Hello Canadian eBayers,
This is our weekly session. The thread will remain open for most of the day. Please start posting at your convenience and I'll come in & out to respond.
Issues/bugs still tracked:
- 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)
- UPC codes suddenly not recognized on live listings (mjwl2006)
- Listings allowed to go live without a photo (rose-dee)
Here are the screen shots of my "experiments", in the order mentioned in the post above:
1. .com buyer buys from Cdn seller listing in $US (this test was done by a seller colleague on one of my items) -- is invited to add to cart:
2. The same .com buyer clicks on "Add to cart" and get the contradictory messages that the item has been added to the Cart, but that the Cart is empty (I'm not sure this is really any better than the old "Item Not Available" messages):
3. A .com buyer buys from Cdn seller listing in $Cdn (this test was done by me on another Canadian seller's item who lists in $Cdn (no IPR). As expected, no cart is offered, buyer has to check out/pay one-by-one:
Good morning Raphael.
With the new changes being announced today:
Shipping Time Metric
eBay will create a new "on-time shipping" metric in order to measure seller shipping performance designed to be based on what sellers control: shipping items on time. eBay will consider shipments to be late only in the following two cases:
1) Tracking shows item was delivered after the estimated delivery date, and there's no acceptance scan within your stated handling time or there's no confirmation from the buyer of on-time delivery, or
2) Buyer confirms item was delivered after the estimated delivery date, and there's no acceptance scan within your stated handing time or there's no delivery confirmation by the estimated delivery date.
This raises the question: what will eBay do with the millions of transactions shipped by sellers worldwide without an acceptance scan?
Do you have an answer to that question?
re: 20th anniversary promotion
http://pages.ebay.com/promo/2015/0910/Anniversary.html
http://pages.ebay.ca/promo/2015/0910/Anniversary.html
Could you please confirm that sellers are in fact allowed 20 free listings on both eBay.ca and eBay.com
Will the 20% rebate on FVF be in addition to the 20% FVF rebate earned by Top Rated Sellers?
"What changes....?"
For years I have suggested Canadian sellers subscribe to ecommerceBytes.com. It is free and you often get news about eBay well before they are posted on eBay! There is no reason not to subscribe.
"Sellers who are considered Top Rated will have to offer a 30-day money-back return policy in order to qualify for the Top Rate Plus discount and seal. While eBay is allowing sellers the choice of not offering returns, those who do will see changes beginning in May."
Will this affect Canadian sellers?
eBay is also creating a new "Seller Hub" that will consolidate the full functionality of its Selling Manager and Selling Manager Pro listing tools as well as reports and dashboards for Sales, Seller Costs, Traffic and Seller Standards.
Will this be available on eBay.ca at the same time?
"How many of these changes will affect eBay.ca? "
Hopefully Raphael will offer answers to those questions as they affect Canadian sellers on both eBay.com and eBay.ca?
@rose-dee wrote:
1) Do you agree that a .com buyer will have a difference experience buying from a Cdn seller, depending on whether that seller lists in $Cdn or $US? I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I'm trying to understand what is going on for my buyers in the background.
2) If a .com buyer buys from a Cdn seller listing in $Cdn, will the buyer have the "Request Total from Seller" option available to them once they click through to make the purchase?
3) Will a .com buyer purchasing from a Cdn seller listing in $Cdn be able to manually combine their multi-item order at their end, despite the items having been purchased separately? Will the seller be able to manually combine?
4) If you were a Canadian seller with traditionally over 90% U.S. (.com) buyers, virtually all U.S. competitors, and items that would attract multi-item orders, would you choose to list in $US on .ca, or in $Cdn? I would sincerely appreciate your take on this, as I'm faced with the most difficult choice I've ever had to make in years of selling on eBay.
Please keep in mind when replying that for me (and I'm sure for many other Cdn sellers), moving to .com will mean immediately significantly higher costs in shipping and FVFs, loss of free subtitles (.cafr), and loss of access to Canada Post options, all of which have been important factors in my business strategy and have helped to keep me viable. In addition, I will not have the "Badge" of TRS Plus as do many of my competitors, simply because 90% tracking will be impossibly unaffordable.
Thank you Raphael. I'll try to post the screen shots in the next window.
Thanks rose-dee for adding these details. Let me answer your questions:
1) Yes you are right, there is a difference. When I said there was no difference, I only means that neither can be purchased via the cart.
2) Not on eBay.com. As you know, that buyer would only be presented with the Buy It Now flow with Immediate Payment required.
3) No, for the same reason outlined in 2).
4) That depends on what I would be selling. As per the study we just ran, it is as good or better for most Canadian sellers to list in CAD on eBay.ca. Keep in mind that the study looked at listing performance on a per item bases, not factoring combined sales which as we know are problematic on eBay.com for items listed on eBay.ca. If my items tended to sell mostly to US buyers and in multiples more often than in singles, I might consider listing on eBay.com to enable the use of the shopping cart there. I would then try to mitigate FVF on shipping by building the shipping cost into the item price and offering free shipping.
@pierrelebel wrote:
"How many of these changes will affect eBay.ca? "
Hopefully Raphael will offer answers to those questions as they affect Canadian sellers on both eBay.com and eBay.ca?
Hi Pierre,
The Canadian version of the announcement is going to come out later today. As usual, we will have a special thread dedicated to those questions. I do have answers to all your questions but for good measure I'll wait until the announcement pages are up and then we can tackle your questions on the dedicated announcement thread.
"... I'll wait until the announcement pages are up..."
Thank you. I understand that. This raises the question how does Ina always get that information several hours before it is posted on eBay? Always!
@rose-dee wrote:
Incidentally, I wouldn't have noticed this if my friend hadn't done these tests on my own items, but why is there a charitable donation line below my item?
I've never agreed to, or authorized support for any particular charity (that I'm aware of), and I'm not sure I would necessarily want buyers to connect me with a particular charity picked by eBay without my knowledge, if you know what I mean. Some charities may not align with my personal principles, and I think that should be an individual seller's choice.
Where do these come from, and what do you think about having a charity donation option arbitrarily added to a checkout item? Personally, I might not mind if I were asked, and could choose the charity.
The Donate at Checkout isn't tied to sellers, it's an eBay initiative. Unfortunately there isn't a way for you to opt out of it or to choose which charity is represented.
@pierrelebel wrote:
re: 20th anniversary promotion
http://pages.ebay.com/promo/2015/0910/Anniversary.html
http://pages.ebay.ca/promo/2015/0910/Anniversary.html
Could you please confirm that sellers are in fact allowed 20 free listings on both eBay.ca and eBay.com
Will the 20% rebate on FVF be in addition to the 20% FVF rebate earned by Top Rated Sellers?
The free listing count should work on both sites independently as usual, and the 20% discount from the promo should work along with the 20% earned by Top Rated sellers.
About the announcement leaked on eCommerce Bytes, please remember that the info you was was the US announcement. Please see our version later today for news that are relevant to Canadian sellers.
This concludes out session for this week, please join me again next week for our next session.
Also watch out for the dedicated thread for the upcoming announcement, URL will be included in the announcement pages and other communications.
