eBay

raphael@ebay.com · ‎03-18-2016

Hello Canadian sellers,

This thread is open for discussion regarding the recent announcement about eBay Canada retiring USD support from its selling flows. Myself and other employees will come visit this thread and do our best to answer any questions on this topic.

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@puckstopshere wrote:

In my 16 years on ebay.ca and ebay.com, I have found that listing in U.S. dollars has had its advantages for me. I have found that, if a buyer wants an item, the currency makes little or no difference. I have never had a complaint or even a question about why I use USD.

It also find that I have more ebay.ca sales to the U.S. as they are used to paying in USD.

In the 16 years, I have done most of my buying in USD. It will cost me money if I have to convert items purchased in USD to a CD selling price. I find that customers tend to look at a dollar amount much more than at a currency.

I have always found it interesting that ebay seems to always give benefits to the buyers at the expense of the seller. Rarely is any ebay policy favorable to a seller. I may be better off to open a retail outlet where I will be able to set my own rules - rather than have my business totally controlled by ebay. I have always been amazed that ebay does not seem to value sellers in their business equation. Without sellers, there are no buyers. Of course, without buyers, there are no sellers. The two seem to be a balance and should be weighted equally in the scheme of things. Instead, buyers are free to take advantage of sellers - with eBay's assistance and blessing.

An example: I do not sell to Russia. Far too many items never arrive at their destination. I end up refunding the payment. Recently, I had a sale to Russia. How did that happen when I have excluded them. The buyer requested that his U.S. address be changed to a Russian address and ebay complied. Now I have to pay that buyer over $30 as the item "didn't arrive". What right did ebay have to change the address, when I had specified otherwise?

I'm sorry you feel that way, We knew this would be tough for our sellers and we absolutely value your business, our sellers, and their point of view. And we respect that lots of you are upset with this news.

ight.coin · ‎03-22-2016

Do you know how it would take me to convert 900 listing manually from USD to CAD to take advantage of the 100,000 Buy-it-Now listings in C$ promotion that was offered today.

It would probably take me 2 minutes to convert each of 900 listings. 1800 minutes or 30 straight hours of tedious work to 'Sell Similar' plus the currency exchange rate conversion calculation. All manually.

And you claim you completely thought this through?

Frankly, I don't think much thought was put into this foolishness at all.

lyndilane · ‎03-22-2016

I wasn't asked either!

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@quebec68 wrote:

With this change it will be the DEATH of EBay.ca and the canadian sellers,the americans do not will buy in canadian dollar,with a exchange rate of 30%. ridiculus

We actually think this will help our sellers to be more successful.

And actually, a 30% exchange rate means a huge advantage for US buyers, and our data shows they currently love Canadian items. I mean, a CAD item looks like it is totally on sale to a US buyer at today's exchange rate.

Imagine FX is at parity and we both list a GTC item, me for $100 Canadian and you for $100 US, If CAD goes up 5% and you don't adjust your prices, you'll sell your item first, but you won't make the margin you expected. If CAD goes down by 5%, I get all your buyers because my item is now $95 to a US buyer. And I get every penny of my expected margin.

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@rogerrabbitanddoe wrote:

If listing on .com will we still be able to print out labels with Paypal/CanadaPost or if listing on .CA in Canadian Dollars will we just add the exchange rate as a handling fee to compensate?

I suspect it will be necessary to list on .com and use VentureOne with CanadaPost to get discount.

Why now is it just because the exchange rate once allows for more profit to cover expenses. If dollar strengthens to par will EBay reverse itself.

You can print Canada Post labels from your eBay.com-listed items by going to my eBay on eBay.ca.

We aren't making this change because of the current exchange rate. I will say though, that if we were depending on the Canadian dollar to be lower than then US dollar, that's been the case for almost all of the history of eBay Canada as well as almost all of my life. And I'm the silverback around here -- I am incredibly old. 🙂

But we were careful to factor out FX as we studied the question of listing currency, and found that CAD made sense for Canadian sellers, period.

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@quebec68 wrote:

If we list on EBay.com,it is impossible for canadian sellers to print a shipping label?????

Yes.

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@prairiecamino wrote:
It's impossible for me to sell to the US in $cad it's hard enough competing with our more expensive shipping costs.

95% of my customers are US based, Americans don't like converting currencies.

All this is going to do is force Canadians to sell on EBay.com and it will kill EBay.ca

And yet, our data shows that sellers listing in CAD are more successful than those listing in USD. Your 95/5 ratio is pretty typical of many Canadian sellers. We found, surprisingly, that CAD worked better for sellers just like you.

skookumcycles · ‎03-22-2016

and here I thought ebays disdain for sellers could not hit a new low, you have done it, after years of selling on Ebay i closed my store due to theft supported by ebay policies and now this, thanks for nothing you heartless crooks and goodbye forever.

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@lorraine_carol wrote:
Bonanza is a great site to sell on. Their customer service reps are very quick/enthused to help. Substantially lower fees. Thousands upon thousand of ebay sellers also sell there.

Hope it works for you. I hope you also stay with us on eBay as well. I'm not personally familiar with that site but for the time being at least I suspect we have quite a lot more buyers than they do.

skookumcycles · ‎03-22-2016

maybe pull your head out of you **bleep**! that makes no sense at all, ever heard of shipping costs?

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@heidi2gabi wrote:

What sales to US Clients. We sold NOTHING to us clients who are over 95% of our orders until we listed in US Dollars. Don't insult our intelligence. Call a turd a turd. and fire the one that made this decision. If it is a regulatory decision, we can accept that. And consult the government behind it.

Easy there -

First - sorry to hear your sales are drying up. Check the sold listings on eBay.com for items like yours and see if there is anything about the listings you are losing out to that you can do something about - price is important but sometimes better pictures, titles, product identifiers, etc. can make a difference too.

I love a good conspiracy theory but I'm pretty sure Justin has more important things to do than worry about listing currency choices on eBay.ca.

This was a business decision, made by the Canadian management team after many months of study and review. We made the decision because we think it's the best one for our sellers and for our platform.

skookumcycles · ‎03-22-2016

absolutely a stupid self serving bad for sellers (again and again) idea, making it even more pointless to sell on Ebay

ight.coin · ‎03-22-2016

Do you realize how confused buyers get when the price that they SEE for an item they are watching changes each and every day!

If I list at a constant C$100.00 then they will see the item at US$70.00 today on .com (in italics).

Unfortunately, each and every day that item's price is going to change in the eyes of about 95% of my buyers (all US buyers)

When currencies fluctuate every day and now the price is US$71.03 the confused US buyer never comes back and is left with yet another bad buyer experience courtesy of another of ebay's ridiculous anti-seller policies.

Nice one.

skookumcycles · ‎03-22-2016

Bonanza? maybe they have some respect for sellers and consider them clients as well not just mules

fabulous-marty · ‎03-22-2016

As many sellers on eBay, I deal in collectibles and media items. Those are valued in USD$, so my listings are in $USD. The volatile nature of the USD/CAD conversion fee in the last year or so make it impossible for me to start playing around 100s of listings to adjust the USD/CAD conversion. If an item is worth $15 USD, I'll list it $15 USD ... if I see a market movement for the item and it's now worth $20, I'll go and adjust THIS item. If next month the CAD is worth $0.65 USD, yet the item is still worth $15 USD in the market, I'll have to go ahead and change the CAD price, even though no real market movement happened to the item. I'll have to change the price of this item ... and the 100s of others! ... It's insane.

You'll tell me to list on eBay.com ... I already do. I'm not behind how your site works but here are the straight facts : ebay.com listings get better exposure to US buyers for sure ... as that's where most of my eBay.com items go ... however, I sell mostly to Canadians since the advent of another of your "great" idea : The GSP program. Canadians who now understand how this works will go out of their way to buy their items in Canada now, that doesn't change the fact that in my line of business, items are STILL valuated in USD. So it's important for me to mostly post on ebay.ca because a lot of customers are there, but it needs to be in USD for simplicity sake of the value of the items. I'm not going to go in and review HUNDREDS of item's price because suddenly our loonie fell. I'll review ONE item when I'll see the market moving for it's VALUE.

Selling on eBay.com has disadvantages, the listing price in the media categories is 0.25 while in Canada it stayed a a nickel. Not gonna pay you suddenly 400% more in simple listing fee because I need to list in USD ... and lose a good chunk of my actual clientele which are Canadians thanks to your GSP program ... so could it be possible that these are related?

You tell us we'll get more sales by listing in CAD ... nope, we don't. Yes, I did the test. I'm pretty sure your stats are based exactly on what happened when you started looking into that ... some "lazy" sellers like me didn't adjust their price when the $CAD started crashing ... so an item we listed at $20 CAD when we were at "par" with the USD, suddenly was a **bleep** good deal for anyone if you didn't adjust to the CAD crash ... instead of selling for $20 US (since listed at $20 CAD at par), it was selling for maybe $16 US ... of course it fled off the shelves ! ... and here you were thinking the $CAD listing was helping in getting the item sold, nope, what helped it sell was the fact that NO price adjustement were made, and an american buyer or a canadian one (why would they care anyway what is the original listing currency, you display the actual price in THEIR currency!) jumped on it, making you think "wow, people with CAD listing are selling A LOT these days!" ... yeah ... but .. their profit?

When is this happening? Right on July first? Since it's summer, I'll certainly close the venue here and see where you'll be going on with this. Hopefully a lot of other sellers in the collectibles/media business will follow the same train of thought and you'll realise how stupid this move is since it doesn't chance anything to the end buyer (except more currency conversion fees from our american buyers since NOW they need to actually pay us in CAD and this trigger a cute 2-3% extra for PayPal (and here I was, thinking you were REALLY distinct companies now! LOL!) .... which it will probably take years for the buyers to realise (or not, and it will means the end of the 300M potential buyers for us ... we'll have to stick with the 25M from Canada .. which isn't bad but ... what's the point in going through eBay then ... a solid sale website will get you the attention of this small sample of buyers since they're interested in the product, not necessarily in buying it through eBay ... compared to when you have 300M users to offer us as potential buyers, when now there's certainly a few of them casually browsing eBay and buying only there .... Canadians are savvy internet buyers you know ... they don't really need eBay.

So good luck with these changes, it's kind of a no brainer that this is to help PayPal make a few extra money on the "conversion" of some numbers in their computers, as no actual money is really converted from one currency to another, like back then when the banks got this cute ideas to charge to convert ACTUAL money from one currency to another ... Since the flow of the cash is higher from american buyers going to Canadian sellers now that the currency is low and a lot of seller don't adjust their price daily to reflect that (meaning, there's always a good deal to get from a Canadian seller who listed in CAD and never adjusted his price now that the CAD is worth 10% less ... 10% rebate for that american buyer)

Hopefully those "sellers" in your focus group were real big moneymakers for you, cause they're the only one who will stay after a huge "USELESS" change like this ...

So basically, all this to ask : "July 1st?"

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@jimbo_kw wrote:

@our*goodies*shop wrote:
With this **bleep** you are imposing our USA client a currency exchange to buy from us?

This is it exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A = the majority of Buyers accounts are in USA $

B = all Seller accounts required to be in home currency CAN$ (or other)

C = more money thorough gouging exchange fees !!!!

A + B = C

of course this was an eBay Canada decision

Spoiler

Spoiler

Just want to point out that we split off PayPal last year. We don't have an interest in foreign exchange fees. Whether you pay them or not doesn't help our financial performance at all. Those fees go to PayPal, as well as to their global banking partners. Not to eBay. This played absolutely no part in our decision.

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@crazy_for_comics wrote:

I never sold on Ebay.com...........I may be wrong but I was under the assumption that if you sell on Ebay.com that you would have to be an American resident and/or have a U.S. address?

Nope. You are most welcome to list on eBay.com using the same credentials you use on eBay.ca. You can also try other sites too if you ever want to give it a try. eBay.co.uk, eBay.de, and eBay.com.au. are a few of our larger ones. You'll need to know some German to list on eBay.de though.

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@sirspinalot wrote:

So, what "new features and improvements" are being considered once this comes into affect?

This change makes every single feature an easier business case when we press for concurrent or fast follow launches. In general, this ensures we stay on pace with everything that is coming down the pipe, in the near, mid and long term.

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

reallynicestamps wour rote:

So about grandfathering.

Over my several accounts I have a few thousand items, listed in USD as Fixed Price/Good Til Cancelled.

Come June 1, will these continue on eBayCANADA in USD?

The basic problem here for me is not so much the currency as the time it would take to correct the pricing should the FP/GTC items be ended.

Also I am concerned that some of the older listings have older scans that may not meet current standards.

I want to be out in the garden all summer, not hunched over a hot scanner.

The UPC codes are already a pain in the button, especially for us collectibles sellers whose products do not have UPC numbers.

We won't stop your USD listings from renewing until August. I'd recommend you wait until the migration tool launches in May, and then begin the process. Unfortunately, for older listings, grandfathered changes can indeed get applied at relist, Because the migration tool works by creating your "new" listings as drafts in selling manager, you can use selling manager to make bulk and individual edits to those drafts as needed and then push them live or schedule them.

Anonymous · ‎03-22-2016

@dutchman48 wrote:

If more and more Canadians list on .com, which may be what Ebay wants, looking through all their BS based on nothing, just maybe in the futue, Ebay.ca will be shut down so ebay does not have to deal with ca any longer.

We are a grain of sand in a landfill as far as Ebay is concerned, and if things continue, there will be no need for .ca or it's staff in Canada.

I list on both .ca in Can dollars and .com in US dollars and what kills Canadians is the Canada Post cost of shipping, the high tracking costs and the fact the Ebay rips us off on the high shipping costs to line their pockets.

That % on the high shipping costs makes us even less competitive and now this change just compounds it even more. And don't forget, we will also be charged cross border fees as well from US buyers if our Paypal account is in Canada.

If Ebay would spend as much time and money fixing issues that they deny exist, as they spend on all these ridiculous changes which will cause more problems and bugs, Ebay may survive. Sticking their heads in the sand and having idiots make all kinds of changes without thinking them through is doing nothing for sellers, buyers, and in the long run Ebay itself.

I have been here for 16 years and all I see is more ridiculous changes that benefit nobody in the long run.

And for Raphael, read the US boards about all the sold and closed listings being relisted since you did not believe me. My question is, what will Ebay do about this issue or just nothing as usual.

We are told discussions are to help explain things but all I read is this is how it is, take it or get lost!

Hi Dutchman. It really doesn't matter to us whether you list on eBay.com or eBay.ca. I just hope you list on eBay, period. You can pick the site you prefer.

If you've been here for 16 years then thank you for your business. It isn't easy to be an eBay seller and I understand your frustration with this change. We must have done a few things right along the way if you stuck with us this long. I hope you stay 16 more.

Raphael may reach out directly - this discussion thread is about USD retirement.