Conversion fee from EBAY for US buyers?

[sparx_63]

Hello

Just wondering if anyone else ran across this yet.  I had a buyer from USA cancel her transaction tonight because of an additional fee charged to her by EBAY.  It was called a currency conversion fee.  She makes the claim to have purchased items from Europe in the past and never had a charge for converting the money.

I have never experienced this before.  Something new maybe?  Have noticed sales tailed off noticeably from the USA last month (did OK in Canada).  I am wondering if it is a new EBAY charge that is turning off buyers?

Regards

Sparx

[msau4301]

I have had many (at least half) of my sales to the US and haven't seen (or been told) about a currency conversion fee (though Paypal used to charge one back in the day). As a seller we are charged by eBay a small "International Fee" which I understand is because of currency conversion but that is not charged to the buyer (to the best of my knowledge) but is part of our fees. I just checked on one of my items under "Order Details", in there it should show you everything about the order (after all we are charged fees on the total!) and it shows the taxes eBay charges but I don't see a converstion fee. When I look at the same order under payments/fees I do see an "International Fee" charged to us/the seller.

I think possibly what the buyer is seeing (and I have had a few US buyers ask me about) is the confusion over what they thought they should pay (the US dollar amount) versus (and they panic) when they see the higher Canadian funds amount  and you have to explain that it is just because of the difference in currencies that eBay takes care of, but that they can rest assured the amount they saw when buying the item is what they will pay (plus the taxes of course).

I had yet another one of these questions earlier this week, they didn't understand why they thought they were buying an item for $16 so why were they paying $20 (or whatever the exchange was that day). Could be that. Too bad they cancelled because of it. I have lucked out (knock on wood) when I explain it, they always pay, however I question if some of the "non paid" items I've had were people confused over this as well but never tried to reach out and ask.

[pjcdn2005 · Accepted solution]

No, it isn't anything new.  If a buyer purchases an item that was originally listed in a different currency than what they are paying with, they have to pay a conversion fee. For example, if you buy an item originally listed on .com in US dollars, you will pay a conversion fee to change your currency from Canadian to US.  If your listing was on .com, they would not have to pay any conversion fee but you would have to pay it when your money was deposited into your $C bank account. 

If the buyer did not pay a conversion fee when they made a purchase from Europe, then the seller they purchased from must have been listing on .com in $US.  If they had purchased an item that was listed on the German site in Euros, they would have had to pay a conversion fee. 

If you purchased an item from a US site such as Macy's, your credit card would likely charge you a currency conversion fee as well so this isn't unique to ebay.

[pjcdn2005]

As a seller you would not see the conversion fee that the buyer is charged. It's basically the service fee for exchanging currency.  There is a little more to it but someone else can probably explain it better than I can.

[msau4301]

Thank you! Always learning something new!

[avidhiker-33]

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@pjcdn2005 wrote:

For example, if you buy an item originally listed on .com in US dollars, you will pay a conversion fee to change your currency from Canadian to US. 

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Have only purchased 1 item from a US ebay seller over the past year, and at check-out had the option of being charged in US$ or CAD$.  I selected US$ and paid with a cc that does not charge conversion fees.

The converted amount was about 2.8% less than ebay's estimate, and what I likely would have paid if I had used another cc which does not waive currency conversion fees.

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