eBay

unicireo · ‎09-17-2023

Got my eye on something I'd love to bid on in the U S but the seller does not sell to Canadians Why?

snoopwiz · ‎09-17-2023

Seems that they may fear the thought of selling to the unknown, the ferners (xenephobia) U.S population is 331 million, Canada is 40 million. Just one of those states has about the same population as all of Canada. My personal sales here are less than 7% of my total sales.

msau4301 · ‎09-17-2023

I've seen this many times also. I've even seen some of my previously saved/loved sellers I bought from for years have stopped shipping to Canada. I had one who I asked and she told me it was because fees were getting too high selling outside of US.

Sellers are charged their fees not just on the item but on the shipping and taxes. We have higher tax rates here (though not as high as Europe's VAT!) but they are probably just not selling to anyone internatioanlly. On some items that extra fee increase can really hurt the profit.

I know even myself I make more money selling to US buyers than Canadian since fees are always lower.

Also some US sellers only ship to Canada or US with eBay's International Shipping service and it is possible they tried it and had trouble (or people complaining about the length of time) so they stopped.

Sad because it certainly wasn't always this way.

msau4301 · ‎09-17-2023

Just wanted to add you can always ask them if they would consider selling to you. Sometimes people will make an exception for Canada and just don't want to ship to other international destinations.

mrdutch1001 · ‎09-17-2023

It is the trending thing to do...has become very obvious and very prevalent over the past few years...

Personally, I purchase as little as possible from the USA...I'd have to want/need something v-e-r-y badly to order/purchase ANYTHING from the USA! I prefer my purchases to be made from and within Canada.

reallynicestamps · ‎09-17-2023

Canadians?

Many US sellers will not sell to Alaska or Hawaii, never mind Puerto Rico or Guam.

Even more will not sell to their armed forces, a 1.4 million member market.

And it seems most will not ship to post office boxes, the safest possible market since the box can only be accessed with the owner's key.

marnotom! · ‎09-17-2023

US sellers may think that they're not selling to Canadians (or any other nationality, for that matter), but actually they're not shipping to Canada. If you have a US address as your primary shipping address when you place your bid and go through Checkout, you'll have fullfilled the seller's "ship to" requirements.

Back in the day, my wife would have her "ships to US" items sent to an aunt in California her the aunt was gracious enough to forward them to Vancouver Island from there. There are now several forwarding businesses that you can pay to do the same sort of job.

marnotom! · ‎09-17-2023

@msau4301 wrote:

Sellers are charged their fees not just on the item but on the shipping and taxes.

If the seller does have international shipping specified in their listing, their fees are going to be calculated based on their domestic shipping rates, though. It's when the seller doesn't have international shipping specified in their listing and makes an exception for an international bidder that they wind up getting their FVF charged on the international shipping rate.

@msau4301 wrote:

Sad because it certainly wasn't always this way.

Actually, my sense is that it has been an issue since eBay's early days. I don't think the GSP and eIS would have become a thing if there wasn't much resistance to the idea of shipping out of the country. There used to be an International Trading discussion board on the .com site that I hung out on a lot, and the most common scenario that came up was a seller had shipped a low to moderately-priced widget untracked and uninsured and then got hit by an INR case that they couldn't defend. Because of this one experience, the seller decided that international shipping/selling wasn't for them and gave up on it.

Delivery Confirmation is now available to many countries on the US equivalent of Small Packet but I don't think that's done much to ease sellers' fears of the greater chances of loss or perceived fraud with an international shipment.