@femmefan1946 wrote:
Some of us list on dotCA because we are in the 'media' categories, where dotCOM will not allow us to charge more than $4.00 for shipping, no matter how heavy or bulky our items might be.
With dotCA we can use Calculated shipping/Canada Post when necessary (as can our US competitors on dotCOM, using USPS).
There are some additional reasons to list on .ca:
1) Ability to choose whether to list in $US or $Cdn (I don't know for sure, but imagine this isn't available on .com)
2) If you sell a lot to the U.S. or internationally, listing on .ca gives the seller the whole range of Canada Post services to display, shows Canada Post services as such in the shipping information. It also allows buyers to see the flow-through on the tracked services as specifically from Canada, i.e. a reminder that they aren't buying domestically, even though we speak the same language).
3) Use of eBay.cafr (if you're comfortable in French and want those subtitles).
4) Policies and features that differ on .ca (when the features work, LOL).
5) If the majority of your buyers are not Canadian, if you list on .ca you can afford to offer free shipping domestically on just about everything and save on FVFs on all U.S. and international sales. If you mainly sell to the U.S., then listing on .com and offering free "domestic" shipping may pose a bit of a dilemma, since your "domestic" shipping there will be the (Canada Post) rates of shipping to the U.S., which may be higher in some cases than "domestic" shipping on .ca would have been -- especially if a lot of your items can go by letter mail or oversize letter mail within Canada.
There are probably others that I can't think of at the moment, but I agree with 'ricarmic' that the choice ultimately may be made clear through experimenting to see what works best for a particular seller and particular categories. Those who sell primarily to the U.S. may benefit from listing on .com in $US.
I've always listed on .ca, initially in $Cdn, then later in $US, since the majority of my customers are in the U.S. However, I've been toying with the idea of listing on .com exclusively. The main reason is the infamous "U.S. cart disconnect".
That one factor, in my opinion, is currently the biggest detriment in listing on .ca, and may outweigh all the advantages. It's a stupid, sorry situation that we apparently have a fully functioning cart on .ca that nobody on .com can use, but apparently it won't be resolved anytime soon. To me it begs the question of why we have a .ca at all.
Interestingly, as discussed recently many times over, the eBay.ca staffer's best advice for Canadian sellers to avoid the "cart disconnect" was to list all items on eBay.com. A couple of weeks later he was telling us that eBay's data now shows that listing in $Cdn will be either advantageous or neutral for all Canadian sellers. The following week he qualified even that statement to say that not every Canadian seller would see this effect. So I wonder, which is it? This sort of blanket statement, without access to the data behind it, is useless, and in my estimation can be harmful if sellers take it at face value without testing it for their particular situation.
I think, as usual, we Canadian sellers are on our own and must figure out for ourselves, through experimenting, the best and most advantageous mode of operating. As the French phrase goes: "Sauve qui peut!" (i.e. every man/woman for himself).
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