Hello Canadian eBayers!
This is our weekly chat thread. Please go ahead and start posting at your convenience, I'll be with you on or before 1 PM.
Good morning Raphael
Following the Board Hour last week, there has been much speculation by Canadian sellers about the possibility of eBay.ca becoming a single currency site (Cdn$) like all other eBay sites and how such move would affect Canadian sellers.
Without divulging "company secrets" - and understanding that no formal decision has been made yet - could you or Rodney provide a bit more information on whatever timetable eBay.ca would use should such a change take place eventually.
Would sellers be given weeks or months to adapt? Should we be thinking 2016 or 2017?
Would eBay.ca provide special new temporary tools for Canadian sellers to allow them to move listings to another site (.com) or easily change the currency on eBay.ca (from US$ to CdnS$)?
Thank you for your time
@pierrelebel wrote:
Good morning Raphael
Following the Board Hour last week, there has been much speculation by Canadian sellers about the possibility of eBay.ca becoming a single currency site (Cdn$) like all other eBay sites and how such move would affect Canadian sellers.
Without divulging "company secrets" - and understanding that no formal decision has been made yet - could you or Rodney provide a bit more information on whatever timetable eBay.ca would use should such a change take place eventually.
Would sellers be given weeks or months to adapt? Should we be thinking 2016 or 2017?
Would eBay.ca provide special new temporary tools for Canadian sellers to allow them to move listings to another site (.com) or easily change the currency on eBay.ca (from US$ to CdnS$)?
Thank you for your time
Hello Pierre,
As with any material site changes that require for sellers to make updates to their listings, we always try to give as much advance notice as possible. Since there has been no decision made on the future of US currency on eBay.ca yet, it's safe to say there is ample time ahead before we get to any such measures. But rest assured that we would certainly announce any changes of that magnitude way ahead of time to let sellers migrate as much of their listings as possible on their own terms.
As for your questions around eBay Canada providing tools to assist sellers through a migration like this, again it's way early to know for sure but this is something we've done in the past. If you remember, we did provide customized tools for sellers to identify & update their listings that fell out of compliance when we changed the requirements around Returns. I think that was in 2012. While I can't tell you exactly what we would do at this time, it's certainly something we would contemplate. If you or anyone else have any specifics to call out for this eventual tool, feel free to share your thoughts withy me, via email or right here on the forum.
Hi dutchman48,
@dutchman48 wrote:
Hi Raphael
At one time did Ebay not show prominently that buyers received a discount for multiple purchases? Now it only shows under the shipping section.
I used to have it in the description but with Ebay hiding descriptions and people not getting descriptions on mobile devices, I took all the extras out of my descriptions.
I remember the shipping discounts being displayed in what we call the "buy box" on the item page (that's the part where all the item details are displayed) but now those are only visible in the Shipping section, which is reachable from the buy box by clicking the "more details" link next to the shipping cost. I don't have much insight into what drove that change, but my educated guess would be that tests have shown that there was less added value in keeping the shipping discounts details in the buy box than there was in keeping that space uncluttered and moving the shipping discount details in the Shipping Details section of the page.
@dutchman48 wrote:
I have also heard that Buy it Now in the US required immediate payment or possibly add to cart if it works.
I have had a number of US buyers on .com listings pay for each purchase separately which means I have to refund or get upset buyers.
Of course, Ebay makes more money off shipping as they never refund the shipping FVF.
This cash grab is getting to be what I call a rip off as they never fix any issues that may cost them money.
Why can they not display on the main page the shipping discount given and stop gouging buyers and sellers for the over charge on multiple purchases for hiding the discounts until buyers go the the shipping section
This is starting to get very annoying and nickel and diming sellers and buyers.
This is a known issue that we have discussed at length on these weekly chats. While we have already said everything there is to say on this topic, I'm happy to summarize the issue for you.
What is happening is that eBay.com has implemented an immediate payment requirement on all BIN items priced under a certain amount. This change was made in early 2014 and made it a requirement for buyers to use the shopping cart in order to combine multiple items into a single order. However, the eBay.com shopping cart was built to only take items listed on eBay.com. As a result, if a seller has items listed on eBay.ca and offers shipping discounts on combined items, buyers on eBay.com are unable to benefit from these shipping discounts and are forced to pay full shipping on all items if they want to buy them. We are well aware of these limitations of the eBay.com shopping cart and have made it abundantly clear to everyone at eBay HQ that this is a huge pain point for many Canadian sellers, however we still haven't been able to secure resources for the necessary work to be done to fix the issue.
There are two work arounds that are available to Canadian sellers impacted by the in the meantime:
- List items on eBay.com instead of eBay.ca. If you mostly sell to US buyers and if your business model can accommodate this, it is your best solution for now. Your items, if listed on eBay.com, will be OK to be put in the shopping cart by buyers and your shipping discounts will apply as they do on eBay.ca.
- Tell your buyers to buy your items from eBay.ca. They will be able to combine into the shopping cart there and make large orders without issues. granted, it's not feasible to catch all US buyers before they attempt to buy, but nonetheless they would not encounter problems if they bought your items on eBay.ca.
We continue to work with the relevant teams in order to bring a solution to this as soon as possible.
@rose-dee wrote:
Hi Raphael,
Last week Pierre asked whether eBay would be ready for Windows 10, and you replied that it would as far as you knew.
It seems there may be problems. This week there are reports that the eBay/Paypal/Canada Post shipping label feature won't work with Windows 10.
I'm glad now that I haven't updated to Windows 10 yet, although I was going to soon. Do you have any information on when or if the usual label features will be accessible using Windows 10? I know there were big problems with a variety of browsers for a long time not functioning with the label features, and it took what seemed like months for those to get resolved. Hopefully this won't be the case with W10.
Hi rose-dee,
Now that we are two separate companies, I have absolutely no insight or control over what PayPal does with their shipping platform, both in terms of maintenance and in terms of improvements. With that said, they have competent people at the helm and I'm sure that any issues with a widely used browser (including IE10 should it ever become widely used) will be resolved quickly.
@rose-dee wrote:
I know I asked this last week, but you really didn't provide a clear answer. Why can't eBay refund the FVFs automatically to sellers when a shipping refund is made to buyers? Paypal does this all the time (they refund the fee portion as part of the refunded amount).
Simply put, we have no way to know what part of a partial refund is supposed to cover for. It's impossible for us to automate an adjustment on the Shipping FVF based only on a partial refund. What if a seller refunds partially because of a defect on the item? Too many variables for us to tell which partial refunds are for this issue specifically. As I said last week, I'll be happy to help any seller who can tell me exactly which of their transactions were refunded due to this issue.
@rose-dee wrote:
One other issue in this regard is that my Sales Record never properly reflects the shipping refund I've provided to my buyer in these situations. Nor does the "Selling" page -- the dollar sign icon is struck through, but the pop-up message says "partially paid", rather than "partially refunded". I certainly hope my buyers aren't seeing this on eBay.com, as it looks really bad, as if I've changed their "fully paid" status for some reason. I have no way of checking to see if this is what they would see in their transaction details. Do you know if this is the case?
Can you give me a specific transaction to look at? I'll happily investigate.
@rose-dee wrote:
"Can you give me a specific transaction to look at? I'll happily investigate."
Yes, it's the same item # as mentioned in my post earlier. (Sorry, I can't seem to use the "Reply" button on your posts today to respond, so I'm using the Reply function on my earlier post).
On this item, the buyer does see "Partially refunded' when they hover their mouse over the Payment icon in My eBay. However I don't see how that could ever look bad. I have never met a buyer who would not be happy with getting some money back.
@rose-dee wrote:
As far as automated refunds on shipping FVFs, shouldn't all partial refunds to buyers generate reversal of FVFs? If a partial refund is made as a result of a buyer complaint, surely eBay would know if there was a case actually opened. If there is no case, then I'd say it's good customer service on the part of the seller to make a partial refund without being forced to do so, so doesn't the seller deserve the FVF refund anyway? I'm a bit confused by your reply on this.
You can read about the rules around FVF credits here:
http://pages.ebay.ca/help/sell/insertion-fee.html#fvf
From this page:
Final value fee credits
You're responsible for final value fees whether or not you complete a transaction with a buyer, but in some circumstances, you can request a final value fee credit:
-
When you and a buyer agree to cancel the transaction
-
A buyer doesn't pay for an item
-
You issue the buyer a full refund
Partial refunds do not, under normal circumstances, meet the criteria for a FVF adjustment.
