Hi, old thread, but still very relevant today!
For the search result to appear one place or another or depending on your primary address. I have discovered this since long, I had to figure it all out, and being a collector, missing some unique or almost unique items can be a "collector disaster" ! Back then I reached someone in development over there and someone called me to understand more. Yes, they have a "worldwide" option, but it does not work "perfectly" let's say. There are still items you won't see.
(I have noted lot of eBay "weird behavior" or things I would consider bad design or not user-friendly... I don't want to only complain, but as an heavy eBay user lot of things has wasted me lot of time and energy and with some people, even created problems; part of eBay but part of them too...).
The best solution I had so far is to have multiple accounts, among those having at least one with my Canadian address as default, and at least one with my U.S. address as default. But for doing search, I would have to run each search twice if I really wanted to make sure I miss nothing, but as someone else said there, usually Canadian ship to US no problem, but it is mostly US sellers that refuse to sell to Canada. But you will be surprised with the amount of Canadian who have no clue that half of their auction does not appear for their US customers... good for me as a bidder to fight with less person, but still they potentially lose some important business...
Also, lot of Canadian sellers does not even know that their default setting only list their items for people identified as "Canadian" let's say. They lose business (and eBay too). The same with U.S. seller you can't even contact through "normal mean" to ask them if they can do an exception (back then, I do not remember someone who refused to me to do that, maybe there was, but they were probably very few, and yes, I did buy a lot 10+ years ago too). Those sellers are losing business and eBay too (I did not invest in the stock, but if I was and if I was more "impulsive", I guess that would shock me; why would they want to block such thing... and do not tell me some people do not want to be disturbed for non-potential client... I repeat, it is rare I found a US person not wanting to do an exception, especially if you have a good record). Anyway there are other mean to contact the seller, just not "via an item". Normal user will just give up. Less business (being open-minded, I really wonder if it is more beneficial overall, but I seriously doubt, I actually think the amount of $ sellers and eBay lose for these kind of decisions is very high). And do not get me going on them hiding everything, including in feedback...
Next, I am not agreeing with what femmefan said about US or Canada account can only have alternative address in the same country.
First, they let you enter address in other country. It is just their software by design that does not take it under consideration (I would blame big project, or lazy designer/developer, etc. -- eh) and it might actually be a challenge now to modify every part to consider all addresses you have, but that is how it should be (that is the *right* answer, and we do exists! Lot of us are heavy traders too).
Second, I have done that since long long time ago. eBay or not, in real life it just makes sense to be able to have multiple addresses (why would you limit that? Maybe laws, but such laws would be questionable, like a lot of laws, ah!).
Third... well even actually as I talk, for some seller it works and for some it does not and the actual error message we get when it does not work when requesting an invoice for an address in another country is this if we hit an error:
The seller does not offer combined shipping discounts
The seller has disallowed combined payments and shipping discounts. Please proceed to checkout to complete your purchase.
I have assumed that it had to do with settings of the seller. I did not check what it was yet (if someone know already, just share, it will be useful for others). However, it is ridiculous as the amount of time I have encounter a seller who really does not combine is like very rare on thousands of transactions (I remember one actually). And even if you request an invoice, they can still calculate the shipping without combining in their price... And again, lot of sellers never done anything intentionally to block combining or whatever, it seems to be there by default and it is a surprise for them (I won't put such settings as "default", if it is the case, for the reason I just gave). I assume this because it works for some and not for others (what I says is by using an account with a primary US address, but alternative Canadian addresses from eBay.com).
Also, my comments are valid for both PayPal and eBay (as femmefan seem to talk about PayPal by re-reading). I have actually confirmed address in both countries in the same PayPal account. So that is a wrong assumptions. And that is how it should be as those case are possible and not really more complicated than having multiple address in same country. Actually, from a software developer point of view, adding an additional rule that would verify that the address is in the same country as the main address let's say; it would complicate the software more (and make it less flexible, so I would call this a lose-lose decision).
Having wrote all this and inspiring myself of some of your comments, I tried to log with my "US Account" (I do not like to say this as for me, an address is just one attribute that can change overtime and you can have multiple, change the default one, etc. so for me an eBay account is an eBay account; it should be that way ideally for everywhere, simple, predictable, flexible, etc.) I THINK I HAVE FOUND A SIMPLE WORK AROUND (until someone has thre great idea to "fix it"... maybe I should not say it, but voilà):
1. Go to eBay.ca and signin with your account w/ default address as US.
2. Go to the item you want to change address, and go pay to get to the full invoice (you can go to the invoice directly by other means).
3. Change your address to one of your Canadian ones (we all have 300 address here as we are all criminals, be on your guard US sellers! :D)
4. Request the invoice
5. Bingo, it works (at least, it just worked for me on two cases that were the reason I finally got mad enough and came here... I wanted to call eBay, but they are closed at this time).
I got a bit lucky, and it always impress me how eBay has so much different version and run different version of their site on different country (with very different interface, and rules like we see here). They probably have their reason, always easier from outside (or maybe it should just be easier? More flexible? Etc. ;-)...)
Well, hope I saved some hairs to someone who'll dare to read my long comment! 😉 [auto-derision does not hurt, but does not go on and over-believe someone who joke about it, and blah blah blah... eh] Maybe someone will read this at eBay and get something to change when he will be mad enough to do it. 😉 [we use to do things we postpone when we are mad enough about them].
Amen-oZ.
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