Big problem when blocking the United States

[chicweb]

When I block the United States, my items disappears entirely from ebay.com, even if my address is in Canada.

devon@ebay this is an enormous problem for canadian sellers. A LOT of people around the world uses ebay.com (canadian, european, etc) to buy. If our items are entirely removed from the .com, even for people in other parts of the world, this will kill any possibilities to continue doing business.

[busybeas_books]

I just blocked my listing going to USA. Don't forget US protectorates/territories: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. No idea if they count in this tarif nonsence. I've mailed stuff there via Canada Post, same price as to USA.

[itolduandso]

This is being considered as a solution?

Is this talk all about Ebay.CA?

Or is this for Canadian sellers sellin on Ebay.COM. Because that is the real issue.

Disabling on Ebay.CA is not a problem and never was.

[chicweb]

The topic is on ebay.ca forum. This is about items posted/added on ebay.ca but not showing on ebay.com (which should be).

If you post your items directly on ebay.com, you should consider asking on ebay.com forum or start a new thread about it, specifying you post your items on .com directly.

Personnally, I would post on ebay.com's forum for issues with items added directly on .com.

[itolduandso]

So Ebay.CA has never been a problem and blocking USA sales always worked, this is nothing new and can be done via shipping policies conveniently.

[chicweb]

Like I said in the post, it wasn't working (and is still buggy). I had to put back my temporary solution.

It was still causing problems with my items not showing on .com store and not showing with wider searches. I had to be very specific for them to show.

[itolduandso]

Probably the best way is to run the CA and COM stores separately and that's what my plan is since I have to start the CA store from scratch, the COM store has 20 years of history. I can use CSV and just change the location and currency so you don't have the extra work or use cross listing tools. Just need to setup the shipping policies correctly.

[chicweb]

Not sure it's allowed on eBay. Duplicate listings aren't allowed, that's for sure.

I'm not sure if you have items on .ca (blocked USA) and on .com (blocked Canada) if that counts as duplicates....

[itolduandso]

Yes, you can, as long as it's not available to purchase in the same market, that means US buyer will only see 1 listing, global buyer will only see 1 listing, Canadian buyer will only see 1 listing.

Now, whether this works in fact, remains to verify. It used to work.  Again this is something that devon@ebay  could confirm, whether it will work:

Ebay.CA - Item available to Canadian and International buyers

Ebay.COM - Item available only to US buyers

Both restrictions would be done using Shipping policies.

[lacemaker3]

I don't think the rule about no duplicate listings is enforced across different eBay sites.

There's an app that people can sign up for -- eBay was pushing it for a while -- which will create duplciate listings for you on a number of the other eBay sites. It is supposed to "handle inventory count and management", presumably this means they will end the other listings when an item sells on one of the sites.

https://pages.ebay.com/promo/lcp/webinterpret.html

It appears that this is only available for sellers listing on eBay.com, and it will translate and list your items that have international shpping, on 4 eBay sites in Europe, the UK and Australia.

I don't think this app can help sellers in Canada with the current issues charging tariffs, but it does show that you can have duplicate listings if they are on different eBay sites.

[musicyouneed]

On Friday, I blocked sales from United States on .ca and all of a sudden I don't have any sales from my Canadian buyers.  I checked .com and my listings do not show up.  Most buyers search on .com probably using an app.  So I have unblocked US but no shipping indicated on Buy It Now Immediate Payment Required.  If I get an email from a US buyer, I will explain.  

[chicweb]

Yes. Thats what I do too.

There's problems with .com when we block the United States.

Thats why I dont block the US and do not provide active methods to them, so they contact me.

The only problem with that is with offers.

I'm still waiting for eBay/Canada Post and/or Chit Chat for DDP to be entirely ready to start sending invoices, depending of the solutions available.

[itolduandso]

Regarding the webinterpret ebay listing tool...

The listings to the additional sites count towards the total listings. So listing an item on 1+4 sites would count as 5 listings and thus 5x listing fees.

I am not sure how is it with the inventory though, because listing on these local sites has a few implications, notably the shipping (you probably have localized shipping methods, possibly assumes you have local inventory). Also I don't know if this doesn't has other implications like packaging fees in Germany etc.

[itolduandso]

Isn't ChitChats DDP working?

[synoco]

No - last I checked, like many other carriers, they are waiting to see what happens

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I understand the logic that .com is the US website - but I don't think your average consumer views it like that. There are some Canadians who arbitrarily use .com. 

It seems like a major issue is that if you don't ship to the USA, your best match placement gets completely destroyed on .com. Meaning, your items might as well be invisible to Canadians who shop on .com because even if your item is the best offer by the metrics eBay uses on .ca, you get pushed to the last one of the spots on .com. This might actually be why OP thought their items weren't appearing on .com.

I think this represents a greater issue they need to address. They need to find a way to redirect both Canadian buyers and sellers to .com. While it is factual that eBay's Canadian market is very small, it ends up looking much smaller than it is because part of the userbase is on the .com website. In the long run, I think that we'd get a better rate of promotion and support if everybody was moved over to .ca so that there was a realistic depiction of the market that eBay has here.

[themorinfam92]

Are you able to tell me exactly how you were able to block them? I’m also having this issue.

[chicweb]

I did not block United States at all.

I use business policies and Calculated shipping. You just have to remove "United States" from all the shipping methods in your international section.

Don't forget to remove North and South America. Because, they will still allow the United States if checked.

That should give this message on the items.

That will allow your items to be shown on .com normally to everybody else in the world. (in search results, .com store, etc)

Note that, personnally, I will still ship to United States, but that will be case by case and manually through invoices. I'm just waiting for a DDP system to be in place anywhere. ChitChat or Canada Post, so I can see how much exactly to bill the customers.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@chicweb wrote:

eBay is using it for USA only but it is used everywhere in the world, like I said.

This is a main hub, not only for USA. Citizens from around the world uses it to buy. eBay might want to use it for USA only, but that's not the reality of what is happening worldwide.

Basically = You ship to the United States or you don't use ebay at all. 

That's what I understand from this. Not a lot of people goes to their country specific ebay (if they even have one). They all use ebay.com.

By the way, my items are on ebay.ca. That is why I also write on the ebay.ca forum. That's my main portal.

They are automatically published on .com, .fr, .be, .uk, etc.

If I block the USA, it's removed from the .com... which removes a LOT of potential customers from around the world who are not even in the USA. Because .com is the default portal everyone is using.

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@chicweb 

If a buyer is searching on dot com using a country or postal code (Canada) as part of their settings shouldn't all countries they DO ship to display. That seems to be how it is working with my testing. The critical part of that equation is that eBay always saves that as a preset. It doesn't always for certain settings. Example on ca if you click on Canada only in left hand filters you have to that with each recurring search. 

[chicweb]

It's supposed to work that way. But as others have also mentionned, our items doesn't appears correctly.

They are either not shown at all when we switch to Canada, or are shown at the end, even with promoted ads.

Also, devon@ebay there's the bug on the .com store. No matter what we do, if we don't ship to the United States, our items/categories doesn't show on the store homepage on .com, unless we say we are from a country other than Canada or United States. Which is a weird bug too. They will show if we say we are from Belgium as an example and if we ship there.... But not if we say we are from Canada (and ship to Canada).

If we do a search in that store, it seems to show the store search results correctly.

I had to unblock USA to be able to be seen normally on .com.

Give me a few minutes. I will create some pictures to explain visually the store problem.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

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@chicweb wrote:

I can't. I use Calculated shipping for the rest of the world.

We cannot mix Fixed price with Calculated shipping.

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@chicweb 

One other thing now more in play than ever....sending offers. We will need at bare minimum a way to know where we are sending offers to even if we can't see who they are. There will really be no point sending an offer to a US buyer if we can't in practice ship to them. Auto filter out of Zip Codes?

If a buyer sends a seller an offer you are able to confirm their location prior to choosing if you want to respond or not. Also get access to their past feedback left history. A major bonus.

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devon@ebay  Could you get this addressed as a possible suggestion down the chain please.