Recent Changes - Helpful Links

[miriam@ebay.com]

Hello folks,

Here are some links for information on the changes that were announced on 1/29.

Bill Cobb's announcement:
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/ca/200801.shtml#2008-01-29085842

Jim Ambach's announcement:
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/ca/200801.shtml#2008-01-29092134

Overview of Changes:
http://pages.ebay.ca/sell/update08/overview/index.html

Fees Changes:
http://pages.ebay.ca/sell/update08/basic/index.html

Fees FAQs:
http://pages.ebay.ca/sell/update08/feefaq/index.html

Rewards & Standards:
http://pages.ebay.ca/sell/update08/rewards/index.html

Rewards & Standards FAQs:
http://pages.ebay.ca/sell/update08/rewardsfaq/index.html

eBay eCommerce Forum Keynote Archive:
http://www.iian.ibeam.com/events/pmtv001/25201/

eBay eCommerce Forum Q&A Session Archive:
http://www.iian.ibeam.com/events/pmtv001/25431/

eBay Seller Webinar Archive:
https://www110.livemeeting.com/cc/vcc-ic03/view?id=ic03-rewards1&role=attend&pw=view

PowerSeller Changes:
http://pages.ebay.ca/services/buyandsell/powersellers.html

PowerSeller Fee Discounts:
http://pages.ebay.ca/services/buyandsell/powerseller/benefits/discounts.html

PowerSeller Fee Discounts FAQ:
http://pages.ebay.ca/services/buyandsell/powerseller/benefits/discounts_faq.html

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Miriam

[miriam@ebay.com]

Hi tea_past_times,

Sorry to disappoint, but I have no spin for you. 😞

I have no idea what these listings are all about, but I agree that 70,000 hoes seems excessive at any given time. I assume they have something to do with the Shopping.com integration issue, but they also reported that bug fixed on eBay.com - perhaps someone was overly optimistic in this regard.

I flagged these to our Trust and Safety lead, and hopefully I will be able to let you know what the outcome is.

Thanks much for letting us know about them.

Cheers,

Miriam

[tea_past_times]

Thanks a bunch Miriam, and don't forget to check out my forced out of business sale on Ebay Sarting March 5 and ending May 1 2008. Lots of deals for one and all!!

[canadabeltbuckles]

Quick Question...

When I check the detail feedback reports on some users, it doesn't show the item description, just the item number, nor does it show the selling price, just two dashes --??

Is there a default setting a seller or buyer can set this up with??

[westernstargifts]

Hi Miriam,

I revised my shipping preferences and now instead of showing that I offer 25 cents per additional item for combined shipping, it says save up to $2.75 per item.

That is correct if it is a Canadian buyer, of which I have very few. Most of my sales are U.S. and international. However it shows the same amount for shipping to the U.S. and international which is WRONG. The additional item charge should also change with the country selected as does the flat rate shipping. In other words, it should show: save up to $3.25 for U.S. and $4.75 for international. When I changed the settings for those countries it still showed as $2.75.

That is DEFINITELY NOT a plus when buyers look at that because it is just plain WRONG and they think the shipping is MUCH higher than it actually is. This is of major importance since many buyers figure in the shipping costs before bidding.

I don't like this new system either because even though my flat rate shipping is lower than a competitor's, hers looks cheaper because it says: save up to $3.00 per item. But her flat rate shipping for the same item is $5.00.

Therefore my rate for 2 combined items shipped to the U.S. would be $3.75. Hers would be $7.00.

Perhaps you could pass on the information that the settings for amount saved on additional items needs to change along with the flat rate shipping so it shows ACCURATE additional shipping information for each country.

I would be interested to know if others have noticed this and if something is going to be done about it. If not my only alternative would be to not show my shipping at all and just state it in my description. Of course I would then have to send out invoices. I would prefer to go back to the old system.

Thanks for your help.

Judy

[westernstargifts]

Any thoughts on this yet Miriam?

Thanks. Judy

[beansantiques]

We have been listing on ebay.com for seven years now and over the years we have got the idea that maybe ebay does not really want us there.
Yesterday I read "A Message from Kristina Klausen - Shipping Update" located in the announcements page of the .com site.
This states that in the next few months all sellers will have to specify shipping costs in each listing.
Now this would not be a problem if you live in the USA but as Canadian sellers this does not work.
I phoned power sellers and talked at length about this problem as it relates to Canadian sellers.
As we all know the shipping cost varies greatly depending on what zip code a parcel is going to.
I was told that we should quote the shipping at the most expensive rate in the shipping cost area and in the description I could give examples of cheaper rates to closer locations in the USA.
Then I was told that with the new Best Match that takes into account the shipping cost that we with a higher shipping cost will be bumped down the list on the search.
I was also told that this would likely result in lower DSR ratings on shipping costs.
Now we know that doing this would be busness suicide so there other suggestion is that I and all Canadian sellers should list on ebay.ca and stop listing on the .com site.
Then we discovered that I and I am sure many of you also have an ebay.com store. This is not transferable to the .ca site so you would have to end your store on .com and open a new one on the .ca site.
And yes you will have to change the name of that store but you can make it very similar to the old one. Well similar names will not search and all the costumers that we have built up over seven years of hard work will be gone. We have also been told that our store has an amazing amount of subscribers and yes we will lose all of them as well.
No there is no way for ebay to flip a store from one site to another we will have to do it manually one listing at a time. We have over 1000 store listings.
About two weeks ago we designed a new format for our listings that you can see in any of our auctions. I phoned power sellers and had them review it so that I would only have to revise all of my items once.
They looked at it and had trust and safety look at it and we passed with flying colors. So we started to change all the listings. Now they tell me that we will have to change it to meet with the new shipping cost specified requirement.
We only charge actual cost for mailing an item. No handling charge whatsoever.
We loose money on every shipment we make after you take into account the paypal fees, cost of packing materials, time and on course the sales tax that we have to pay Canada Post that is not included in the sticker price. Still we have a shipping cost DSR of 4.7. But that is not unusual because if you search "free Shipping" and check the DSR of those that ship for free you find that there DSR on shipping cost vary from 4.1 to about 4.9 I did not find one that had a 5 for shipping even when it is free.
Some how this is all supposed to make sence but I cannot figure out how.
At the end of my talk with power sellers they sent me to a voice mailbox of a manager to see if they could come up with a way around loosing my customer base for my store. This person was going to call me back with some help but as you have probably guessed we have not had that call.
I am hoping that an ebay rep will read this and come up with some suggestions or a way around this new looming problem.
Telling all Canadians to quit listing on .com is not the answer but it looks like it may be ebays answer as it was there suggestion.
And no there will be no credit for the cost of ending a 1000 item store and starting a new one. All the listing fees in the old store (for the month you end your store) will just be gone and you will have new listing fees for the new store. This means that you will be charged twice for one month, loose all your costumers and the years of work you have put into your store. Now that is the way to go.
We have no intention of stopping using ebay as it has always been good for us. We have even been featured in two books on how to do ebay the right way (check our ME page. Recently we have opened an ebay drop centre and are in the process of expanding our busness on the strength of the ebay.com site.
I just do not think it will work on the .ca site and our sales #'s will go down.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and could someone offer any help???
Ron Walker Beansantiques

[miriam@ebay.com]

Hi westernstargifts,

This doesn't sound optimal to me either. I'm happy to flip this suggestion over to Rodney and the Product team folks to see if they can figure out a work-around to this. Rodney and Ryanne have their regular weekly board hour on Canada Town Square every Thursday at 11 a.m. ET, so you should also feel free to bring this issue up there.

Thanks,

Miriam

[miriam@ebay.com]

Hi beansantiques,

Thanks for sharing your experience here on the board. I agree that shifting one's store from .com to .ca is difficult, and ebay.ca continues to advocate for a tool to make this exchange easier.

I hear what you're saying about specified shipping; however, I think that it's not something any ecommerce site is going to be able to escape. As eBay moves more in the direction of specified shipping, I do think it's incumbent on us to make it easier for our users (especially Store owners like yourself) to move their products to the CA platform where you could take advantage of Calculated Shipping. This would allow you to specify your shipping without having to worry about losing money when you make a sale on the other side of the country.

Again, let me bring this up with our head of Product, Rodney, and point out the escalated need for a way to move Stores from one site to the other.

Best,

Miriam

[futuretech_liquidations]

Miriam - perhaps you are not aware but the Shipping Calculator DOES NOT WORK. I have posted several times with this topic without so much as an acknowledgement from anyone at eBaY.

When I called in to report the problem I was told "Well if it is not working then don't use it and stick with FIX PRICE shipping."

The calculator at this time magically inflates the item weight from whatever you enter to anywhere from 62LBS to 825LBS. Therefore when a potential buyer clicks on the CALCULATE button they get a message that a shipping rate is not available and to contact the seller.

As you can guess this results in alot of emails asking for shipping costs and also on a few occassions you have someone bid on the item just to find out later that they disagree with the shipping costs and now do not want the item (basically it is a newbie user most of the time that does not realize the cost of shipping from Canada).

To this date I have never received any followup emails nor seen any postings on here that address this situation.

It would be nice to get some sort of idea as to if and when we can expect this to be fixed.

TIM @ FTL

[tea_past_times]

Hey Miriam:

Blah blah blah, company line, blah, blah, blah, empty promises, blah, blah, blah, more headaches for sellers, blah, blah, blah, the Americans could give a rip if Canadian sellers dry up and blow away....blah, blah, blah,maybe we should all dust off our resumes..blah, blah, blah, keep paying fees for lousier service, blah blah blah blah blah.......

[tea_past_times]

Or did I hear that wrong??

[tea_past_times]

Did you hear that Ebay let 125 employees go this week?
And so it begins....

[tea_past_times]

Completely as predicted earlier by this former power seller.

[miriam@ebay.com]

Hi futuretech_liquidations,

Yes, I am aware that there are some bugs on the CA Shipping Calculator - I can pass this over to Rodney to see if this particular problem you describe is on the books. I may follow up with you directly for more information on this.

Thanks,

Miriam

[futuretech_liquidations]

Miriam - tonight I relisted 200 items and I can tell you that all items with the shipping calculator option once again showed up with incorrect weight amount. The most popular amount is 125LBS and 62.8LBS.

I have had to manually adjust over 100 listings which is extremely time consuming to say the least - not to mention unprofitable.

Anyhow, any help is better than none.

Thanks

TIM @ FTL

[beansantiques]

Hello and thankyou Miriam for answering .
I think that it may help to list shipping costs but also as you can see by our site it also works fine with not listing the cost but you have to treat the buyer the way you want to be treated. We get a lot of emails asking shipping cost and are always happy to answer them. I think most buyers understand that a calculated shipping cost to there location is going to be less than a flat rate for everyone. When you look at our record I think you will see that our way also works quite well.
As far as the moving our store to .ca goes I read that this move to shipping cost manditory is going to take place sometime in the next few months. This to me says that there is no set date to do this.
I would hope that this means that they want to get everything done before they make this move.
Part of getting everything done I hope is to make sure that there is a way in place to move Canadian sellers stores to the .ca site without loosing all the years of work that went into these stores.
I would hope that ebay looks at this as a manditory step in the process as a way to protect the selling community.
We always hear that that is job #1 and I think this would show if ebay is sincere about protecting these sellers.
Making a change like this without being able to move these stores would be a very rude and nasty way to say thankyou for all the years of sales.
It should be manditory for ebay to accomplish this as step one in the process of making shipping manditory.
This would show that they actualy care about Canadian sellers and are also trying to protect them.
Another thing I would like to bring up is the power sellers support.
When you phone you get the USA power sellers and they just have no idea about Canadian issues.
A month or so ago I had a very Canadian issue and phoned.
No one could answer the questions so they had someone call me back who would be able to help.
Naturaly I thought that I would be talking to someone who had some experence in dealing with the .ca site.
When I recieved the call back the woman on the phone was not aware that Canada was a seperate country or that we had our own postal system.
This is not a joke and she was sincere in her belief. I know that that is hard to believe but if you pull up my account you will see the entrys.
I would think that there are enough Canadian power sellers that we could have a few staff members that only deal with the Canadian site and issues pertaining to it.
Ebay tells us that there is support for the Canadian power sellers but it is the .com support and not a .ca support group.
Thanks again
Ron Walker beansantiques

[westernstargifts]

When I recieved the call back the woman on the phone was not aware that Canada was a seperate country or that we had our own postal system.

It boggles the mind but I am not surprised. Even a Canada Post outlet, which just recently closed, had employees who thought Malaysia and Indonesia were in "in the States, right?"..!!!!!

And even George Bush got Jean Chretien's name wrong when he was Prime Minister.

And we all speak French and live in igloos!!....:^O

[futuretech_liquidations]

With the 125 employees that eBaY fired last week - you would think that the rep you mentioned above of one of them --> typical American ignorance - I quess an IQ test is not something eBaY has potential new hires take - probably since they prefer the DA ones so they can be trained to eBaY's specifications.

[whoscloset]

Wouldn't it be great if eBay would just hire PSers to handle their customer service calls. We could do it from our homes and the customers would actually get the right information.

Over the years I have found that PSers seem to know A LOT more about eBay policies, glitches and best practices than most of the customer service reps they currently have on call.

Miriam, if eBay is interested in hiring me to provide ACCURATE and INFORMATIVE assistance to customers, I'm available...at the right price of course.

[westernstargifts]

You have my vote Monique!

Judy