Hello Canadian eBayers,
September already!? Yup.
Continuing with the new format, I'll leave this thread open for most of the day and come reply to your posts on & off throughout. Here are the bugs reported in the last few sessions which I am still tracking:
- Full shipping FVF charged on combined orders with discounted shipping (dutchman48)
- SYI form stripping the weight off when switching back to USD on an item that was originally in USD and set up with calculated shipping (block36)
- SYI preventing relist and Sell Similar if the original listing had a non compliant photo (pierrelebel)
- Notifications reappearing in the header (pocomocomputing)
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Good afternoon, Raphael.
There is some oddity with UPCs again. It's been reported by myself and another member this time.
http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/UPC-Problem-Again/td-p/312064
and
Can you look into what is happening here? What's is wrong with my listing? I don't see anything wrong with it and was never told it was incorrect until Aug. 31.
I will have to dig a bit into this. Thanks for flagging it.
@mjwl2006 wrote:
Also, my old 'friend' is back.... the one who has been harassing me steadily for the past year. You can check my messages: they are flagged. I am also now being 'followed' by this user and it isn't intending to be flattering. The member in questions has me confused with someone else. (Someone that I don't know, halfway across the company.) I called ebay Customer Support about this over the weekend. What else can I do? The user is telling me he will match 'blow for blow' on ebay whatever this other person is doing to him or....? I'm at a loss. Any advice you can give me would be appreciated. It would be ever so nice if people could just behave themselves, wouldn't it?
I'm afraid this is a tough one. If this other user doesn't understand when you tell them you are not the person they think you are, all you can do is continue reporting them on eBay and ignore the emails. There comes a point where repeated offences bring harsher consequences, up to and including an indefinite suspension.
@rose-dee wrote:
OK, I'm back from grocery shopping in Digby, hopefully not too late to get these questions in.
My first question is about the current 80-item promo that started yesterday: http://pages.ebay.ca/promo/2015/0901/80Listings.html
One Canadian seller pointed out yesterday -- and correctly I believe -- that if you want to use your normal monthly allotment of free listings for September, you'd have to use up all 80 promo listings in September first. This is because the listed items get counted first against the promo, then only after the promo listings are exhausted can a seller access their usual allotment of free listings for the month. This seems to defeat the purpose of having a promo extending over 6 weeks.
In other words, it seems that the only sellers who can really make any use of this promo in October will be those who have very few items to list (or relist) at all, if you understand what I'm getting at. That's too bad, because it would have been nice to be able to split those extra free listings up between September and October.
I'm wondering if this was deliberate, or did no one at eBay stop to think about the practical application of a promo straddling two months? Maybe next time they can give us a portion one month and a second promo for the remainder starting on the first of the following month?
Hi rose-dee,
I can't speak to whether this was deliberate or an oversight, but I do think it's of little importance. This promo will be beneficial to sellers who usually reach and exceed their monthly allotment of free listings. There is absolutely no difference to those who don't: they still get enough free listings to cover for their selling activity.
@rose-dee wrote:
I thought I'd post this question separately, as it's a completely different subject.
I want to bring something to your attention that I ran into this week as a buyer on eBay, which was also an unpleasant surprise from my viewpoint as a seller.
I play classical guitar and was looking for a particular set of replacement strings. To start with, I entered "classical guitar strings" in the general search box. This pulled up a not terribly long list of different makes of strings in that category, from various parts of the planet. I tried to narrow the search (by maker) with the drop-down filter at the top left. The pop-up box that appeared ("see all choices") did not include "Augustine", which was the type I was after (and which is a favourite amongst guitarists). This seemed very odd. I knew there absolutely must be sellers of this brand on eBay, so I did I search on the specific description: "Augustine classical guitar strings" and voilà! Suddenly there they were, dozens of them.
I was thinking that had I been an inexperienced eBay buyer, I would simply have assumed that Augustine strings didn't exist at all on eBay and would have gone to, well, ahem, that other site...
My question on this particular experience is this: why does eBay have a list of brands if a brand that is represented by a substantial number of listings isn't included? Why have a filter list at all unless all major brands are included?
I assume (am I right?) that the sellers of the Augustine strings did not fill out the Item Specifics (i.e. brand name), and therefore didn't get into the list. However, from a buyer's perspective (and eBay's too), it isn't going to sell if it's invisible -- and a buyer is likely to try to narrow his search down using that list. I would think this neither serves buyers nor eBay well.
You are right, the reason there were no Augustine strings in your first search is that none of the sellers offering them included the brand in their listings' item specifics. This is why we are increasingly making it mandatory to include such item details.
Edit:
I just wanted to add that buyers largely use keywords to search for items. I would bet money that an inexperienced buyer wanting to find Augustine guitar strings specifically will use the brand work in the search first. I'm certainly not saying that the search refinements aren't important, but they won't prevent most buyers from finding what they are looking for.
Also after looking a bit deeper at those Augustine strings listings, I have to say those are very poor! Some are completely in the wrong category (Guitar Strings > Electric or even Musical Instruments > Other) and almost none of them have any item specifics selected.
@rose-dee wrote:
One other issue around searches, from a buyer's point of view (this wasn't a test, my husband really was looking for this book).
We did a search for the book title "The Road to Stalingrad" (WWII history), and filtered for items located in Canada. The list that appeared contained a few surprises:
1) Under "Format" -- The filter here was not what a book buyer would want to know (i.e. hardcover/ softcover/trade paperback, etc.) but the format of the listing (fixed price, auction, etc.) This was useless. Nowhere in any of the other filters was there a place to refine for hardcover/softcover.
2) Quite a number of the listings under "international sellers" contained no photo at all (verboten on eBay I thought!), and one even contained wording across the blank photo area saying "Image Coming Soon".
If you repeat this search, you'll see what I mean. Why doesn't eBay do a better job of displaying books to potential buyers and providing filters that make sense in that category?
Again, this is a listing quality issue. Left nav filters show up only if the initial search returns listings that have those data points. In your example, "The Road to Stalingrad" returns 27 hits in the Books category on eBay.ca. This is a pretty niche item without a super rich inventory, when you get to this kind of search it's not representative of what it's like to search on eBay, and buyers who look for such specific items usually are patient enough to figure out how to find them.
Not much eBay can do there except try to educate sellers into creating better listings, which we already do a pretty good job at. We can't do much for sellers who don't take time to make better listings. That said, I totally agree that it would be much better if they did. 🙂
raphael@ebay.com wrote:
I can't speak to whether this was deliberate or an oversight, but I do think it's of little importance. This promo will be beneficial to sellers who usually reach and exceed their monthly allotment of free listings. There is absolutely no difference to those who don't: they still get enough free listings to cover for their selling activity.
Yes, I understand that it will be beneficial for sellers during September who would normally reach or exceed their monthly allotment, but then why bother extending the promo into October? Those sellers would never be able to take advantage of the promo in October in any event.
If you look at the promo ad, the manner in which this was touted seemed a bit disingenuous "EBay offers you the chance to list for free every month. Now we're letting you list even more. List by October 15..."
The fact is that once you activate the promo, the counter begins to allocate all listings/re-lists to the promo, so there is no way to take advantage of the promo in October if a seller normally uses more than 80 listings in a month, if you understand what I mean.
Or perhaps someone was asleep at the switch when they designed the promo? 
@rose-dee wrote:
Yes, I understand that it will be beneficial for sellers during September who would normally reach or exceed their monthly allotment, but then why bother extending the promo into October? Those sellers would never be able to take advantage of the promo in October in any event.
If you look at the promo ad, the manner in which this was touted seemed a bit disingenuous "EBay offers you the chance to list for free every month. Now we're letting you list even more. List by October 15..."
The fact is that once you activate the promo, the counter begins to allocate all listings/re-lists to the promo, so there is no way to take advantage of the promo in October if a seller normally uses more than 80 listings in a month, if you understand what I mean.
Or perhaps someone was asleep at the switch when they designed the promo?
I'm sorry I really don't understand the issue. If a seller normally lists more than 80 items in a month, they will eat through the promo listings in September. Extending the promo into October actually allows a seller who lists close to 80 item in a month to have more free listings than their normal amount of free listings for 2 consecutive months... How can there ever be too many free listings?
@rose-dee wrote:
Are you saying that blank gallery photos are allowed on eBay and there isn't anything eBay can do about it? There were quite a number of them in the search results I looked at. It really looked quite bad, very unprofessional.
Not what I'm saying. I apologize I should have addressed that part and I didn't. I am unsure how these listings were created without a picture as all listings are supposed to have at least one. This was brought up by another books seller in a recent chat session. I forgot about it but will add it to the list of things I am tracking.
About it looking unprofessional, you are 100% right on that. But I would argue it has a worst effect on the seller who runs a bigger risk of not selling their item against other sellers who so have pictures on their listings.
One last question, and then I'll stop pestering you today. 
I am an optimist by nature, but I've now accepted that the .com cart disconnect will never be fixed, I have. You've finally worn me down (you may be glad to hear).
Now I have to make a very difficult decision on whether to list on .com exclusively or list in $Cdn exclusively on .ca. There are some serious concerns around both. Listing on .com will without doubt work better in terms of allowing my buyers to buy easily, but will cost me more in FVFs on shipping and I will lose a number of features I love on .ca.
My question is this (more of a suggestion-box item I suppose): If eBay can't/won't fix the cart, is there any possibility they could allow Canadian sellers listing on .com to have their shipping to Canada deemed as the "first domestic shipping"? Could that be done?
This would mean that we would not be losing our ability to offer free shipping to Canada, while still benefiting from lower or no FVFs on shipping. The latter has helped me to continue to offer "subsidized" shipping to my primarily U.S. buyers. Since I do used Expedited USA quite often, the loss of the FVF discounts on shipping, together with having to pay FVFs on all my shipping to the U.S., is going to be significant. Any hope?
raphael@ebay.com wrote:I'm sorry I really don't understand the issue. If a seller normally lists more than 80 items in a month, they will eat through the promo listings in September. Extending the promo into October actually allows a seller who lists close to 80 item in a month to have more free listings than their normal amount of free listings for 2 consecutive months... How can there ever be too many free listings?
I suppose what I was saying was that for someone like me, who is already at or close to the (for example) 150 free store listings, I was hoping to be able to use some of those 80 in September and some in October, which I don't think I can possibly do. (We never know when the next promo will come around).
So for example, I'd love to be able to use my 150 + 40 of the promo listings in September, then my 150 + the remaining 40 promo listings in October, which would mean 380 free listings for the two months -- wonderful! But now that I've activated the promo, I'll go through all 80 of the promo listings pretty quickly in September, then have no "leftovers", either promo or regular, to roll over into October. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm not being very clear... ?
@rose-dee wrote:
My question is this (more of a suggestion-box item I suppose): If eBay can't/won't fix the cart, is there any possibility they could allow Canadian sellers listing on .com to have their shipping to Canada deemed as the "first domestic shipping"? Could that be done?
This would mean that we would not be losing our ability to offer free shipping to Canada, while still benefiting from lower or no FVFs on shipping. The latter has helped me to continue to offer "subsidized" shipping to my primarily U.S. buyers. Since I do used Expedited USA quite often, the loss of the FVF discounts on shipping, together with having to pay FVFs on all my shipping to the U.S., is going to be significant. Any hope?
Unfortunately, no. This would represent a huge task in terms of re-architecture on the .com site, possibly even more work than building a new cart. We then run into the exact same prioritization problem since this would only serve to fix an issue for a small sub set of sellers.
I'm curious though, why do you use Expedited Parcel for sewing patterns? Don't these fit in large envelopes? I assumed so but I may be wrong. I always thought you primarily used lettermail which is why I always thought you could very easily build the ship cost into the item price and sell to the US with free shipping.
@rose-dee wrote:
Now I have to make a very difficult decision on whether to list on .com exclusively or list in $Cdn exclusively on .ca.
It sounds like you think sellers can't list in USD on eBay.ca anymore. That is very much not the case: you can still do so when listing on the advanced tool.
@rose-dee wrote:
Listing on .com will without doubt work better in terms of allowing my buyers to buy easily, but will cost me more in FVFs on shipping and I will lose a number of features I love on .ca.
Can you elaborate on what features these are?
@rose-dee wrote:
I suppose what I was saying was that for someone like me, who is already at or close to the (for example) 150 free store listings, I was hoping to be able to use some of those 80 in September and some in October, which I don't think I can possibly do. (We never know when the next promo will come around).
So for example, I'd love to be able to use my 150 + 40 of the promo listings in September, then my 150 + the remaining 40 promo listings in October, which would mean 380 free listings for the two months -- wonderful! But now that I've activated the promo, I'll go through all 80 of the promo listings pretty quickly in September, then have no "leftovers", either promo or regular, to roll over into October. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm not being very clear... ?
I understand what you are saying. You wish the promo did something it doesn't, but that's how the promo is built.
Think of this as when you get a coupon for a store which says "coupon cannot be combined with another offer." As much as I would love to combine it with another offer, I can't. 
One more thought, since I haven't been cut off yet:
It seems to me that the 5% to 10% increase recently reported by eBay.ca for sellers listing in $Cdn could be explained, at least in part, by the fact that doing so (listing in $Cdn) would obviate the worst of the .com cart disconnect, I assume by forcing .com buyers to use the old-style checkout process. They just won't see the cart at all, which is good and bad. Good for single purchases, bad for multi-item orders.
I know you've said that it's a very small sub-set of Cdn sellers who are affected by this, but I keep thinking that it must include any seller who has ever had a potential order of more than 1 item at a time. I don't know how anybody can possibly quantify something that doesn't happen (i.e. buyers who don't buy because they encounter a dead-end cart, or no cart at all). It's like proving a negative, which is why I find it hard to understand how eBay can say with certainty that this is a very miniscule problem. How can eBay know how many buyers have tried, failed, given up, and gone away?
It makes sense to me that those Canadian sellers who have been listing in $Cdn, as the eBay survey showed, should be partly immunized from the worst effects of the "dead-end cart" (because their .com buyers won't be able to use it at all). Which is the main reason I would consider switching from listing in $US to $Cdn if I decide to stay on .ca. I can imagine there are many other Canadian sellers listing in $US who are in the same boat right now, and who would logically see their sales rise by listing in $Cdn and by-passing .com buyers' ability to use their cart. It's such a shame, things worked so well for a while.
@rose-dee wrote:
One more thought, since I haven't been cut off yet:
It seems to me that the 5% to 10% increase recently reported by eBay.ca for sellers listing in $Cdn could be explained, at least in part, by the fact that doing so (listing in $Cdn) would obviate the worst of the .com cart disconnect, I assume by forcing .com buyers to use the old-style checkout process. They just won't see the cart at all, which is good and bad. Good for single purchases, bad for multi-item orders.
I know you've said that it's a very small sub-set of Cdn sellers who are affected by this, but I keep thinking that it must include any seller who has ever had a potential order of more than 1 item at a time. I don't know how anybody can possibly quantify something that doesn't happen (i.e. buyers who don't buy because they encounter a dead-end cart, or no cart at all). It's like proving a negative, which is why I find it hard to understand how eBay can say with certainty that this is a very miniscule problem. How can eBay know how many buyers have tried, failed, given up, and gone away?
It makes sense to me that those Canadian sellers who have been listing in $Cdn, as the eBay survey showed, should be partly immunized from the worst effects of the "dead-end cart" (because their .com buyers won't be able to use it at all). Which is the main reason I would consider switching from listing in $US to $Cdn if I decide to stay on .ca. I can imagine there are many other Canadian sellers listing in $US who are in the same boat right now, and who would logically see their sales rise by listing in $Cdn and by-passing .com buyers' ability to use their cart. It's such a shame, things worked so well for a while.
Please don't confuse my statement for the amount of impacted sellers for an assessment of the size of the problem. I think it's a huge problem, and for the affected sellers, it's colossal. But that doesn't mean it's easy to make the case for the resources necessary to change this.
Listing in USD or CAD on eBay.ca won't change anything to how buyers on eBay.com see items. Neither can be added to the shopping cart on eBay.com. Only items listed on eBay.com can be added to the cart on eBay.com.
I'll leave the thread open over night and come back in the morning to respond to any remaining posts and close the thread. Good night!
Good morning Raphael
On the subject of wrong messaging, you may have noticed "Your traffic reports will become inactive on Sep-22-15."
That is also incorrect. Why?
