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 · ‎03-23-2016

@timeshell wrote:

You say you are "recommending" CDN dollar. That's not true. You're FORCING the CDN dollar.

You are still free to list in USD. We're not forcing you to list in CAD.

In fact, you are welcome to list on a European site in EU, or on the AU site in AUD...

The only thing we are changing here is removing the option to list in USD when you list on eBay.ca.

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-23-2016

@lorraine_carol wrote:
I am opposed to having this forced on us as much as the next person. I do not believe Canadian seller's sales will increase by listing in CAD. I do believe the majority of the US buyers will not purchase outside of USD.
Since ebay is not providing us with the proof otherwise, only their 'say-so'......

Suggestion-
Log onto ebay.com, go to 'advance search', your category i.e. "apparel" etc, click on "SOLD", go down to the bottom "check-mark only in Canada". Do the same for ebay.ca, compare the number of 'sold' items (sweater, skirt, coat) on each site. (this won't work for sellers who sell equally to both the USA & Canada) Obviously there are Canadian buyers and we've no way to distinguish if a 'sold' item went to the USA or Canada, so this would help only Canadian sellers who's clientele are essentially USA based. This will not be a 100% confirmation but I think it will for some sellers give some indication.

Sorry but I don't understand what indication will that give?

raphael@ebay.com · ‎03-23-2016

@forester_studios wrote:

So for the next 6 weeks the 450 items will remain unlisted until the ebay tool is available in May. I was doing great business with steady sales until the past month. The lack of promos and this currency change has killed my business and waiting until May will cause even more harm. Why didn't ebay have the currency conversion tool available BEFORE they did this??? Not impressed with the way this company is run.

Hi forester_studios,

We also very much wanted to have the full version of the migration tool ready today. However, since what we are building is very complicated (it is, after all, a tool to help you accomplish operations that are 100% impossible on the usual eBay selling tools), we won't able to get it live before May. For now, it will still pull a downloadable list of your impacted listings, in case you'd like to slowly start manually converting or migrating some of your listings, or even just print out the list and take notes as you decide what you'll want to do with each.

martmaduke · ‎03-23-2016

You are removing calculated shipping if we want to use USD. So we really have no choice but to switch to CAD.

There is no way to curb shipping rates using Flat Rate Shipping without the seller taking a loss.

Ebay was perfect as is. I don't understand how this is for the better. My item might sell more if the exchange rate decides I am a few pennies below USD listings?

ecgt · ‎03-23-2016

This is semantics. You are forcing us to list in CDN or move to another website that is not set up for Canadian sellers. This is not a choice

forced

fôrst/

adjective

obtained or imposed by coercion or physical power.
"the brutal regime of forced labor"
synonyms: enforced, forcible, compulsory, obligatory, mandatory, involuntary,imposed, required, stipulated, dictated, ordained, prescribed
"forced repatriation"

raphael@ebay.com · ‎03-23-2016

@ight.coin wrote:

eBay Listing Migration Tool, which will be available in early May. What good is that? That tool is needed today, not in 6 weeks.

How is eBay Canada so unprepared for this change? A change that they implemented.

eBay continues to treat it's sellers as complete garbage.

Totally agree that it would have been preferable that the tool be fully ready now. I disagree that this constitutes us treating our sellers as complete garbage.

grandmasblueberries · ‎03-23-2016

Can you imagine the harm you will cause to us, imagine, if we have one items we sell buy it now 15 times, you will place it down, we will lost what we take 5 years to work with this listing.

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-23-2016

@libaliss wrote:
If I decide to use both ebay.ca and ebay.com, with using two different currencies, isn't that going to be a nightmare to sort out in my paypal account?

It probably isn't the ideal way to do thing but it works for me. The totals are separate in Paypal. One thing I like about selling in both currencies is that i have a Canadian balance to pay for postage and a U.S. $ balance if I want to pay something from a U.S. seller.

It is a problem if one buyer purchases an item in different currencies and/or from different sites as they either have to pay separately or you have to bill them on Paypal in one currency. In my case the type of items sold on .ca and .com are quite different so I have never had that problem but my husband also does some selling on both sites and he has only had that happen once even though his products on both sites are quite similar.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎03-23-2016

@skookumcycles wrote:

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.

Sorry you're upset, and to hear about transactions having gone sideways. If you'd like, I'd be happy to assist you in figuring out what can be done about what you referred to as theft supported by eBay (we don't support theft). Feel free to reach me directly via email.

Anonymous · ‎03-23-2016

@ight.coin wrote:

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.

A tool will be available to help you with bulk operations starting in early May. Sorry it's not ready yet, but we thought it was better to offer promotions now rather than wait until the tool was ready. We also wanted to announce as quickly as we could once we had the dates and details locked down, to give you as much notice as possible.

Safe to assume that more promos will follow to help you through this.

brixtonchrome · ‎03-23-2016

Yes, but why would you implement a change ahead of being certain that you had the necessary migration too ready, knowing the problems it would cause sellers with thousand or tens of thousands of listings?

That is my main issue with this change. Not the loss of sales, but the fact that I may have to spend weeks re-doing work I've already done.

Anonymous · ‎03-23-2016

@skookumcycles wrote:

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.

Sorry to hear that is how you feel. We'll still be here to welcome you back if you change your mind.

billybee99 · ‎03-23-2016

I just realized that not only will I have to change the cost of the items from USD to CDN but I will have to also convert the shipping costs in every single auction; so I will have to go into the item descriptions of every single auction and make changes to the shipping - I doubt the "new tool" will allow for this to be done easily.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎03-23-2016

@ight.coin wrote:

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.

Our data clearly shows that US buyers don't care about this, especially when the price is lower. I highly recommend trying some listings in CAD and see for yourself.

Anonymous · ‎03-23-2016

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

I've met quite a broad range of sellers over the past 14 years. I haven't met any mules yet.

sheepgal54 · ‎03-23-2016

I am beginning to wonder if this is something to stick it to paypal over. Paypal has been getting the benefit of the exchange rate for quite some time. If we sell in CAD then there is no fee for exchange. That means we can use that small percentage to make up for the Canadian $ fluctuations without editing the prices weekly. I for one will be selling some of the same stock on both sites. I just had 3 sales in US$ to Canadians that were listed in separate CAD also but they paid the higher US$. So the theory that Canadians are buying more items listed in CAD is definitely false because this happens to my listings regularly.

Anonymous · ‎03-23-2016

@zome2 wrote:

Rodney,

You keep saying that this for our own good. This is to help the sellers. It will all work out in the long run.

However, you are very short on the specifics. How exactly is this helping us? What, in the long run, or for that matter the short run, is our benefit here?

All we see is a lot of work ahead for diminished returns. No matter how often you repeat that this is a good idea, it does not make it a good idea.

You're saying "trust us, we know what's good for you", but believe me that the sellers complaining here, who have put years of work every single god **bleep** day into their business are far better equipped to know "what's good for us".

By all means please direct me to your data that shows US buyers are more likely to buy in a foreign currency. This is so counter intuitive that it beggars belief.

You should have had a far large consultation than 20 or 25 sellers from Canada and I'm willing to bet my business that the majority of those people told you this was a bad idea.

Having said all this, I actually feel sorry for you having to defend the indefensible. You obviously have the right temperament for it, but please, stop blowing smoke up our butts and tell us the real reason this is happening. People are mad as hell either way. What difference does it make?

Thanks for your note zome2.

We've been pretty specific about the benefits we see in comparing the performance of Canadians listing in CAD and Canadians listing in USD. You can read more about it here. http://pages.ebay.ca/sellerinformation/list-in-cad/index.html. Scroll down to the module headed "Sellers do better with CAD listings". This is an interactive module that shows the actual data by major vertical.

If you're hoping for specific commitments that feature X Y and Z will come right after this change, I can't provide that kind of info. What I can tell you is that in my professional experience - 14 years of presenting business cases to try to bring features to Canada - this is going to make it MUCH easier for us to get the things we need for our sellers either concurrently with eBay.com or as a fast follow release. The technical folks we work with inside eBay agree with us on that point wholeheartedly. I can't stress enough how the extra complexity of double listing currency was a boat anchor on our technical progress.

Anonymous · ‎03-23-2016

@crazy_for_comics wrote:

This upcoming currency change has caused me allot of stress, anxiety, anger, a headache and confusion today. Selling here is a big part of my livelihood. And I'm sure allot of other sellers agree. I literally feel sick to my stomach..........There are so many questions that I have in my head. Seems like this change is going to create a whole bunch of extra work and more headaches....

I picked one question out of my head .........

I have gtc items listed in usd. If I stay on Ebay.ca will the eBay listing migration tool in May convert all my gtc's from usd to CAD with the the proper exchange rate? .......Like for example would a $9.99 usd item become 13.05 cad?

What if this change effects Ebay.ca sellers' bottom line? and was a mistake?

Sorry to hear that. I hope you're starting to feel better by now.

Yes - the migration tool will do exactly what you asked. It can do so across many items at once, or one at a time. And it will allow you to either use the daily exchange rate that is prefilled in the tool, or to select your own.

We believe this will change the bottom line for Canadian sellers. On average, we expect sell through rates to improve in keeping with the guidance on our landing page. We don't think it was a mistake, because helping our sellers be more successful is the only way we get to be more successful. And our data is very clear that CAD - once a detriment to expoert sales - is now an advantage.

Anonymous · ‎03-23-2016

@zome2 wrote:

Rodney,

Belief does not constitute reality. Your entire group may have an unshakable belief that this the right thing to do, but from every angle that I can see this, it will make my life more difficult and for that trouble, I will make less money.

I am beyond frustrated with this BS. I had over 100K in sales in 2015 on your site. All in US dollars. I would have made substantially less than that have I listed my items in CAD. There is no getting around this FACT!!!! Not a belief, but a FACT!!!!

So far everything we sellers said here was like throwing water on a brick wall. The wall doesn't care and it seems that neither does ebay. And for all your reasonable tone and polite answers, there is not one concrete indication on just HOW this will benefit us.

I get depressed just thinking about how this whole thing is going to affect my bottom line.

Really, just be honest with us. After all, that's the Canadian way, right? There can't be much worse fallout than what you're getting now, so tell us why you decided to knee cap us in such an incomprehensible way. If the reason makes sense, however nefarious it may be, I can at least live with that, but if you keep sticking to this lame story about how this was done for the sellers, I really have to question the humanity of your whole group.

With all due respect,

zome2

Hi again zome2.

We aren't asking to sell something that you were going to sell for US$10 for CA$10. We are asking you to sell it for CA$13 or whatever the exchange rate suggests.

If you had converted all your listings to CAD a year ago, adjusting for FX, you would have made exactly the same amount of money - except that you may well have sold more items. I know you don't believe our numbers. But they are real. So if you had the same 10% FP sell through we see on average, you would have made another $10k.

That's why we're going this. We want you to make that extra $10k if you can.

Anonymous · ‎03-23-2016

@lorraine_carol wrote:
Hi.....I am in complete agreement with you zome2. Our frustration should be directed at eBay US. Ebay Canada did not decide this, they are only following orders from the parent company. Of course Canadian ebay employees are going to side with their employers whether they agree or not. Part of eBay Canada's employees jobs at this particular time is to convince us it's the right thing to do.

Literally none of that is true.

I'm not here because someone asked me to be here. I'm here because I'm the director of product for Canada, I've worked here with great pride for a long time, and I care a lot about our sellers. I know the news we shared upset a lot of you, and I want to help you through it by answering questions as best I can.

This was a decision we made in Toronto. I promise you. I was in the room.

I'm not expecting to convince anyone on this thread of anything. I am just here to try to help cut through some of the misinformation and point folks to the answers as best I can.