01-12-2016 10:35 PM
hi all, having some problems for awhile now and no response from ebay on this so here i am. When i have buyers buy more then 1 item say 15 items and request a invoice i can no problem. But at times i have other buyers buy 15 items and will not let them ask for invoice and asks them to pay for each item 1 at a time. Any ideas why? Thanks for any replys
01-12-2016 11:23 PM
Buyers from Canada have no problems combining shipping. Buyers from the U.S. that use the relatively new shopping cart on eBay.com are forced to pay for the items separately because the shopping cart will not work with eBay.ca listings.
This has been brought up many times on the Weekly Chat session on Wednesday's but, according to Raphael, it only affects a small number of Canadian sellers. I don't know how this can be correct when most, or a large number, of sellers offer combined shipping. At any rate, it is not considered a high priority to be changed.
This results in a 30 cent PP fee being charged for every single item. Also it could turn buyers away if they have to go through all this trouble to buy multiple items. One workaround that eBay staff suggested was to ask the buyers to log onto eBay.ca and make their purchases from there. If buyers have to jump through these hoops they will leave and go to another site. Another suggestion was for sellers to list on .com (from where you cannot print shipping labels).
I had a buyer on the weekend who was very frustrated because he could not buy 2 items from me and pay on one invoice. I gave him the suggestion to use the back arrow after making the second purchase. That did not work and he called customer support. They kept him waiting and then put him on hold twice and finally came to the conclusion the items could not be combined. We had several communications back and forth and he was quite happy with me, but not with eBay. He told them so in the comment section that we was offered after finally paying for the items separately. I issued a refund for the excess shipping.
01-12-2016 11:24 PM
My 1st thought is S&H gouging.
I've had that problem a few times.
I just advise Customer service and get them to note the concern in the event the seller initiates a claim.
I pay promptly when an invoice is provided.
01-12-2016 11:29 PM
@mcrlmn wrote:My 1st thought is S&H gouging.
I've had that problem a few times.
I just advise Customer service and get them to note the concern in the event the seller initiates a claim.
I pay promptly when an invoice is provided.
This problem on .ca has nothing to do with S&H gouging. It has to do with changes eBay made on .com which had the unintended consequence of the shopping cart not working with listings from .ca. I can see how you might come to that conclusion and I hope that customers do not start blaming the sellers for eBay's glitches. There have been many posts about this subject on the board and most sellers just refund the excess S/H.
01-14-2016 01:00 AM
Even when the buyer can use a cart, there can still be problems. I've had buyers use the cart but then when they wanted to ask for an invoice they got the message that I didn't combine shipping and wouldn't let them ask for an invoice.
Another suggestion was for sellers to list on .com (from where you cannot print shipping labels).
You can go to paypal and print the label regardless of which site you post on.
01-14-2016 12:16 PM - edited 01-14-2016 12:21 PM
Hello -- 'westernstar' has summed up the problem fairly well. It has nothing to do with shipping/handling gouging, but everything to do with the inability of the U.S. (.com) to fully integrate with the .ca (and some other) carts.
This has been going on for at least a couple of years. I've been consistently and regularly banging my head against a brick wall with eBay over what I call the "cart disconnect" in the hope that eBay.com might someday do something about it. I've concluded it's hopeless. We Canadians who sell a lot to the U.S. are left with few options, none of which is really completely satisfactory. These are:
1) Stipulate "Immediate Payment Required" on all your items listed on .ca. This will defeat a U.S./.com buyer's ability to use the cart or combine orders at all, and they'll be forced to use the one-at-a-time "choose and pay" method of checking out. You can then refund the excess shipping, although of course you will have paid FVFs on all the shipping charges (which you may or may not get reimbursed for if you contact eBay).
2) List on .com ('pj' is correct that there is no problem producing a Paypal shipping label if you list on .com, although you will not be able to display the specific Canada Post service types in your listings, and you must remember that "domestic" shipping on .com means shipping to the U.S.).
Listing on .com is the "workaround" I've chosen to use for the items that I traditionally have sold as multi-item orders. But then my buyer base is over 95% in the U.S., so I felt compelled to find some solution, even if it's less than completely satisfactory for other reasons. By the way, I should mention that the eBay Canada cart can "communicate" with .com listings, so Canadian buyers using eBay.ca to purchase should not have a problem with combining items listed on .com.
3) Ask buyers to log onto .ca: This is fine if a buyer contacts you and if that buyer is willing to go to the trouble. Most won't.
4) Do nothing (especially if you don't have a lot of U.S./.com buyers or multi-item orders), and simply refund the excess shipping to your buyers, then try getting your FVFs on shipping back from eBay (I hate to say it, but good luck on that )
Ultimately, I think the choice of using one or more of these "workarounds" will depend on the proportionate volume of your Canadian vs. U.S. (or .com) sales, and the number of multi-item orders you usually get. Keep in mind that many Canadian buyers shop on .com, which compounds the issue.
In my own situation there was little choice. I felt I had to do what would best serve my U.S. customers. So many were finding it impossible to make a multi-item/combined order. In fact, I concluded that the ones who were contacting me probably represented a small percentage of the buyers who had tried, and failed, to combine an order, and just found another (U.S.) seller where things worked properly.
EBay Canada has given mixed messages over the past year or so about their perception of the seriousness and extent of this problem affecting Canadian sellers. As 'westernstar' mentioned, at first they basically dismissed the issue as practically irrelevant because they claimed it affected a very small minority of Canadian sellers. Later, they did acknowledge the importance of the problem, but I think they still maintained it affected relatively few Canadian sellers.
At no time since this issue was first brought up by sellers (which I believe was in late 2013/early 2014) did eBay.ca ever indicate that they'd been able (or even willing) to convince eBay HQ to do anything about it. I suspect it could be solved, but that eBay U.S. sees it as a money-waster on a very small user base (Canadian sellers), so it's been less than low priority.
Consider this: leaving things exactly as they are is actually making money for eBay, since most sellers don't go after eBay for their lost FVFs on shipping once they've refunded their buyers' excess shipping. Why would eBay want to give up that little cash cow in order to spend money solving a problem that affects a minority of their sellers?
So I'm sorry to say that if you're listing on .ca and have U.S. customers attempting to combine orders, you will find this happening again and again. If you don't have a large U.S. buyer base, or don't often sell multi-item orders, it will simply be an occasional annoyance and a small loss (in FVFs).
The biggest issue to my mind is the number of .com buyers that may have been turned away from my store, from buying from a Canadian, or from buying on eBay entirely for that matter, because of the "cart disconnect". None of us who regularly sell to the U.S. and regularly sell multi-item orders will ever know how many customers tried, failed and went elsewhere to buy. For some reason this doesn't seem to concern eBay.
I apologize for the lengthy post, but as you can see, this is a complex problem with many factors involved that a Canadian seller needs to consider. Believe me, I've spent at least the last year trying to parse out this issue and have brought it to the attention of the eBay.ca staffers on a regular basis, but nothing -- absolutely nothing -- has been done. I finally had to give up and just try to save my business the best way I could, despite the disadvantages of doing so for a Canadian seller. It was, in the end, a question of the lesser of two evils.
01-14-2016 02:42 PM
1) Stipulate "Immediate Payment Required" on all your items listed on .ca. This will defeat a U.S./.com buyer's ability to use the cart or combine orders at all, and they'll be forced to use the one-at-a-time "choose and pay" method of checking out.
Immediate payment isn't going to make any difference with the .com cart. There is no option to add a .ca listing to that cart even if immediate payment is required. As i mentioned a couple of months ago, the add to cart popup on the second screen is no longer there.
01-14-2016 07:43 PM - edited 01-14-2016 07:46 PM
@pjcdn2005 wrote:1) Stipulate "Immediate Payment Required" on all your items listed on .ca. This will defeat a U.S./.com buyer's ability to use the cart or combine orders at all, and they'll be forced to use the one-at-a-time "choose and pay" method of checking out.
Immediate payment isn't going to make any difference with the .com cart. There is no option to add a .ca listing to that cart even if immediate payment is required. As i mentioned a couple of months ago, the add to cart popup on the second screen is no longer there.
And that's exactly the point. No option to add to cart = no confusion.
As I've said previously, I realize the "Add to Cart" option is now gone. Which is why IPR at least addresses the problem to the extent of defeating (bypassing) the cart completely. A purchaser will have no choice but to "Buy It Now" and pay immediately, one item at a time.
Nonetheless, it can create other issues, as we all know. Many sellers prefer not to force IPR on their customers, and I completely understand. On the other hand, I must admit that almost all of my own buyers now pay immediately anyway.
The difference for me personally is that I want to encourage multiple/combined orders, so I've avoided IPR. However, it may work for the OP if they traditionally sell items one at a time anyway -- it could be something the OP could experiment with for a few months. A seller just has to realize that they might be losing some customers who would rather pay a day or two after choosing their item.
It's not easy to weigh the options and come up with the least evil of the unsatisfactory alternatives. Unlike some "workarounds" on eBay, none of them truly resolves the problem.
01-15-2016 05:35 PM
As I've said previously, I realize the "Add to Cart" option is now gone. Which is why IPR at least addresses the problem to the extent of defeating (bypassing) the cart completely. A purchaser will have no choice but to "Buy It Now" and pay immediately, one item at a time.
You've lost me. How does IPR address bypass the cart any more than not having IPR? With or without IPR there is no cart to use so each item has to be paid for individually. The purchaser has no choice either way.
01-16-2016 01:40 PM - edited 01-16-2016 01:43 PM
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
How does IPR address bypass the cart any more than not having IPR? With or without IPR there is no cart to use so each item has to be paid for individually. The purchaser has no choice either way.
Unless something has changed once again since September (2015), with IPR there is no cart presented to a buyer, and each item has to be paid for individually, quite true. However, if IPR isn't stipulated in a listing, although there is no functioning cart, the buyer can still arrive at a "dead-end" because the listing shows him two buttons for payment, one of which is the "Add to Cart" button up front. This is still very bad, and can be confusing for some buyers who aren't familiar with anything but the U.S. cart.
The "Add to Cart" I referred to earlier here as having been removed is the option that used to be presented to a buyer one layer down after he selected the first item. It was good eBay got rid of that, but it still doesn't eliminate the problem.
The continuing concern I have is that the .com buyer may still be presented with two up-front purchase buttons -- one for BIN, the other saying "Add to Cart".
If eBay has completely removed this up-front "Add to Cart" option, please tell me, because I am not able to test this on my own listings anymore. When I tried logging onto .com with my alternate ID and brought up one of your listings, I see both "Buy It Now" and "Add to Cart" buttons up front. In fact I was able to add the one item to the cart, but I suspect this was because the eBay system recognized me as a Canadian buyer. Or maybe not? I didn't go any further.
If this is what U.S. buyers are still seeing when clicking on my listings, it's a serious issue if nothing happens when they click on "Add to Cart". Buyers who aren't used to anything but the .com cart may just assume the checkout doesn't work for a Canadian purchase, and will go back to familiar .com territory. This is a problem. So perhaps what we need is a willing American seller to try the same test.
The bottom line is that eBay keeps changing and shape-shifting to the extent that I really can't say precisely what the current state of affairs with checkout is, from a .com buyer's point of view.
01-16-2016 03:26 PM
Unless something has changed once again since September (2015), with IPR there is no cart presented to a buyer, and each item has to be paid for individually, quite true. However, if IPR isn't stipulated in a listing, although there is no functioning cart, the buyer can still arrive at a "dead-end" because the listing shows him two buttons for payment, one of which is the "Add to Cart" button up front.
NO. There is no dead end because there is no add to cart button. When a buyer is shopping on .com and they want to purchase a listing that was done on .ca, there is no add to cart button at any point. The only option is to pay for the item even without IPR. We discussed this in November in another thread.
The "Add to Cart" I referred to earlier here as having been removed is the option that used to be presented to a buyer one layer down after he selected the first item. It was good eBay got rid of that, but it still doesn't eliminate the problem.
The continuing concern I have is that the .com buyer may still be presented with two up-front purchase buttons -- one for BIN, the other saying "Add to Cart".
I don't know what you mean by an up to front add to cart button. The only add to cart button that I have ever seen for a .ca listing when shopping on .com was one layer down which is what we were discussing in September and November. You said now that you know that has been removed but I don't know what other add to cart button you are referring to If a buyer is on .com and they click on a listing that was done on .ca, that first screen has never shown an add to cart button. It has only shown the buy it now option.
If eBay has completely removed this up-front "Add to Cart" option, please tell me, because I am not able to test this on my own listings anymore. When I tried logging onto .com with my alternate ID and brought up one of your listings, I see both "Buy It Now" and "Add to Cart" buttons up front. In fact I was able to add the one item to the cart, but I suspect this was because the eBay system recognized me as a Canadian buyer. Or maybe not? I didn't go any further.
No, it has nothing to do with being a Canadian buyer. If you are on .com you would not be able to see any add to cart option for a .ca listing. You must have been looking at a listing that I did on .com. All of my .ca listings are in Canadian dollars but if you want to check one click on my listing 272083858387 on .com, you will not see any add to cart option. To check on a .ca listing that was done in U.S. dollars, you can check any of jt-libra's listings. One of them is item 252221514578. You won't see an add to cart icon on that screen and if you click on buy it now, you will only see the option of paying for the item. Until you pay, you really haven't purchased it so it won't hurt to click on buy it now.
01-16-2016 04:25 PM
@pjcdn2005 wrote:
If you are on .com you would not be able to see any add to cart option for a .ca listing. You must have been looking at a listing that I did on .com.
That is quite likely why I got the result above (and no doubt previously as well). I'd forgotten your listings were all on .com. I did try 'jt's' item and you are absolutely right, there is only the "Buy It Now" button on the main listing page.
So, if I understand what you are saying, since some point in the fall this year (which must have been after September when I did my set of tests for Raphael), IPR is no longer relevant because the second level "Add to Cart" nonsense is gone. I was aware that this lower level invitation to "Add to Cart" had been removed, but I obviously must have picked items to test in the meantime that I didn't realize were listed on .com, and kept getting the two option buttons on the main listing page.
Quite frankly, there are so many permutations to the checkout process, and eBay keeps changing the situation so much, like backdrops on an ever-shifting stage, that I gave up completely a couple of months ago. Rather than shifting all my listings to .com as I originally intended, I now list on .com only items that historically have attracted multi-item sales for me. The rest I've continued to list on .ca. That compromise has been the least complicated and least time-wasting, and involved fewer problems and monetary losses, than moving everything over to .com.
By the way, while I was at 'jt's' listing, I noticed this interesting line just below the actual delivery estimate (in bright yellow lettering at that):
"Please note the delivery estimate is greater than 1 business days."
What on earth is that supposed to accomplish for a Canadian seller?
I also noticed the entire appearance of the checkout screen has changed since I last tried such a test. I wouldn't blame buyers for getting confused (or going elsewhere to shop). Every time they come here, the furniture has been re-arranged.
I hope the OP isn't shaking his/her head in disbelief by now at the complexities involved in what should be a very smooth and simple purchase and checkout process. I'm afraid I have to say that other sites seem to be able to handle it in a far more streamlined and consistent way.
01-21-2016 02:37 AM - last edited on 01-25-2016 12:11 PM by lizzier-ca
This is an issue I have been bumping into daily over the last few years through one of our other accounts here. On a regular basis we have US customers having difficulty with multi-item purchases because of poor software roadmaps. I'm not quite sure who decided that a mobile version of a website or app would disable the add to cart functionality, but this is basic ecommerce level software design turned rocket science. An app, mobile site, or regular desktop browser site should have the same basic functionality period. Surely someone in a decision making capacity has thought to look at browsing trends by devices and realized that having a functional add to cart mechanism might be of interest to mobile device shoppers.
Having worked with one of Canada's largest etailers by volume on backend and frontend design and integration, this is a trivial issue to solve unless for some reason they are having daily code changes on the carts and changing data fields. Our other account is not super high volume, but greater than 50% of transactions involve a buyer wanting to make multi item purchases. Now consider this is just the percentage of customers who felt compelled to contact for assistance (we have detailed instructions but not every customer is IT literate). There is no way to measure directly how many abandoned the purchase, but of the remaining percentage of purchases, a majority of those are customers checking out one by one. Unless your customer base is Buddhist monks, I sincerely doubt your customers will have the patience to one by one process every item they may be interested in.
How on earth anyone at corporate level can decide that attach rates are not at all a priority for an entire country beggars belief. Attach is the key driver of revenue, and to suggest it is not important because a CTO can't get off their to do something about it is indefensible. If ebay hopes to attract mass retailers this is a key design issue they need to resolve. Try telling any category manager or VP that you want them to sell on a site where you have knowingly crippled attach potential and see what sort of reply you get.
The popular ebay suggestion to "just add free shipping" shows an ignorance of the market. Even with a high volume contracted rate with any Canadian courier or Canada Post, it is impossible for a Canadian retailer to set a one size fits all shipping rate given regional variations. Not to mention the suggestion that we should effectively rip off customers by padding extra shipping margins into every multi-item order is highly offensive to an ethical retailer. Redirecting customers to .ca is far from ideal as well, as you are erecting another barrier to customers. I shouldn't have to herd customers to another domain just to have them gain the ability to add an item into a shopping cart.
If you think this is bad, spend some time looking at the rest of eBay's code as it relates to cart functions. Can someone please explain to me why a ground shipping method displays a shorter ETA than it's air shipping equivalent? I know we Canadians like to drive fast given the vast expanse of the country and are comparatively empty roads, but the last I checked vehicles that had the luxury of using the air were still a fair bit faster. There are so many fundamentally broken features, broken links, and wrongly implemented features on .ca that I find it hard to believe that anyone at ebay is taking responsibility for Canadian business management.
01-27-2016 12:30 PM
I could not agree more with your comments! Thank you for putting it so succinctly from the point of view of someone who obviously knows the business and the technicalities. I know virtually nothing about code, but your remarks concerning the "mess" behind the flashy façade that is eBay don't surprise me.
The real question to me has always been why this has been allowed to go on and on. Why wouldn't eBay care about making the essential function of an online site -- that of allowing customers to easily checkout and pay -- their #1 priority?
I hope you don't mind if I refer to your post at the Wednesday Board Session. They are tired of hearing from me, and I'm tired of hearing the same old excuses and explanations for why fundamental features don't work properly. I think it's time eBay heard from someone who clearly understands the bigger picture. You might want to join in too, if you're available.
01-27-2016 03:54 PM - edited 01-27-2016 03:55 PM
The responses seem to indicate this just isn't a priority for them to address. As you mention this is a core basic function of any ecommerce site and it is fundamentally broken, and has been for a long time with no fix in sight.
There are a variety of approaches to handle any concerns with multi-currency (ie block add to cart if new item is different currency) or multi-tax zone concerns, neither of which effect the mobile version of the site not having an add to cart function for domestic sales. At a fundamental level there isn't a great deal going on with cart logic, you are referencing customer records to look up shipping destination data, totaling weights, checking that against shipping rule logic or carrier rate APIs to get a shipping rate, checking against tax zone/tables to apply tax, checking any seller level set restrictions, etc.
Looking at the Canadian cart, prevention of checkout of multiple currencies is already addressed (prompt indicating separate checkout is present), looking up rates from Canadian shipping and US shipping API's is already addressed and works fine when items using those two different APIs are present at the same time, seller specific shipping rules from both countries seem to pass properly, tax rules seem to work fine in either cart when mixing items from different tax zones and only the applicable tax is passed. I can't find anything broken when I add to cart from Canada on a mix of US and Canadian based items. Everything totals as it should, based on any balance impacting functions specific to each country, with tax and shipped totals passed as they should be. From a coding perspective everything works as it should on the .ca cart. why this can't work in reverse and be implemented on the US cart is puzzling.
One explanation is they are holding out till they have a 100% multi-currency implementation for a one step checkout (I haven't walked through the end to end workflow on the Canadian cart to see how checkout to payment works in this respect), but in the meantime setting up the same logic used in the Canadian cart for multicurrency, or employing an add to cart block when a new item from a new currency is added to an existing cart would seem to be a viable option. A user level prompt is surely more intuitive and would have a lower rate of cart/sale abandonment than disabling a core feature of any ecommerice site.
As to why it has been allowed to go on for as long as it has? There is the sticky issue of the extra revenue it generates in terms of FVF. There is the philosophy that setting free shipping will increase buyer conversion rates and buyer spend rates (also generates more revenue in terms of the extra shipping padded in translating into higher FVF). If you want to take a more sinister point of view that is one possible explanation but I would make the assumption that the revenue loss from cart/sale abandonment due to not having this feature would be a higher revenue loss. More likely whoever is in charge of the software roadmap may not want to devote resources to addressing issues between the newer and older versions of the cart implementation. From the level of what we can see I can't see where this is falling apart as everything tests fine. The ebay.com originating listings pass fine to ebay.ca with cart enabled, just not vice versa. It should be mentioned that the ebay uk site has similar issues with .com/.ca listings and is also a newer cart implementation.
At least there is an admission that this is a monstrous issue for those whom it affects, which is anyone who lists on ebay.ca, doesn't offer free shipping and ships to the US, rather than the line that it only effects a small number of sellers. A greater degree of transparency on where they are with this issue would be appreciated given the impact it has on sellers here. I don't think that is asking too much, given the amount of revenue those sellers generate for ebay.
01-27-2016 04:07 PM
It should be mentioned that the ebay uk site has similar issues with .com/.ca listings and is also a newer cart implementation.
Both the UK and .com cart work only with listings done on their own site and were set up that way from the beginning. I was amazed that they did set them up that way but they obviously weren't looking ahead. According to ebay, it isn't that simple for them to allow the .com cart to 'see' listings on other sites. I don't know anything about programming but I do think that if it were a simple thing that it would be done by now.
As you know, other carts such as .ca and the Australian cart were done years later and are integrated with other sites.