Shopping Cart on eBay.ca? Do we want it or not?

[rose-dee]

I'm interested in knowing other sellers' opinions about having "shopping cart" checkout on eBay.ca.  I've purchased a few items from US sellers recently and it seems to be working well there (at least from a buyer's perspective).  The pros as I see it are:

1)  It would mean an end to the ill-conceived policy of allowing items to remain available once a buyer has chosen "BIN".  This in my opinion is a fiasco in the waiting for sellers.

2)  Sellers would be paid immediately upon cart check-out;

3)  If a buyer changed his/her mind about purchasing (assuming there is a good cart abandonment process in place - see #2 below), items would go back into the seller's current listings faster than going through the UIC or cancellation process currently in effect. 

"Cons" I can think of are:

1)  Cart abandonment -- there would need to be a maximum limit on the time that buyers could "hold" items in their cart, say 24 hours, after which they automatically get re-stocked;

2)  Dealing with combined purchases over a period of more than the cart re-stock time -- I don't know how eBay.com handles this.

Other thoughts?  By the way, does anyone know if this is actually in the works for eBay.ca? 

[pjcdn2005]

1)  Cart abandonment -- there would need to be a maximum limit on the time that buyers could "hold" items in their cart, say 24 hours, after which they automatically get re-stocked;

On .com if you put an item in a cart there is zero hold time. That item is available to anyone until the buyer checks out and the item is paid for.

I've never used the cart on .com but I've read about negative and positive experiences so it seems if there might still be a few glitches.

[lady.stark]

Hate it. I never used the cart on .com and never will. It will be a mess trying to combine shipping with auctions. Not to mention the BIN items can still be purchased at any time by anyone. So as a buyer, you are facing 2 choices:

1- pay your BIN and pay your auctions seperately;

OR

2- wait until your auctions are over and risk loosing the BIN.

In instance #1, buyer pay shipping price twice. Or if seller is kind enough to wait, the seller have to pay the PayPal fees of $0.30 twice. And the items are not grouped together on eBay.

As for #2, the negative side is already explained. This system only works if ALL items are BIN. That's probably where TPTB* want to go. 😞

* The powers that be

[pierrelebel]

"Do we want it or not?"

NO.

Despite the "cart abandonment" problems, a shopping cart may work very well for single sellers.  However, eBay is a venue with millions of sellers with different policies and marketing approaches .

Many sell items individually.  Some sell in multiples, Others sell individual items but will often find buyers buying a large selection of items.

Trying to have a solution that fits all is doomed.

The current Buy-it-Now system works pretty well.

If sellers selling individual items want immediate payment, they can specify that requirement in their listings.

If sellers want to wait and give the opportunity for buyers to shop around and accumulate other items to be combined in one payment, one shipment, they can do that.

However, once you offer a shopping cart, in addition to the "cart abandonment" issues, you have the problem of a buyer committing to purchase an item - put it in the cart - while still available for someone else to purchase in the meantime resulting in a few very unhappy buyers.

Sellers can't win.