eBay

femmefan1946 · ‎07-09-2016

eBay Canada 's head was interviewed on Radio One this morning.

It will probably repeat later today if you missed it.

Seems eBay commissioned a report from the CDHowe Institute about the $20 maximum duty free on imports.

Among other numbers tossed around, she said it cost CBSA $170 million to collect $40million on these low value imports.

She did NOT mention CBSAs practice of ignoring the low value imports entirely.

Now in my opinion you hire the company that will give you the results you want, but at least we know eBay is doing something for their buyers.

If not particularly for their Canadian sellers.

She also spoke briefly about the Canada Post disruption. I'll have to listen again for that or else it may show up on their website.

And, in passing, what do you think are the chances that the CDH report was shown to Neil MacDonald? The lapses in both interviews indicate a common source?

momcqueen · ‎07-09-2016

@rose-dee wrote:
@marnotom! wrote:
I seem to recall that in the early days of the GSP, eBay and Pitney Bowes were reasonably up-front about the fact that part of the "import charges" went towards a finder's fee of sorts for eBay.
I can't honestly say I ever heard this, but Pierre might remember.
If a "finder's fee" of sorts still comes out of the import charges, it can't be all that large on a per-transaction basis.
It isn't the per transaction rate that's important, but the volume. Even at a very low fee of 2% of the Pitney Bowes fee, multiplied by thousands per week or month, there is serious cash involved. And what I glean from the performance on CBC by Andrea Stairs is that Canadian buyer volume is way down due to the GSP.
The reason I am so jaded about eBay is that I no longer have any trust in their bona fides. If their motive was to simply help Canadian buyers, and if they truly wanted those buyers to come back, instead of this ridiculous ruse they could have dropped the GSP long ago (or at least made sales to Canada exempt).
The fact that they didn't do so says a lot about how much money they must have been making off Canadian buyers through the Pitney Bowes "commissions".

How and why could they make sales to Canada 'exempt'? The American seller who chooses to adopt the GSP is doing so for specific reasons: they are not comfortable shipping outside of their own country so the program does it for them. Exempting Canada would merely remove those listings from Canadian searches altogether.

Certainly you cannot be suggesting the GSP overlook the $20 de minimum for Canadian buyers. That would be illegal.

As the GSP stands, the buyer is left with the decision whether to use it or not. Period.

momcqueen · ‎07-09-2016

As a Canadian buyer, I avoid the GSP for reasons that have little to nothing to do with Import Fees and everything to do with my items being wrecked by repacking at the hub.

But this discussion has moved off-topic. The original post was about Ms Stairs and the Howe Study, not the merits (or lack thereof) on the Global Shipping Program. There are plenty of threads about that already.

rose-dee · ‎07-09-2016

@pierrelebel wrote:

Do not expect the C D Howe Institute to ever look for what is best for Canadians. Than is not their mandate. All they want is more profit for big businesses (regardless who owns them) and lower corporate taxes.

I agree with you completely (will wonders never cease? ).

However, I think the integrity of the report is beside the point where eBay's PR campaign is concerned. The average Canadian won't understand the problems with the CDH report.

The report itself is smoke and mirrors, a ruse, nothing but a ploy. EBay simply needed some "experts" to back up their new campaign to reverse the losses in the GSP programme. I'm sure they knew in advance precisely what sort of "study" they'd get from CDH.

pierrelebel · ‎07-09-2016

"I can't honestly say I ever heard this, but Pierre might remember. "

Correct.

Staff (or management) at eBay-Canada confirmed three years ago that they were getting a "small" percentage from Pitney Bowes for directing traffic their way. I frankly do not think that amount is significant for eBay nor relevant in this context.

eBay makes its money by having more American sellers selling more outside the USA. That is where the real money is. GSP has been instrumental to that and has worked well for eBay (not so for Canadian buyers but that is a different story).

rose-dee · ‎07-09-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:
As a Canadian buyer, I avoid the GSP for reasons that have little to nothing to do with Import Fees and everything to do with my items being wrecked by repacking at the hub.

But this discussion has moved off-topic. The original post was about Ms Stairs and the Howe Study, not the merits (or lack thereof) on the Global Shipping Program. There are plenty of threads about that already.

Actually the performance by Stairs was precisely about the merits of the GSP programme. Had it worked for Canadian buyers (and had they not abandoned it) she would not have been sent out to the CBC.

The GSP was entirely an eBay/Pitney Bowes construct. They could very easily have provided U.S. sellers with a means to opt out of the programme and use regular USPS shipping where Canadian buyers were concerned. That they didn't says a great deal about how lucrative they expected the programme to be for them. It had nothing to do with legality -- CBSA was doing that job and making those decisions before eBay thought up the GSP.

You may even recall how U.S. sellers were complaining about finding themselves inadvertently "opted in" against their wishes, and how many of them had no idea what the real cost of the programme to their buyers was until a Canadian told them. Aside from the mishandling and repacking at the Kentucky hub, most Canadian complaints came from the shock of the final total on their purchase, which (depending on the item purchased) could almost double the cost.

Canadian buyers felt duped, and rightly so, but they likely blamed the wrong party. The hapless U.S. sellers who were suckered into the programme by eBay's blandishments about ease of shipping didn't realize that Canadian buyers might blame them for the exorbitant shipping costs. In the early stages of the programme, you might remember, some of those costs weren't even fully disclosed to the buyer until he/she had already purchased the item. I recall seeing a lot of complaints on the GSP threads about that.

The point is, eBay thought it could pull the wool over the eyes of both its U.S. sellers and its Canadian (and international) buyers through the GSP. Andrea Stairs' sudden appearance, dubious study in hand, on CBC, attempting to bad-mouth CBSA, is more or less an admission of eBay's failure and miscalculation with this programme.

No doubt the CEOs in San Jose thought the GSP was brilliant -- and it must have worked beautifully for them as long as there were enough suckers out there to continue using it on both sides. This spontaneous and odd appearance by Stairs is big time damage control. If I were her, I'd be mortified. But then, she's the one probably getting the 6-figure salary.

I'm just not feeling the love for eBay anymore I guess.

momcqueen · ‎07-09-2016

You heard it as it was broadcast? Or is there a transcript available? If so, please cite your source. I'd like to read it for myself.

rose-dee · ‎07-09-2016

@mjwl2006 wrote:
You heard it as it was broadcast? Or is there a transcript available? If so, please cite your source. I'd like to read it for myself.

There's no transcript. CBC simply posts the on-air spots on its website. Look down the page here:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thehouse/canadian-troops-heading-to-eastern-europe-1.3665618/canadian-troops...

You can probably download it as a podcast if you'd prefer, as most Radio 1 programmes are available in that format (see the podcast search).

If you listen to the entire interview, Stairs dances around the question of precisely who eBay is "consulting with" or speaking to (in government or otherwise) and what their reactions have been. She basically blows the whole question off with silly generalities. She also proffers the specious argument that this push for an increase in the de minimus is somehow primarily intended to benefit eBay's Canadian sellers. Some ridiculous rationale about giving Canadian small businesses an even playing field with their international counterparts, etc.

The interviewer (who I presume was Chris Hall) let Stairs completely off the hook on several points. He was clearly uninformed about the real issues behind this impetus by eBay (those being eBay's disastrous GSP programme, how it affected eBay's Canadian buyers, and how increasing the import threshold would benefit eBay's U.S. sellers). A better researched piece would have dug hard into those questions.

In a couple of words, the whole thing is just bunk and spin (or maybe I should say "bumph and spin"). Just what I'd expect from eBay at this point.

Read the SEC submissions -- they will tell you a whole lot more about why eBay is grasping at straws to find sources of increased income than these obviously manufactured stunts. After listening to Stairs, I just want to say, oh pllleease, I give up.

femmefan1946 · ‎07-09-2016

.. but ignore Great Britain (£15) and most of Europe which averages about Cdn$25 or so -

I was wondering about that one too.

I once put a Norwegian buyer in the position of having to pay duty and VAT on a $125 book. He was the one who (graciously) informed me that Norway starts duty at about the same level as Canada.

Thanks for the link to the programme. I wanted to listen again, but have a dinner party tonight.

rose-dee · ‎07-09-2016

@pierrelebel wrote:

eBay makes its money by having more American sellers selling more outside the USA. That is where the real money is. GSP has been instrumental to that and has worked well for eBay.

You are of course correct about this, but the GSP was nonetheless a win-win for eBay, both in increasing nervous U.S. sellers' willingness to sell abroad and in collecting a take on the side for every transaction. That was, of course, as long as all the unwitting participants, both U.S. sellers and Canadian buyers, remained ignorant.

I'd be surprised if as many U.S. sellers complained about the ultimate result of the GSP as did Canadian buyers. I can hear the telephone call now between eBay HQ and Ms. Stairs: "Andrea, you'd better do something now to get Canadian buyers back. They've caught on to what's happening and have abandoned eBay en masse. Pay somebody we can depend on to produce the report we need, then sell it on the airwaves."

Poor Chris Hall, he's been made the patsy of the piece and he doesn't know it. He also missed out on a bit of a journalistic coup -- there was a much bigger story behind this and it flew right past him.

rose-dee · ‎07-09-2016

@femmefan1946 wrote:

I once put a Norwegian buyer in the position of having to pay duty and VAT on a $125 book. He was the one who (graciously) informed me that Norway starts duty at about the same level as Canada.

Yes, I had the same experience with a Norwegian buyer, although I wasn't too surprised about a ca. $20 limit, since I was already aware how low the U.K. allowance was, and assumed other western European countries might have similar levels.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Norway is a "third world country" like the others quoted in the so-called study touted by Andrea Stairs, at least the last time I looked.

esclyons · ‎07-09-2016

one of the bigger issues, is a lot of usa sellers have no idea that they are even enrolled in the program..i have talked to a couple of people, and only once did i buy through the program., then the seller said i don't use the program,and i said yes you do , because i just paid for it.. and after they spent a hour on the phone with ebay, i got a refund of the fees.. but how many of them even now they are in the program, ..

you buy something and they get paid, and pitney gets paid, and they ship it to you directly. not even knowing they are supposed to send it to the processing center..., how many of them are padding the program with out even knowing it..???

lucitabby · ‎07-09-2016

I wonder how much the report cost ebay.ca. Whatever the cost (of a report that is useless), it would have been nice, instead of the report, to offer Canadian sellers discounted shipping supplies or free shipping or no FVF fees for a month or etc., etc.

Yes, I'm daydreaming.

Seems eBay commissioned a report from the CDHowe Institute about the $20 maximum duty free on imports.

sylviebee · ‎07-10-2016

Unless you are a Canadian buyer purchasing International items valued from $5 up to $1,000s of dollars on regular basis, you have a very inaccurate picture of how the law is put into practice.

Suggesting changes based on partial information will result in an outcome that no one predicted, and probably not the outcome anyone wanted or hoped for.

rose-dee · ‎07-10-2016

@sylviebee wrote:
Unless you are a Canadian buyer purchasing International items valued from $5 up to $1,000s of dollars on regular basis, you have a very inaccurate picture of how the law is put into practice.

That may be true, but it's irrelevant eBay's "campaign" for a change in the de minimus. It was the average, everyday, $10 to $20 purchases where Canadians were getting burned badly by the GSP. Those are the legions of buyers eBay has lost, not the few who were regularly able to purchase items of a higher value that would be assessed GST/HST by CBSA anyway.

As most Canadians who buy online from the U.S. already knew, even articles valued up to $100 or more often got through via regular USPS without being captured by CBSA. That is what made them so angry, and that is doubtless what has made them avoid U.S. listings with GSP.

Incidentally, I recall eBay made a weak attempt some time ago to lessen the negative impact of the GSP on Canadians by reducing the Pitney Bowes side of the costs slightly. Canadians weren't fooled then either. So eBay had to turn to new tactics to get those buyers to come back to purchasing from U.S. sellers.

Suggesting changes based on partial information will result in an outcome that no one predicted, and probably not the outcome anyone wanted or hoped for.

The only outcome eBay wants is to have the personal import allowance raised so that more items being listed by U.S. sellers with GSP can be sold to Canadians without import taxation. This is all about eBay's income flow. EBay's fee income from its U.S. sellers is being impacted, and that's the only issue they are concerned about. Andrea Stairs was simply sent to do the dirty work and toss around a few red herrings. San Jose hasn't the slightest concern about what impact their hoped-for increase in the allowance would mean for Canada and Canadians.

EBay HQ apparently believes it will be as easy to hoodwink the Canadian government as it was to bamboozle U.S. sellers and Canadian buyers with the GSP. EBay itself created this problem, and are now hoping they can have somebody else solve it for them. I am confident that Canadian officials will see through this transparent ruse and ignore it. It smacks of the worst of American-style lobbying.

pjcdn2005 · ‎07-10-2016

"The GSP was entirely an eBay/Pitney Bowes construct. They could very easily have provided U.S. sellers with a means to opt out of the programme and use regular USPS shipping where Canadian buyers were concerned. That they didn't says a great deal about how lucrative they expected the programme to be for them. It had nothing to do with legality -- CBSA was doing that job and making those decisions before eBay thought up the GSP. "

---------------------

Ebay does provide a way for sellers to ship using USPS to Canada and use the gsp for other countries and I know that some sellers do that. There are also some sellers who use the gsp for some of their items and ship the rest of them directly. So eBay does give them the tools to be more flexible but some choose not to use them and some are not aware that it can be done.

rose-dee · ‎07-10-2016

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

Ebay does provide a way for sellers to ship using USPS to Canada and use the gsp for other countries and I know that some sellers do that. There are also some sellers who use the gsp for some of their items and ship the rest of them directly. So eBay does give them the tools to be more flexible but some choose not to use them and some are not aware that it can be done.

'pj', I do quite a lot of buying of materials and supplies on eBay, almost all from the U.S., and in all the time that the GSP has been in effect, not one GSP seller I dealt with knew the procedure for "opting out" in order to provide regular USPS shipping. Some didn't know it was even possible to do so. Some didn't want to bother. Others were aghast when I explained the real effect of the programme. I actually had to help one U.S. seller as best I could through the process, step by step. I'm not saying I didn't deal with non-GSP sellers, but the ones who found themselves "stuck" weren't very happy.

Many of the sellers I encountered weren't even aware they had been "opted in"! Some were very upset about that, and even more upset when I explained the effect of the GSP on a Canadian buyer. The general tenor of the U.S. boards on the subject at the time seemed to reflect those reactions.

The trouble is, U.S. sellers would have absolutely no idea of what Canadian (or international) buyers were seeing at the other end unless their buyers told them directly. EBay promoted the GSP programme to U.S. sellers as a means of simplifying and streamlining international sales, but they most definitely did not make it easy or clear how to opt out, either permanently or for a particular transaction. In fact I can recall seeing some U.S. sellers saying that they had tried, and failed to figure out, how to get out of the programme.

Unless eBay has made some major changes recently to the way it enrolls U.S. sellers in the GSP and presents options to them for bypassing it, eBay most definitely has not provided easily accessible tools for doing so.

In any case, opting out of the GSP relies on a U.S. seller understanding the programme's details and function, or finding out from a Canadian buyer how bad it can be. I don't recall eBay ever clearly setting out that information for U.S. sellers (let alone Canadian buyers) when it implemented the GSP.

I think the bottom line is that you have to be a very experienced and well-informed U.S. seller to use the GSP as an optional shipping method in the way you suggest, or you have to be lucky enough to have your Canadian buyer(s) tell you what is going on at their end.

Doubtless some educating amongst U.S. sellers has gone on in the boards since the GSP was introduced, but if the listings I regularly look at are any indication, there are more and more U.S. sellers buying into eBay's GSP propaganda.

It's easy for eBay to continue to entice them, presumably because most U.S. sellers are more than happy to hand off all the "hassle" of dealing with international shipments to someone else. What eBay didn't tell its U.S. sellers was that they were also handing off the extra costs to those sellers' international buyers. Clearly what eBay didn't count on was that Canadians weren't complete fools.

sylviebee · ‎07-10-2016

@rose-dee wrote:

The only outcome eBay wants is to have the personal import allowance raised so that more items being listed by U.S. sellers with GSP can be sold to Canadians without import taxation. ....................

EBay HQ apparently believes it will be as easy to hoodwink the Canadian government as it was to bamboozle U.S. sellers and Canadian buyers with the GSP.

rose-dee: I think you nailed it.

Raising the import limit could hurt Canadian retailers and buyers will ultimately pay more because the law will be enforced (at least in the beginning).

Only the Americans (EBay and the GSP for example) have something to gain by raising the limit. Canadian buyers and sellers alike would be the losers.

Don't rock the boat. Canvasing to raise the tax free limit is short-sighted and selfish and certainly not in the best interest of Canadians.

marnotom! · ‎07-11-2016

@rose-dee wrote:

Unless eBay has made some major changes recently to the way it enrolls U.S. sellers in the GSP and presents options to them for bypassing it, eBay most definitely has not provided easily accessible tools for doing so.

My understanding from the eBay.com user agreement is that only sellers that have not specified international shipping in their listings and have not set their buyer requirements to block bids from non-US registered buyers may have the GSP automatically applied to their listings.

Sellers who ship directly to their international buyers and have appropriate international shipping information in their listings should not see the program automatically applied.

This means there are different sorts of GSP sellers:

1. Ones who have no idea they've been auto-opted into the program (and who may or may not be aware the program exists)

2. Ones who have made a conscious decision to use the program (and who may or may not be using it appropriately)

rose-dee · ‎07-11-2016

@marnotom! wrote:
This means there are different sorts of GSP sellers:

1. Ones who have no idea they've been auto-opted into the program (and who may or may not be aware the program exists)

2. Ones who have made a conscious decision to use the program (and who may or may not be using it appropriately)

Yes, I think you're exactly right.

However, I think the sellers you listed in #1 above were the ones who were most likely to fall prey to eBay's GSP propaganda, i.e. sellers who were perhaps less experienced and/or trusted eBay to act in their best interests. When offered the touted advantages of the GSP and a chance to join up, they simply hit the "OK" button, without fully understanding the consequences. Once opted in, it doesn't appear to be a simple matter to opt out for any particular transaction, at least according to the U.S. sellers I've dealt with.

I say shame on eBay for pulling the wool over their U.S. sellers' eyes and making Canadian buyers the dupes. And it's even more shameful, in my view, that eBay has now sent out Andrea Stairs to try to turn our government into eBay's fixer, based on a whole lot of specious arguments and rhetoric.

If anything, that excursion of Ms. Stairs to the CBC has convinced me that it was right to be skeptical about eBay's motives and claims generally -- on almost any subject.

momcqueen · ‎07-11-2016

@rose-dee wrote:
@marnotom! wrote:
This means there are different sorts of GSP sellers:

1. Ones who have no idea they've been auto-opted into the program (and who may or may not be aware the program exists)

2. Ones who have made a conscious decision to use the program (and who may or may not be using it appropriately)
Yes, I think you're exactly right.

However, I think the sellers you listed in #1 above were the ones who were most likely to fall prey to eBay's GSP propaganda, i.e. sellers who were perhaps less experienced and/or trusted eBay to act in their best interests. When offered the touted advantages of the GSP and a chance to join up, they simply hit the "OK" button, without fully understanding the consequences. Once opted in, it doesn't appear to be a simple matter to opt out for any particular transaction, at least according to the U.S. sellers I've dealt with.

I say shame on eBay for pulling the wool over their U.S. sellers' eyes and making Canadian buyers the dupes. And it's even more shameful, in my view, that eBay has now sent out Andrea Stairs to try to turn our government into eBay's fixer, based on a whole lot of specious arguments and rhetoric.

If anything, that excursion of Ms. Stairs to the CBC has convinced me that it was right to be skeptical about eBay's motives and claims generally -- on almost any subject.