w~~_7.JPG "pjcdn2005"){kind=avatar}
Hello Canadian eBayers,
Happy April Fool's Day! We are holding the weekly chat as scheduled, and I'm not joking. See you at 1 PM!
@rose-dee wrote:
Good afternoon!
I hear that Amazon is poised to take over eBay. Can you comment on this, and whether this might mean the .com "cart disconnect" would be fixed soon?
Hi rose-dee,
I guess there is no point in hiding the truth anymore. It's true, Amazon secretly took eBay over at the beginning of the year. Everything that happened since has been their doing: the eBay/PayPal split, the personnel reductions... It's also because of them that the eBay.com shopping cart still hasn't been fixed: all engineers on the payroll have been commandeered to get the Amazon delivery drones project finally launched. It turns out the drones keep disconnecting for some reason and until Amazon acquired all eBay engineers, there were problems prioritizing the necessary work to fix the drones. But they now expect everything to get going sometime around April 1st, 2018.
#AprilFools
Well, at least you guys have kept your sense of humour. Sorry, I couldn't resist today. 
@rose-dee wrote:
Well, at least you guys have kept your sense of humour. Sorry, I couldn't resist today.
Humour is always welcome. It helps keep us sane 
@rose-dee wrote:
OK, since I'm here now, I have a couple of "real" questions.
1) Is there any further information on the apparent problem with the .ca cart not properly applying automated discount rules to mixed free/shipping charge items? You were going to look into this further.
I've removed my shipping discount rules for the time being. As we know, these don't work for .com buyers anyway, and I'm not sure they're working every time for .ca buyers. So I suppose I'll just adjust manually and pay the FVF fees on excess shipping where that occurs in multi-item orders.
2) What sort of payment flow will a .com buyer see if I specify "Immediate Payment Required" on all my items? I've been reluctant to run a test, as I may end up actually purchasing something I don't want. What I need to know is whether a .com buyer will be presented with the old-style "BIN/Commit to Buy" flow as the only option. There is no point in using IPR if .com buyers will still end up routed to a dysfunctional cart.
Further, would IPR basically knock out the .ca cart, i.e. would .ca buyers be unable to use the .ca cart at all as well?
1) I am still working with the Shipping team to figure this out. Funny anecdote: I gave them your account & items so they could see what I meant, without noticing that you had removed your 5 items = free shipping rule.
Side note: there is nothing to gain from removing your promo shipping rule, even if it only works in some cases. Now it won't work 100% of the time. Are you OK with putting it back, if only to help us figure out why it's not behaving as it should?
2) IPR is already forced on all BIN items priced below $100 on eBay.com, so adding IPR manually to your items would only change the experience for buyers on other sites.
@rose-dee wrote:
Do you know whether the old style eBay storefront design is going to be phased out completely soon, or if not soon, when that might happen? Alternatively, will that old design continue to be available to those who already had it set up prior to the change in store decor?
The reason I ask is that I depend on many of the storefront features for promotional uses, and I don't really want to find one day that I've been migrated over to the new design and suddenly have to scramble to get set up properly. In other words, if it's coming around the corner, I'd rather switch now and have some control.
By the way, do you know whether the new store design permits anything similar to the old "promotional boxes"? I've used them extensively, love them, and yet recently the editing options on them have been severely restricted (I assume because of an imminent changeover to the new design). Will it still be possible to run some sort of special notices or communications at the top of the storefront? I'm not referring to the "Featured Item" bar, but custom-designed messages, along the lines of the old promotion boxes.
I would say it is always preferable to do such a migration on your own terms, as opposed to waiting until eBay makes the switch for you. The right way to do this is to move to the new Store format but only publish it once you've been able to set everything up to your liking (use the preview function to see what it looks like as you adjust settings and parameters, try different photos, etc.). That way your Store will remain on the old format until you're happy with the new one.
The current next generation Store format doesn't yet support the Promo box or custom pages (I think), but these are things that are coming. I doubt the old Store format will be fully decommissioned until these features are made available on the new format, but please don't hold me to this statement if it turns out differently.
For now, there are ways you can use the cover picture to display custom messages. Just make an image with your custom message on it.
@rose-dee wrote:
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
1) I am still working with the Shipping team to figure this out. Funny anecdote: I gave them your account & items so they could see what I meant, without noticing that you had removed your 5 items = free shipping rule.
Side note: there is nothing to gain from removing your promo shipping rule, even if it only works in some cases. Now it won't work 100% of the time. Are you OK with putting it back, if only to help us figure out why it's not behaving as it should?
1) OK, thanks. I can put the promo shipping rule back in place this afternoon (give me a couple of hours, as I'm in the middle of something else). I'll leave it there for a couple of weeks and will check with you again.
I don't want to leave it in place until the "cart disconnect" problem is resolved, because otherwise (as you may recall from my tests) US customers will get those contradictory messages about discounts being offered and then the error messages about discounts/promos no longer being valid (see my screen shots from a couple of weeks ago).
This to me is worse than no automated discounts, and I can always manually adjust/refund. I'd rather do that than look like a reneging scammer to my buyers (yes, you get free shipping as advertised, but no you don't once you choose your items).
Surely I can't be the only Canadian seller who has this problem?
2) IPR is already forced on all BIN items priced below $100 on eBay.com, so adding IPR manually to your items would only change the experience for buyers on other sites.
If the first part of this statement is true, then I don't understand then why my .com experiments showed that a buyer would be directed by eBay to a (non-functional) cart, as we saw. All the items I tested were under $100.
1) Thanks for putting the promo rule back up. I'll wait until tomorrow and re-engage with the Shipping team so we can trouble shoot.
2) It is precisely this measure (forced IPR on BIN items priced below $100 on eBay.com) that causes the misleading "add this item to your cart" recommendation on eBay.com. If IPR was not forced, then BIN items would have the old Commit to buy flow and everything would be fine. Hence, adding IPR yourself would change nothing for .com buyers, they would still have to pay immediately if they wanted to buy your items, and the overlay messaging to add to cart would still show. The only thing that would change would be for non .com buyers, who today can choose between BIN or Add to cart on eBay.ca, and whom would only be able to add to cart if you manually added IPR on your items.
I just thought of another one... 
Do you happen to know whether eBay Bucks are not valid if a U.S. buyer leaves .com to buy? For example, if a U.S. buyer logs onto .ca, will they be able to use their eBay Bucks against a purchase from a Canadian seller?
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
Hail to the drones!
I think that you may be incorrect in #2. merritt-motorocycle first posted on the board that if a buyer on .com clicked on buy it now on one his listings, the page that it then when to showed that the item could be then put into a cart. That was when the item not available, up for auction etc problems showed up. When I read about it I checked and saw exactly the same thing that he did.
But the next time I checked he had put ipr on his listings and that add to cart option no longer existed for his listings although it did still exist on listings that did not show ipr.
Hi pjcdn2005,
I assure you, I am correct 🙂
The normal flow goes like this on eBay.com (with forced IRP):
1. Buyer clicks BIN
2. Next page says "someone else could buy this until you pay for it"
3. Buyer pays
Now that the US Checkout team implemented the overlay with invitation to add the item to Cart, the flow breaks:
1. Buyer clicks BIN
2. Overlay says "click here to add to cart"
3. Buyer adds item to cart, attempts to pay
4. Item changes from available to unavailable, put up for auction
5. buyer cannot buy the item
The normal flow resumes if the buyer ignores the invitation to add the item to cart and proceeds to checkout.
PS. Be careful which drones you hail...
@rose-dee wrote:
I just thought of another one...
Do you happen to know whether eBay Bucks are not valid if a U.S. buyer leaves .com to buy? For example, if a U.S. buyer logs onto .ca, will they be able to use their eBay Bucks against a purchase from a Canadian seller?
eBay Bucks have been retired in Canada. Buyers can only earn & spend them on eBay.com.
