eBay

sin-n-dex · ‎02-18-2025

I know it's not for two weeks, but I'm getting ready. Wondered how other people would handle it and maybe it will give me some new ideas of things I haven't thought of before.

Currently my location is USA on my listings (which means I provide domestic USA shipping, but I use Stallion, so they take my items across the border). I'm thinking of things I can do to deal with this, but I'm not sure what's best and won't know what to do until there's a process in place for dealing with tariffs so I can respond appropriately.

On March 1 I'm going to put my store on time away, and on March 2 I will drive to Stallion in Mississauga with my last parcels to get them over the border on March 3 (in case tariffs start March 4). Then I'm going to stay on time away until I know what's going on (like will Stallion allow me to pay tariffs, how much is it going to cost, will it work on all items I sell, is this a temporary measure until I figure something else out, etc, etc).

Things I'm thinking I might do, depending on the outcome:

- Change item location to Canada (so if there's tariffs buyers will be aware the item is coming from Canada and they might have to pay)

- List items on the dot CA site to attract more Canadian buyers

- Open a store on dot CA (probably with my other eBay account that's registered in Canada)

- Ship with Canada Post (that seemed to have the fewest problems the last time)

- Continue to be showing a USA location and pay the tariffs myself (might not be feasable for all items I sell, might have to take stuff out of the store)

- Try to attract more international sales (other than USA)

I don't know which I'll do yet, these are just things I'm thinking about to deal with the changes. I do think my USA location is hurting me with Canadian buyers (however when I send offers out, I do state I'm in Canada and Canadian buyers are purchasing, but they aren't bidding on my auctions right now).

Wondered what others were thinking of doing to deal with this (other than perhaps a time out to do other things). I'm currently working on listing my jewellery on a crafting type of platform (with the location in Canada), I never had time for that before, but since I'm not listing on eBay right now until I know what's going on with tariffs, I thought I'd work on something else. Once that's done I have a project to do for my family that I never had time for. Just think of the free time I'll have for a week or so until they sort out how to collect tariffs and put measures into place so items can get across the border.

I do know some people never stopped selling or shipping to US the last time, but since there are things going on in my store, stopping seems to be the best idea until I figure out what to do. (The main thing is the USA location, if there are tariffs perhaps minimally I'll have to change my location to Canada and ship with Canada Post, the postage on eBay is pretty close to what I pay at Stallion, but Stallion allows me to do a domestic USA sale with a USA item location).

C.

mrdutch1001 · ‎02-24-2025

You do whatever you need to and/or feel you need to...but, I for one am changing nothing. I want FACTS before I leap into the whatever...

dinomitesales · ‎02-24-2025

I'm doing nothing in preparation. I sell on eBay.ca with my location in Canada. My Canadian sales will go on as they always have with no change. For any shipments to the US it's the buyer's responsibility to be cognizant of any fees/tariffs that may be imposed on their purchase; and it's the buyer's government that is responsible to collect that fee, not me. I do not use any cross-border shippers.

I'm more concerned with any upcoming Canada Post disruptions once the temporary agreement expires come May.

sin-n-dex · ‎02-24-2025

He's announced today that tariffs are going ahead next week "on schedule/as planned".

Since I'm on the dot com site (the US one), the only thing I can do is update my location to Canada so that if there's tariffs, the buyer can expect them. The buyer isn't expecting tariffs if I have a US location (like a few dot com sellers here who use services like Stallion).

I'm scheduled for time away by the end of day on March 1 (and I'll change that if the news suggests tariffs happening sooner than March 4. I'm prepared and planned what I'm going to do if they happen March 4, but I do not trust Trump as far as I can throw him.

C.

dinomitesales · ‎02-24-2025

Reminder that the tariffs themselves shouldn't affect us too much. Ultimately it's going to come down to whether or not the de minimis is taken away (or significantly reduced), of which I don't think there's been any announcement (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

sin-n-dex · ‎02-24-2025

@dinomitesales wrote:
Reminder that the tariffs themselves shouldn't affect us too much. Ultimately it's going to come down to whether or not the de minimis is taken away (or significantly reduced), of which I don't think there's been any announcement (someone correct me if I'm wrong).

That's what I'm banking on, that there's still a de minimis. I'm even OK with them lowering it (for my own eBay business). It's not common that I have sales upwards of $100 USD, so I can deal with a lower de minimis if it will keep me selling here. but every once in a while I have one great sale (like yesterday, with the auctions one guy spent $455 USD). so it's those things I'll have to deal with if the de minimis is lowered.

C.

cottagewoman · ‎02-24-2025

Just a quick note - if you're using any calculated shipping methods on .com and change your location to Canada, the system rejects your shipping policy and forces you to use a flat rate policy.

nhl_automotive · ‎02-24-2025

I just don't see it working out as USPS doesn't have the staff or room to process billions of parcels for tariff charges. Pretty much they'll be on every country so every single international package would need to be checked.

cottagewoman · ‎02-24-2025

The current DT executive order for the Canadian tariffs repeals de minimis treatment of Canadian goods. Get ready for border mayhem again just as it happened with the repeal (then reinstatement) of de minimis on Chinese goods.

mrdutch1001 · ‎02-24-2025

I ship with Canada Post and there was no"border mayhem" when I shipped packages to the USA at the time of your reference "just as it happened with the repeal (then reinstatement) of de minimis on Chinese goods." I am not intimidated by any of this and I shall carry on!

cottagewoman · ‎02-24-2025

True that it didn't hit .ca sellers using CP. For those of us using transborder services selling on .com it was gridlock for many days. Access to a market 10 times our size and selling as if we're domestic US sellers has been a very viable and profitable model for the last 9 years.

mrdutch1001 · ‎02-24-2025

I sell on .COM as well as .CA plus I sell on Etsy>and I use flat rate shipping for all my items regardless of where they are listed. Have been using Canada Post for many many decades and for online selling that has worked well for me for the past 20+ years so I have no need to change anything.

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎02-24-2025

@flipistics wrote:
@femmefan1946 wrote:
@brle_5065
I can't speak to everyone, but I cannot eat the 25%, nor should I!
You are making the same mistake as 47.
The Seller does not pay the tariff, the BUYER pays the tariff.

That means that, even if the seller reduces their price by 25% the Buyer would still be hit with a 25% tariff on the reduced price-- and that would be in addition to the price the Buyer thought he was paying.
So.
Sell at $100 +25% tariff- Buyer pays $125 = Angry Buyer
Sell at $75+ 255 tariff- Buyer pays $93.75 = Angry Buyer

The only hope is that the eBay invoice shows the price breakdown as "25% tariff on imported goods" rather than burying it it. as seems to happen sometimes with eIS/GSP where the "shipping cost" included duty and sales taxes making the program seem to charge unusually expensive shipping.

Hard to imagine this happening from eBay. They haven't been able to show what tax rate is being charged for state and provincial from day 1 of implementation of collection.
We don't know how they're going to be eventually implemented, but I wouldn't make any assumptions at this point. Trump may very well bring in a law that the tariff has to be prepaid by the shipper before the item is accepted into the country. I could actually see him doing that. Marketplaces would have to start charging the tariffs on checkout, assuming it's actually legal for them to even do so.

As a side this is what happens when someone who doesn't know what they are doing, does a system override willy nilly or have sharpie will tax.

If tariffs were to be collected that way, that would be a major change to the apple cart so to speak.

Customs authorities collect tariffs, which are taxes on imported goods. In the United States, this is done by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

How tariffs are collected

The importer is directly responsible for paying tariffs
The importer receives an assessment of duties and taxes after making a declaration
The importer pays the tariffs at customs clearance/pre delivery - Not an eBa function.

Tariffs:

Are taxes on specific products from specific countries
Are determined by international trade negotiations
Can change based on government policies

VAT:

Is a tax on the value of a product

Is levied on all domestic consumption, regardless of where the good or service is produced

Is collected through a multi-stage payment mechanism where businesses collect and pay VAT throughout the supply chain - eBay etc

This would be a massive overhaul (180) of how customs functions have been performed for years.

sin-n-dex · ‎02-24-2025

@cottagewoman wrote:
Just a quick note - if you're using any calculated shipping methods on .com and change your location to Canada, the system rejects your shipping policy and forces you to use a flat rate policy.

I do use flat rate shipping, but I'm using Sixbit so I have "shipping policies", so it's one policy change that will update 100s of listings at once. (For instance, there's a policy for postcards, stamps, coins, banknotes, etc).

C.

sin-n-dex · ‎02-24-2025

@cottagewoman wrote:
The current DT executive order for the Canadian tariffs repeals de minimis treatment of Canadian goods. Get ready for border mayhem again just as it happened with the repeal (then reinstatement) of de minimis on Chinese goods.

That's mainly why I'm on time away at the end of the week, I'm counting on them reinstating it if they cancel de minimis, because of border mayhem. I just don't want to be caught up with this drama next week. I had to deal with it the last time (because of China tariffs, I had actually stopped selling and started again when Canada tariffs were postponed). Then there was border mayhem about possible China packages coming in from Canada, so yes, every package had to be checked. I'm going to wait it out again to see what happens before I start selling again.

C.

sin-n-dex · ‎02-24-2025

@cottagewoman wrote:
True that it didn't hit .ca sellers using CP. For those of us using transborder services selling on .com it was gridlock for many days. Access to a market 10 times our size and selling as if we're domestic US sellers has been a very viable and profitable model for the last 9 years.

I hear you there! That's totally what I think.

I've been using Chit Chats and Stallion Express since 2016 (we started off with the Mississauga office of Chit Chats because my husband worked in Mississauga, although we lived an hour away). That was the beginning, and it was the greatest thing to happen to my business.

C.

arkmch · ‎02-25-2025

The crossborder services have been amazing so no longer having them would be awful. It's not just access to the US market with local ebay shipping rates & labels but also the ebay international shipping program which takes on all the risk associated with global sales.

Haven't really thought things through yet but it seems that in the worst case scenario the only sensible thing to do would be to change location to Canada so US buyers pay the tariffs themselves. I think on the whole this will end up reducing everyone's inventory to only the high value / most desirable / rare items.

As for listing on ebay.CA - are there any benefits to doing this?? If I'm not mistaken, an item on ebay.COM with shipping location Canada will still be available to Canadian buyers searching on ebay.CA

sin-n-dex · ‎02-25-2025

@arkmch wrote:
The crossborder services have been amazing so no longer having them would be awful. It's not just access to the US market with local ebay shipping rates & labels but also the ebay international shipping program which takes on all the risk associated with global sales.

Haven't really thought things through yet but it seems that in the worst case scenario the only sensible thing to do would be to change location to Canada so US buyers pay the tariffs themselves. I think on the whole this will end up reducing everyone's inventory to only the high value / most desirable / rare items.

As for listing on ebay.CA - are there any benefits to doing this?? If I'm not mistaken, an item on ebay.COM with shipping location Canada will still be available to Canadian buyers searching on ebay.CA

I agree with a lot of your post, the thing I like about the cross border shippers is I'm able to have the illusion of being a domestic seller and fairly compete with other US sellers (like some people here, I use a US location for my item so when filtered for USA only on the dot com site, my items are seen... I have been able to sell some low end stuff for more money as a US seller than the competition in Asia can do, which I think has to do with US buyers filtering their search to US only).

If you are on the dot CA site, you can block US buyers (if you need to do that because of current drama), on the dot COM site you can block Canada (like in the event of a strike, like we had), but you can't block USA even if your item location is Canada. So that's the thing I can see making a difference, but other than that, you're right that the item is visible to Canadian buyers. Not sure if it's visible on the dot CA site or not, or if they have to be on dot COM to see it. Perhaps someone with more knowledge with that can chime in. (My stuff is all on the dot COM site, so perhaps a search can be done on a few items to see if they appear).

For having more rare, desirable and expensive items, I try to hang out in that niche anyway so my item isn't one of 1000 items showing up in search. On the dot COM site I list a lot of Canadian history stuff (like stamps and tokens), and there aren't lots and lots of similar items to what I list. I also noticed a lot of what I list is sold by sellers in other countries (which won't get seen if the buyer filters to US only on the dot COM site). So the cross border shipper gives me that one advantage with my listings.

As for changing the location to Canada, that is kind of my worst case scenario situation but I want to wait and see what happens before making major changes. Since there are around 11,500 listings for me to update (which takes around 3 days of 8-10 hours each, with software), I don't want to do any changes to deal with a Trump whim that will last less than a week. I'd prefer to be offline and not sell for a few days to see what happens before I invest time. The more changes I do to listings, the more likely things will get more messed up and it will be difficult to make changes. My software finds text and replaces with new text in the description, so making a bunch of disjointed changes will make it more challenging to do changes later on.

I did stop listing things for right now so I'll have fewer items to update when the time comes.

C.

flipistics · ‎02-25-2025

@arkmch wrote:
The crossborder services have been amazing so no longer having them would be awful. It's not just access to the US market with local ebay shipping rates & labels but also the ebay international shipping program which takes on all the risk associated with global sales.

Haven't really thought things through yet but it seems that in the worst case scenario the only sensible thing to do would be to change location to Canada so US buyers pay the tariffs themselves. I think on the whole this will end up reducing everyone's inventory to only the high value / most desirable / rare items.

As for listing on ebay.CA - are there any benefits to doing this?? If I'm not mistaken, an item on ebay.COM with shipping location Canada will still be available to Canadian buyers searching on ebay.CA

If you have the item listed on dot com and shipping set to Canada, your items should show up on dot ca. However, if you're on dot ca and DO NOT have shipping set to the USA, I don't think your item is visible on dot com. That means that Canadian buyers who just type in dot com as a matter of habit may not see those items.

The other consideration if selling on dot com, as you currently are, is that I don't THINK eBay collects Canadian taxes as they expect those to be charged at the border. If you're shipping those items from Canada, technically I believe you are responsible for self assessing and remitting those taxes out of pocket (you should ask a qualified professional to make sure). One advantage to listing on dot ca is you can use calculated shipping for within Canada.

It should be pretty simple for you to test visibility.

sin-n-dex · ‎02-25-2025

@flipistics wrote:
The other consideration if selling on dot com, as you currently are, is that I don't THINK eBay collects Canadian taxes as they expect those to be charged at the border. If you're shipping those items from Canada, technically I believe you are responsible for self assessing and remitting those taxes out of pocket (you should ask a qualified professional to make sure). One advantage to listing on dot ca is you can use calculated shipping for within Canada.

It should be pretty simple for you to test visibility.

I'm on dot COM and listing item location as NY, eBay does not collect HST on my sales, I'm responsible for self-reporting. eBay also doesn't have a mechanism for me to add it to the order and collect it from the buyer (probably because the location is NY, so it's not legal to be collecting HST if you're shipping from NY). If your item location is USA, eBay expect you to ship ALL orders from USA. Most sellers I know who are using a USA location are not uploading tracking on their Canadian orders. If you were to ship your orders from USA, taxes would be collected upon entry into Canada (which is another reason you cannot collect it at point of sale).

I was shipping my Canadian orders from NY once upon a time, but Stallion and Chit Chats won't allow "northbound shipping" (where the item leaves Canada, goes to the USA, and comes back to Canada). I was able to do that by buying postage on eBay or Stamps.com. Now Stallion won't even accept any third party postage, and if you buy Canadian postage from Stallion it will ship from within Canada.

So that's the quandry we're in when listing on dot com with a USA location. On many items I don't have Canadian postage specified, but will add postage to Canada if contacted (when I find out where the buyer lives, so I can put the right postage). I also don't think any Canadians will complain that their purchase with a USA location ships from within Canada, it means no taxes are due on that order. But the Canadian seller still has to remit HST/GST if registered (which you have to do if you're over the threshold for sales, the threshold is for all sales, not just Canada).

Hope this explains a few things.

C.