Retirement of USD from eBay.ca Selling Flows

[raphael@ebay.com]

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.

[sheepgal54]

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@great_junque_finds wrote:
I did find out something interesting with my first sale in CAD though. The buyer was in US, my PP is a US account and I'm billed in USD, yet her payment came through as CAD that needed to be converted to USD.

Now what happens if a CAD buyer buys from a CAD listing? I'm assuming I'll get billed a cross border conversion there as well.

Seems to me this is going to cost me more than listing on .ca in USD

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Just make sure you have both currencies available in paypal and whichever currency is invoiced will go into the correct account. If you don't have a Cad currency account then of course you are having to pay the exchange rate to move it to US. You can change your billing currency on Ebay once a year so change it to CAD, open a Canadian currency with paypal (you can have several different at once) and then you don't have to worry. I have had both in paypal for years since I sell (or used to ) in US$ I move it to the CAD to pay for mailing labels with Canada Post and I shop with the USD account. 

[pierrelebel]

"payment came through as CAD that needed to be converted to USD."

You should open a Cdn$ balance in your PayPal account (in addition to the US$ balance).  So payments in Cdn$ do not get converted.

ALL Canadians should.

[pierrelebel]

"those are the only ones that might balk at 2 payments.  "

I have never, ever, experienced a buyer balking at making 2 or more payments.

[pierrelebel]

"Now what happens if a CAD buyer buys from a CAD listing? I'm assuming I'll get billed a cross border conversion there as well."

The billing (listing fee and Final Value Fee) will be charged to your eBay seller account at the Cdn$ rate.

If your "Billing Currency" is US$, then eBay will convert the charges to US$ using the daily wholesale conversion rate (no conversion fee).  At the end of your monthly cycle, eBay will collect its fees from you based on the method of payment you have selected (most sellers use credit card or PayPal) in the currency you selected (US$ or Cdn$)

Once a year you can change your Billing Currency.

If you plan to list/sell in Cdn$, then it is advantageous to have the Cdn$ as a "Billing Currency".  If that is your plan, I suggest you switch the Billing Currency to Cdn$.  I also recommend to all sellers to pay their eBay fees with credit card giving you rewards (mine gives AirMiles) and not PayPal.

The advantages of using a credit card instead of PayPal are many.  From my perspective, it is much easier when preparing your bookkeeping and tax return to look for 12 amounts on credit card statements than trying to identify those amounts through PayPal.

Switching billing currency is not instant.  It takes several months to complete.  Start here:

http://pages.ebay.ca/help/sell/billing-currency.html

Good Luck

[great_junque_finds]

But I'm not a Canadian. I'm an Aussie in the states & I'm a US seller lol

Most of my selling is US based in USD so not sure I want to hold a CAD balance in PP. Will have to think on that as I'll end up paying conversion rates sometime, right?

[great_junque_finds]

So basically the change to having to list (and be paid in apparently) CAD is that for non Canadian sellers listing on .ca it increases our fees via the conversion rates.

[great_junque_finds]

Answered my own question = )

You can't revise the currency on active listings, just when you relist them.

[pierrelebel]

I am sorry I had not noticed you were not Canadian.

Most questions asked here are by Canadians selling on eBay.

I suggest you state the fact you are American listing mostly on eBay.com when asking questions on eBay.ca boards.  It would be easier to answer correctly.

[great_junque_finds]

Well I did mention my situation when I first posted = )

[ecgt]

First sale since starting to convert to CDN. Here is what the buyer said:

"Im sorry but i didnt realize how much that would be in USD.. i thought it would come out to less than 300 including the shipping. Sorry for the inconvenience but if you could cancel my bid id greatly appreciate it"

Great start! Thanks a lot eBay.ca. I expect more of this to come.

[pierrelebel]

When I look at the listing

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1983-Kenner-Star-Wars-ROTJ-Lot-of-5-MOC-Figures-Logray-Weequay-Rancor-Keeper...

It shows US$ 401 plus about US$ 50 shipping.

How could the buyer state " i thought it would come out to less than 300 including the shipping. "

Does not make much sense to me.

Can't he read?

[ecgt]

Indeed.

[great_junque_finds]

Maybe they failed to notice the USD & CAD & converted the wrong way?

[rainbow71113]

or they weren't logged into ebay with their address at the time they first looked at it

[jakt1982]

I just found out about this today. What a bummer! I have been reading through the comments and a general fear of most of you is that US or international buyers will skip over your listings due to the Canadian currency (whether it be just laziness on the buyer's part to simply convert or just too confusing for them to spend their money in another country's currency). May I make a suggestion? Post a link or widget within the body of your listing to make for easy currency conversion for the buyer! This will accommodate buyers so they can bid with more confidence. Or, you can even convert it for them; write something like: "Currency converted on this date (listing date) is $?$?$ in US funds (conversion is likely to be adjusted on date of closing based off real-time currency rates). Please keep this in mind prior to bidding on this item, thank-you!"

[rainbow71113]

you don't need to do that, I guess you missed the posts about the fact that each country sees the currency converted into THEIR currency,so if someone in the UK is looking at my US dollar listings they are seeing the conversion to sterling or euros for Europe...and the shipping will also show in that currency.  The only time buyers don't see the correct amounts is if they are on another site, for instance if a Canadian buyer goes on .com they will see everything in US dollars but they will also see a lot of  "does not ship to your location" or if the buyer isn't logged in with their address.

[pjcdn2005]

How could the buyer state " i thought it would come out to less than 300 including the shipping. "

Does not make much sense to me.

Can't he read?

The buyer used the best offer option so they must have made a mistake figuring out the conversion or just guessed at it. 

If the offer/listing had been made in $US the buyer wouldn't have offered more than $400 anyway and no sale would have been made but then the seller wouldn't have had to do a cancellation. But regardless of which currency you list in, I think that there are always going to be buyers who don't think before they make a purchase and then want a cancellation.

[rainbow71113]

along with the change over to Canadian funds, ebay has also put a cap on the time to change listings needing upc/brand/mpn, I think

I read June ...a word of caution, if you have variation listings and try to bulk edit them you may lose your variation photos.  I had over 1100 items to correct, took me a week and I now have over 200 listings that I know of that do not have their variation photos- I have to go through 2600+ listings to see which ones turbo lister hasn't told me about yet- I've already found 5.  Revising these listings to add the photos again is somewhat problematic because I have to pull most of the listings to make sure I get the correct photos in the right spots and already I have customers saying "can you add the individual photos in this listing? "   I've been in contact with the turbo lister and selling manager teams and no one can see how this happened-the photos are still showing up in my turbo lister listings however when we try to upload those listings it says it needs the upc and when we looked into the listing on ebay it shows the upc in the variations areas.  VERY frustrating and annoying.  I really wonder, with the shipping charges that changed, the revisions and now the photo issues and then migration when I will ever be able to get back to listing new listings at the amount I used to do.

[tch_ca]

I would love to see Amazon get into the auction business. They have the money, infrastructure and the size to compete against ECrap. Raphael also claims Ebay has  "compelling" data that sellers listing in CDN do far better then ones listing in USD. I would call on Ebay to make that data public because many sellers will disagree. I for one list in both and have significant sales data that points otherwise, especially for US centric products. It's no different the previous Ebay claims that Sellers who use free shipping do better. Hog wash!!!! Also 43 pages of this thread says something about the decision as a whole....

[pierrelebel]

"I would love to see Amazon get into the auction business"

Amazon was in the auction business eighteen years ago.  I know I sold there for years using the auction format.

As time went by, buyers seemed to prefer the ability to buy immediately (Buy-it-now) instead of placing bids and wait a week to find out if your bid is the highest.  That trend has been growing for over ten years.

Amazon was first to realize it.  eBay is still doing auction but fewer than 15% of all listings on eBay are using the auction format.  The vast majority have switched to fixed price format like the rest of e-commerce worldwide because that is what the majority of buyers want..

The online auction concept was a great novelty twenty years ago.  The appeal has been fading over the years. That is not where the future is.