/or Chit Chat for DDP to be entirely ready to start sending invoices, depending of the solutions available.
itolduandso
·11 months agoIsn't ChitChats DDP working?
synoco
·11 months agoNo - last I checked, like many other carriers, they are waiting to see what happens
lacemaker3
·11 months ago@musicyouneed -- FYI
As of today, 8-26-25, I can still see 172 of your listings on ebay.com, which have shipping available to the US. Canada Post tracked packet.
chicweb
OP11 months agoAfter an hour of having set United States as a blocked country in a Business Policy on ebay.ca, here's what I can say.
(thanks to @john_koenig99 for his help).
1. My items using the business policy that blocks the United States still show on .com when connected to my account. That's very good news. Maybe it was fixed during the day? Who knows.
2. When I use an Incognito browser and search a specific item, it shows. Good.
3. Note that I did not test browsing categories on .com. But my main issue was with the search results.
Here where I found some minor problems, still.
1. If I switch my country to United States (With the dropdown in search results), I disappear. Good, that's wanted. If I switch back to Canada, my item is not showing as expected. I have to close the browser and re-search. Then it is working. My guess would be some kind of session cookies problems. This happens on both (connected and incognito)
2. Items are removed from the .com store, even if I set manually my country to Canada in search results or if I don't change anything at all.
@devon@ebay I don't know if it was fixed during the day or if the last two points was what threw me off. But I think I pinpointed the problem.
I will tag this post as the solution.
itolduandso
·11 months agoThis is being considered as a solution?
Is this talk all about Ebay.CA?
Or is this for Canadian sellers sellin on Ebay.COM. Because that is the real issue.
Disabling on Ebay.CA is not a problem and never was.
chicweb
OP11 months agoThe topic is on ebay.ca forum. This is about items posted/added on ebay.ca but not showing on ebay.com (which should be).
If you post your items directly on ebay.com, you should consider asking on ebay.com forum or start a new thread about it, specifying you post your items on .com directly.
Personnally, I would post on ebay.com's forum for issues with items added directly on .com.
itolduandso
·11 months agoSo Ebay.CA has never been a problem and blocking USA sales always worked, this is nothing new and can be done via shipping policies conveniently.
chicweb
OP11 months agoLike I said in the post, it wasn't working (and is still buggy). I had to put back my temporary solution.
It was still causing problems with my items not showing on .com store and not showing with wider searches. I had to be very specific for them to show.
itolduandso
·11 months agoProbably the best way is to run the CA and COM stores separately and that's what my plan is since I have to start the CA store from scratch, the COM store has 20 years of history. I can use CSV and just change the location and currency so you don't have the extra work or use cross listing tools. Just need to setup the shipping policies correctly.
chicweb
OP11 months agoNot sure it's allowed on eBay. Duplicate listings aren't allowed, that's for sure.
I'm not sure if you have items on .ca (blocked USA) and on .com (blocked Canada) if that counts as duplicates....
themorinfam92
·11 months agochicweb
OP11 months agoI did not block United States at all.
I use business policies and Calculated shipping. You just have to remove "United States" from all the shipping methods in your international section.
Don't forget to remove North and South America. Because, they will still allow the United States if checked.
That should give this message on the items.
That will allow your items to be shown on .com normally to everybody else in the world. (in search results, .com store, etc)
Note that, personnally, I will still ship to United States, but that will be case by case and manually through invoices. I'm just waiting for a DDP system to be in place anywhere. ChitChat or Canada Post, so I can see how much exactly to bill the customers.
chicweb
OP11 months agoI'm re-testing with one of my category with a specific business policy.
I will write here in a few hours to see how it goes. I want to let time pass to make sure it's working properly with cache and syncing.
If it works, it will mean they have fixed it during the day. It wasn't working this morning.
shawnspeller
·11 months agoSorry about this dumb question but when checking on .com for your items what was your "ship to" country set to? I just tested a few of my items on an incognito browser on ebay.com, when I had ship to set to USA my items didn't appear, when I had ship to set to say Botswana or Uruguay or another country I'm pretty sure doesn't have their own ebay domain it the items re-appeared. I don't have a vpn right now but have you tried a vpn set to a random country on .com yet?
shawnspeller
·11 months agoYou could always just set your American Only shipping options to a ridiculously high flat rate price so the listing still shows on .com but nobody in their right mind (as if there is any right minds left there) in the US would buy your items, everyone elses shipping should show the same. I have recently blocked the dummies too but never thought about my items no longer showing up, I have since the block was put on got orders from Europe and Australia so they must still be seeing my items somehow.
chicweb
OP11 months agoI can't. I use Calculated shipping for the rest of the world.
We cannot mix Fixed price with Calculated shipping.
shawnspeller
·11 months agoYeah, you're right. You can't, **bleep**. I'm glad I came across this post, I've been meaning to take some time to sit down and work this out myself. I'll keep up on this thread hopefully we can come up with a good workaround, as I said I'm still getting international orders since I've blocked but from reading this thread I assume they found it through their own country's domain (.au, .de, ect.) I'm working my way through a tutorial now to see where my items are visible I'll check back if I get any good info.
chicweb
OP11 months agoThe only solution I've found, is to not block USA, but to remove all shipping to USA. I use the Business policies to help.
Here is an example, if others wants to try.
Then, only FedEx should be shown to the americans.
I configure it to remove United States from showing.
This will show your items and "Contact the seller for shipping options".
I will then deal with those case by case. Time consuming, but special times needs special solutions.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·11 months ago@chicweb
One other thing now more in play than ever....sending offers. We will need at bare minimum a way to know where we are sending offers to even if we can't see who they are. There will really be no point sending an offer to a US buyer if we can't in practice ship to them. Auto filter out of Zip Codes?
If a buyer sends a seller an offer you are able to confirm their location prior to choosing if you want to respond or not. Also get access to their past feedback left history. A major bonus.
chicweb
OP11 months agoTotally agree with you!
I think what would be the most important as a feature for offers is to be able to send offers only to where we ship. That would eliminate all other possible problems.
No sellers want to send offers to someone they can't even ship to. 😉
john_koenig99
·11 months agoI eliminated the US from my shipping whitelist, and I can still see my listings in .com.
chicweb
OP11 months agoI just checked.
You are still shipping to the United States
That is why you still appear.
Let's wait a bit, because this morning, after I did my changes, it took some time before my items disappeared. When did you set it?
john_koenig99
·11 months agoWeird. I see in my listings in .com that the US is not even in the dropdown list of ship to countries.
Maybe I missed the change in one of the shipping policies. I will check them again.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·11 months ago@devon@ebay Could you get this addressed as a possible suggestion down the chain please.
byto253
·11 months agoCan you add a craxy handling fee to go on top of the calculated amount? I really only use flat rate on .com to date so don't know.
chicweb
OP11 months agoNo, we cannot add handling fees per country, only one fee for national and one fee for international.
hansatrade
·11 months agoNot a bad solution at all!
If I change free shipping to $250, all international buyers, Canada included, will still see the $10 charge!
Problem resolved!
tavman
·11 months agoHi,
My understanding is eBay fees will be calculated using the 250.00 Domestic shipping rate if someone outside of the US purchases your item.
tavman
·11 months agoIf you do this be aware that eBay fees are calculated using the lowest Domestic shipping rate on .com. So if a Canadian purchases an item from .com your eBay fees for that item would be calculated using the inflated US domestic rate. At least this is my understanding of it. If you drill down into fee details on an order from a Canadian buyer you will see the calculation always uses the lowest Doemstic US rate.
ypdc_dennis
·11 months agoThe calculation is based on the lowest Domestic rate or the International rate -- whichever is less expensive.
Plus the international fee of 1.65% for foreign sales not shipped through the eBay International Shipping program.
tavman
·11 months agoThanks for the reply. I'm wondering if you have actually tried this approach. I have received cotradictory info. Nsmely that the FVF alwsys uses the lowest domestic rate and ignores the international rate even if it's lower.
Do you know if eBay has this information anywhrre on line?
Thanks again
byto253
·11 months ago.com is the US home site and I don't see it changing to allow blocking of US buyers.
To deal with it you can raise shipping prices to the US to a crazy level that rules out sales to the US, or if you do get them takes care of any possible customs related charges. You see US based sellers do something similar on Amazon where things are "available" to Canada but at 5 times the price.
To completely eliminate the US you will need to move items to .ca.
chicweb
OP11 months agoeBay is using it for USA only but it is used everywhere in the world, like I said.
This is a main hub, not only for USA. Citizens from around the world uses it to buy. eBay might want to use it for USA only, but that's not the reality of what is happening worldwide.
Basically = You ship to the United States or you don't use ebay at all.
That's what I understand from this. Not a lot of people goes to their country specific ebay (if they even have one). They all use ebay.com.
By the way, my items are on ebay.ca. That is why I also write on the ebay.ca forum. That's my main portal.
They are automatically published on .com, .fr, .be, .uk, etc.
If I block the USA, it's removed from the .com... which removes a LOT of potential customers from around the world who are not even in the USA. Because .com is the default portal everyone is using.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·11 months ago@chicweb
If a buyer is searching on dot com using a country or postal code (Canada) as part of their settings shouldn't all countries they DO ship to display. That seems to be how it is working with my testing. The critical part of that equation is that eBay always saves that as a preset. It doesn't always for certain settings. Example on ca if you click on Canada only in left hand filters you have to that with each recurring search.
chicweb
OP11 months agoIt's supposed to work that way. But as others have also mentionned, our items doesn't appears correctly.
They are either not shown at all when we switch to Canada, or are shown at the end, even with promoted ads.
Also, @devon@ebay there's the bug on the .com store. No matter what we do, if we don't ship to the United States, our items/categories doesn't show on the store homepage on .com, unless we say we are from a country other than Canada or United States. Which is a weird bug too. They will show if we say we are from Belgium as an example and if we ship there.... But not if we say we are from Canada (and ship to Canada).
If we do a search in that store, it seems to show the store search results correctly.
I had to unblock USA to be able to be seen normally on .com.
Give me a few minutes. I will create some pictures to explain visually the store problem.
apmtrade
·11 months agoAs a Canadian seller, yes I agree, this is an enormous problem for international sellers listing on com.. I have used Inkfrog for + 22 years for my listings, and as I remember, when I signed up, only com was available,
If international sellers are not given the option to change from com, continuing to do business will be almost impossible.
Additionally, the loss of selling fees for eBay can be expected to be noticeable in the upcoming statements.
marnotom!
·11 months agochicweb
OP11 months agoI was searching best match, prices and also directly on my store on .com. They disappeared on my entire .com store and from the search engine.
I tried Incognito and also with my current account which is based in Canada.
Items disappeared entirely, unless I unblock USA.
phc64
·11 months agoThis issue will not just affect those of us who list on ebay.com.
I list exclusively on ebay.ca. Because of my rural location, shipping services other than Canada Post are simply not a viable option. Like many of us, I will be forced to add the United States to the list of countries to which I do not ship. As I understand it, this means that a German will still be able to see my items on ebay.de but not on ebay.com.
chicweb
OP11 months agoYes. I think the items will appears on ebay.uk, ebay.be, etc.
This post is also to notify other sellers. By blocking USA entirely, you are removing your items from the .com portal.
My temporary solution will create other problems, but will still shows my items on .com for smaller countries around the world who don't have their own portals or for customers who uses the .com.
I prepared a message to send to those american customers and also I updated my payment delay to a month. So if someone still want to wait for the situation to settle... They can wait until we offer shipping to the USA again (soon, let's hope)
lotzofuniquegoodies
·11 months ago@chicweb
@devon@ebay
As a test I checked a seller that has pre-emptively turned off USA shipping (listing on ca). This is what you see on their listings.
If you update to specify a ship to (Canadian) postal code you get this message:
chicweb
OP11 months agoyes, but the items shows on the search result? And on their .com store?
You might be able to see the product page, but if the product cannot be found....
A good test (that I did this morning), is to search for the items.
I did a search incognito. Before I blocked USA = Items shows. Either if I say I'm from Canada or USA. I have promoted listing. Easy to see.
I did the same search after blocking USA. After 15 minutes, the item disappeared from my .com store and no search results at all. I switched the dropdown to Canada. Still no items. No items in store either.
I tried with my own account (address based in Canada). On .com, product not in my .com store. Product not in search result. As soon I unblock USA, I appear everywhere as normal. Both Incognito and with my account.
The products listed on .com really seem to be the products that ships to the United States. Period.
neotrendsstampco
·11 months agoWhy not set quantity available for purchase to zero?
chicweb
OP11 months agoI'm not sure I understand.
We cannot set a quantity available per country on eBay.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·11 months ago@chicweb
Unsure what the solution is? A filter to search by site only? Make Canada a default option on com vs N. America.
It does show a location on left (USA, Canada etc and sellers name on right. Not sure if that is an across the board result. Just tested now doing an exact title search. Canadian seller showed up first with name along with additionall listings but no locations. There was no option to specify(filter) by location. Only pu's within a certain mile range, arrives in 2 to 4 days is greyed out and the always awesome provides free intl shipping. Ya right!!! (Certain results on dot com include filters for shipping services within USA (1 to 4 day or free shipping). That's never been a thing on ca.) Features like that tend to be visible in one view and missing in another. And betting with a long list of search results most buyers will not be going listing to listing checking to confirm where a seller is.
chicweb
OP11 months agoThere's multiple solutions that can be implemented on .com
One would be: Hiding products based on address on file (or dropdown).
If a seller doesnt ship to USA and you are from USA = hide
That's all. No need for filters. At least, items will still show for others.
The only problem would be when browsing while not connected. Well, then, they could continue like they do currently or use IP geolocation, but that's less important, in my opinion. What matters the most are people connected to their account with address on file.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·11 months ago@chicweb
Would they be blocked if they purchased and tried to check out? According to the recent OPEN25 held in the USA verifying buyers was covered.
Verifying Buyers
Problem being oncenumber is included how is it being verified. Are they doing random checking to confirm it is actually valid? Recently have received numerous orders where in trying to contact the buyer eBay emails went unanswered and phone number was out of service. (When the account was opened was it a landline? Does anyone still have their landline? Well besides me?)
As I have mentioned at nauseum in the past when shipping by courier a valid phone and ACTUAL email are required fields. Also noted on the UK postal website as a requirement starting about 3 years ago. A requirement when there are issues with either customs or delivery. If it's not there shipments risk being returned at sellers expense after 10 days.
mrdutch1001
·11 months agoNot sure why you think you are entitled to "block" shipping to the USA when listing on the USA .COM site...that would be like Canadian sellers trying to block Canada when listing on the eBay.CA site!
chicweb
OP11 months agoBecause .com is the only portal used everywhere in the world, not only the USA.
Why would the USA be entitled to block our items everywhere else in the world, because we don't ship to them?
People in Poland will not go to ebay.ca to buy. They will go to ebay.com
The .com must be treated differently since it is used everywhere in the world (compared to ebay.ca).
nhl_automotive
·11 months agoMy items have always been exclusively listed on ebay.ca and they end up showing on ebay.com and in other countries.
chicweb
OP11 months agoMy items are only listed on ebay.ca too.
Are you specifically blocking the United States?
chicweb
OP11 months agoThe only temporary solution I've found is to not block the United States, but disable every shipping methods to be used in the United States.
Then they have to contact us for shipping prices. That causes other problems... with offers and automatic offers, as examples. Not counting the time lost and all the cancellations ahead.
Thinking about the fact that a lot of countries doesn't have their own portal and uses .com as their main hub... This is a critical issue for me. This temporary solution is the only current way I've found to be able to offer our products everywhere in the world for sure.