eBay

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-29-2015

Hello Canadian eBayers,

The weekly chat is back! Please start posting at your convenience, I'll be with you at 1 PM Eastern as usual.

vintagenorth · ‎07-29-2015

I do wonder why it is still available on .com but not on .ca. Do you have any suggestions as to where we go to find a price which includes the sellers discount, so that we are able to estimate shipping costs for expedited or express packages?

jt-libra · ‎07-29-2015

raphael@ebay.com wrote:
@block36 wrote:
I am on advanced tool but Cdn $ appears as first option and it is very easy to overlook it.
It's true that the advanced tool, which used to default to USD, now defaults to CAD. The reasoning behind our strategy to default all CA listing flows to CAD will be explained in detail in an upcoming announcement.

Uh, oh! I'm not sure I like the sound of that. I'm guessing that means we may be required to list only in CAD if we list on .ca, even though many sellers have valid reasons not to.

I don't have a problem with a default to CAD as long as after we change it to USD, the USD currency will remain in future Re-Lists and Sell Similar.

Anonymous · ‎07-29-2015

I've been here 13 years. It something that comes up often in our panning cycles. But we have never moved on it to this point.

There are some advantages.

For one thing, it's one less thing for a seller to have to think about in what is an already way-too-complicated listing process.

For another, we think that in many cases sellers with longer-tail GTC inventory can be hurt by currency fluctuations if they are, say, acquiring inventory and paying bills in CAD and selling in USD. If FX moves over time and those sellers don't adjust their prices, then depending on the direction of FX movement they either risk having their item become uncompetitive, or having it sell successfully but with a value realization that eats at the profits they had originally intended. Not the case for all sellers - and some may be fine with rolling the dice on FX movements and/or revising their prices to remain competitive if needed, etc. There is a lot of inventory on our site that was priced at an 85 cent dollar or higher, and we've been sitting at 76 cents right now. So if those items sell, the sellers are going to make more money than they expected which is great - but those items may no longer be priced competitively vs the time they were listed.

Finally, as eBay's only dual-currency listing platform, our French and English sites present architectural challenges that sometimes slows or event prevents the delivery of new functionality that has tested well on other sites. Removing USD support would simplify things for eBay as well as the companies in our ecosystem moving forward.

If we do ever decide to retire the option to list in USD on the Canadian site, we will communicate that decision, then look to do so gradually, over a period of time, to minimize disruption for sellers. Canadian sellers who prefer to sell in USD would still be able to list using eBay.com.

And on a related question - revenue impact to PayPal would not be a consideration for us.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-29-2015

@rose-dee wrote:

You've made it clear in previous Board Hours that there is virtually no likelihood the ".com cart disconnect" will be resolved anytime soon.

My question is, will eBay reimburse Canadian sellers for all those extra, individual FVFs they've paid over the past year or so on shipping charges where the seller has reimbursed buyers for excess shipping on multi-item orders? That is, will eBay reimburse sellers for the FVFs that would not have been charged had the .com cart functioned properly?

For example, I have had buyers who managed to purchase more than 1 item by buying them individually, paying the individual shipping as well. I always, as a matter of honesty, refund my buyers' excess shipping where such items can be combined and shipped at a lower rate, or where (had the cart functioned), my automatic discounts would have applied. Surely this scenario must happen many times every day, and eBay is quietly and unfairly pocketing the extra fees.

Will eBay.ca set up some kind of automated function to deal with refunding sellers' excess FVFs on shipping in these situations? Or must we continue to do battle with Customer Service for hours on the phone and in many cases get denied?

Hi rose-dee,

Unfortunately there isn't a way to automate something like this. Without going into details, it's simply impossible to detect when a buyer pays full shipping because a seller's combined shipping rules didn't kick in.

The only way we can do this is manually, based on a seller's report. If you are able to send me details on which transactions had to be partially refunded because of this issue, I'll be happy to look into it.

I'm also working with the CS organization to implement a way to cover for such reports.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-29-2015

@rose-dee wrote:

On the SYI currency question, I've found on testing today that if I choose a current listing and click on "Sell Similar", the listing form that comes up no longer brings with it the original listing currency (in my case it's always $US).

There is now a drop-down box near the top of the 'Sell Similar' form that reads "Canadian $" by default. Frankly, if I hadn't seen the posts on this issue recently, I might never have known and would end up stuck with listings in a currency I didn't want, and have to delete those listing(s).

A seller has to now be aware that the $US option is there and manually select it. Many sellers (especially newer ones) will never notice that that box has another alternative available.

So it seems to me that eBay is already shepherding sellers into de facto listing in $Cdn. Can you tell us why?

As I said earlier, the full details around the migration to CAD default will be published soon.

As for the USD/CAD selection menu, it was always there.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-29-2015

@jt-libra wrote:

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

I realize that Paypal and ebay are separate but perhaps there is some way you could look into this.

If we wanted to print a shipping label for a transaction that was not printed through paypal, we could do so at paypal.com/shipnow.

That link is now removed for Canadian users. However, U.S. users can sell access their paypal.com shipnow link so was the Canadian one removed by mistake or is it a permanent change. If it is a permanent change..why is that?

We're getting conflicting answers from Paypal cs reps.

_________________________________________________________

This is an important issue for many sellers and a fairly lengthy thread on this subject was started (by me) last night. There are many reasons why we would want to use a blank label, not least of which is to obtain estimated shipping costs for our listings. It's my understanding that U.S. sellers are still able to avail themselves of this option, but Canadian sellers cannot.

Do you know anything about this?

This is a recent change to the PayPal platform, unfortunately I have no insight on this.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-29-2015

@jt-libra wrote:

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

I realize that Paypal and ebay are separate but perhaps there is some way you could look into this.

If we wanted to print a shipping label for a transaction that was not printed through paypal, we could do so at paypal.com/shipnow.

That link is now removed for Canadian users. However, U.S. users can sell access their paypal.com shipnow link so was the Canadian one removed by mistake or is it a permanent change. If it is a permanent change..why is that?

We're getting conflicting answers from Paypal cs reps.

_________________________________________________________

This is an important issue for many sellers and a fairly lengthy thread on this subject was started (by me) last night. There are many reasons why we would want to use a blank label, not least of which is to obtain estimated shipping costs for our listings. It's my understanding that U.S. sellers are still able to avail themselves of this option, but Canadian sellers cannot.

Do you know anything about this?

This is a recent change to the PayPal platform, unfortunately I have no insight on this.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-29-2015

@vintagenorth wrote:

I do wonder why it is still available on .com but not on .ca. Do you have any suggestions as to where we go to find a price which includes the sellers discount, so that we are able to estimate shipping costs for expedited or express packages?

The only way to see the cost of shipping labels offered on PayPal is on PayPal. Unfortunately I don't have an alternate solution for what you ask.

raphael@ebay.com · ‎07-29-2015

@jt-libra wrote:

raphael@ebay.com wrote:

@block36 wrote:

I am on advanced tool but Cdn $ appears as first option and it is very easy to overlook it.

It's true that the advanced tool, which used to default to USD, now defaults to CAD. The reasoning behind our strategy to default all CA listing flows to CAD will be explained in detail in an upcoming announcement.

Uh, oh! I'm not sure I like the sound of that. I'm guessing that means we may be required to list only in CAD if we list on .ca, even though many sellers have valid reasons not to.

I don't have a problem with a default to CAD as long as after we change it to USD, the USD currency will remain in future Re-Lists and Sell Similar.

Relists will always be in the same currency as the original listing (it was always this way). Sell Similar now defaults the new listing to CAD, which can be changed back to USD on the SYI form.