Paypal between Canadian buyers/sellers

Ebay recommends that we list in US$. We can offer to accept equivalent CDN$, but most buyers want to paypal right away. The result is most of my Canadian buyers immediatly click through and pay in the US$ that paypal is ready to accept. When they fund their payment from credit card or bank account they pay 2.5% exchange premium, send it to me, and I pay 2.5% exchange premium to convert it right back. The 5% fo the gross taken on the currency exchanges exceeds the FVF fees and far exceeds the paypal fee!

If there was an option on the paypal invoice for Canadian sellers to let Canadian buyers select the currency at time of payment that avoided the double currency exchange it would be a big help for both Canadian buyers and sellers. Canada is probably unique among all the ebay countries for the larger amount of currency conversion going on.

Of course that 5% that would be split between the buyer and seller would come right out of Paypals pocket so might not be what you have in mind But that much of the gross going to currency exchange puts us at a subtantial disadvantage to USA users.

The August 15/16 "move from store to core" promotion did very clearly demonstrate two things for most store sellers in most categories:

1) more sales are possible if using auction style with BIN or fixed price listing, both with gallery, on the core site as compared to hard to find inventory store listings (but we all already knew that).

2) while substantially more sales are achieved, the relatively low "sell thru" rate and high insertion/BIN/gallery fees do not justify listing most inventory items on the core site for only seven days and repeat the process (and expenses) for seven more days and one more time.

Considering the "sell thru" rate for auction listings starting above $1.00 fluctuates between 35% to 40% in 2006 (the ratio has been decreasing every year), a seller needs to pay three insertion/BIN/gallery fees for every sale on average.

Since most sellers are smart enough not to do it, eBay loses many opportunities to generate FVF while sellers loses the sale (on eBay).

I understand eBay wants an item to sell faster - for the good of the seller! This is too simplistic and does not reflect the marketplace today. eBay does not bring enough new buyers every day for all 12,500,000 items listed on the site (growing to 16,000,000 or more by November).

What I suggest is for eBay to offer two small things, at very little cost:

1 - longer core site listing duration (10 or 15 days) for sellers who wish to offer longer duration at no extra cost

2 - offer one (or more) free relisting of all insertion/BIN/gallery fees on the core site for unsold items, instead of charging and crediting insertion fees only if sold on first relist.

A few years ago, listings were available for 10 days on eBay at no extra cost. Then eBay started charging 10 cents, justifying the fee by claiming higher "storage/hosting" costs. The fee has now been increased to 40 cents in an attempt to discourage the use of the longer duration. Once again, eBay really, really, I mean really, wants an item to sell quickly. The problem is - there are not enough buyers to achieve that goal.

While there is an extra cost to carry a listing for ten days compared to seven, that cost is minuscule. eBay's cost of a core site listing (regardless of duration) is mostly in uploading, indexing and confirming, not storing for a few extra days. Hosting is so cheap today that $0.40 has no justification.

What we need is a change in mindset on the part of eBay. Forget about trying to have every seller sell every item within 7 days - it no longer works!. Instead, concentrate your efforts and energy in making sure most listed items eventually sell - whether it takes a day, a week or a month. Eventually eBay will get its FVF.

Let sellers decide what is their best timing strategy. Do not make the decision for them.
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Keep the suggestions coming. This is a terrific start.

You have my word that every suggestion will be read and evaluated and we are going to test the heck out of those suggestions that help the most sellers. My commitment to you is we will start testing ASAP and we will be aggressive. I also will commit to trying my best to keep you up to speed on what suggestions lead to what tests and how we intend on measuring "success".

A question....does anyone use the Store FVF credit offer?

Jordan

Making a CDN Seller more profitable:

Everyone would welcome a decrease of listing fees. Decreasing upfront listing costs would help.

I would much prefer to lose $10 than $20 per day if by chance some or all of my listings were not succesful on any given day.

Everyone wants to make money, including Ebay. But as that saying goes "how much milk can you take from the cow". Sellers are the engine that drive Ebay because you collect your fees from Sellers, not buyers. You can increase traffic to Ebay but if sellers will not list because fees are too high, then what is the point.

Recent increase of fees for store and core listings has discouraged several acqauinted Canadian powersellers to discontinue selling in Ebay. Combine that with unfair like Paypal policies towards non-USA based Sellers and that makes it even harder to stay in Ebay. The profit pie is getting smaller for sellers and if this trend continues I may even close online shop because no sense to do all the hard work for peanut profits.

A suggested solution. Other than the obvious - is to perhaps create a type of symbolic membership subscription available only to Powersellers. Subscription can be monthly or renewable every three months with a flat fee charged monthly. Powerseller members would be introduced to very very low fees for the core listing fees including a reduced FVF. No cap on how many listings during duration of the membership. Ebay gets some money on a ongoing basis and Sellers will be confident their profit margin will not be eaten away by high fees.

Why should we have to choose between a 7 day listing (10 with extra cost) or 30 days hidden in some corner where no one can see it? -grade_a_consignments

Theres a 30 day option?

Thanks for giving us this chance to voice our opinion ! I love e-bay for this!

First of all, reinforce your new shipping policy buy putting publicity abouy reporting these items on the site, so that sellers who charge reasonable shipping costs can compete to thoes who list for 0.99$ and charge 25$ in shipping. Of course, their small prices attract more people.

My second idea is to put the listing fees down or none at all and then charge fees for a percentage of what we sell. It would encourage more listings and there would be no loss of money the item does not sell.

I find that the fees are to high to insert a gallery picture.
The biggest problem of all is Canada Post shipping costs.

Sometimes U.S customers think that we are ripping them off, even when we charge only the actual shipping cost.It would be nice to have Canada post understand that if they put their prices down, we will be able to sell more, have more sellers and they will make more money. I personnaly try to sell only what can be sent through lettermail because I loose money when I have to pay shipping, especially when sending a parcel to someone in Canada !

Thank you so much for reading.
Angela

Hi,

The question youask is certainly not an easy question to answer. That is it's not only one solution. As many people have already said we have to 1) compete with cheaper Shipping prices from our Us counterparts. 2) Extremely high fees that include insertion fees, FVF fees, Paypal fees, Currency conversion fees. 3) It's difficult to compete with some US prices. Some US sellers sell items below my cost. I have contacted them they told me what their costs are and I can;t beleive it. THIS EBAY CAN DO NOTHING.

EBay must give us a level playing field with the US or they will eventually lose ebay Canada.

Maybe a package or different packages would be nice. For example to buy upfront 200 listings (per month) with gallery at a significantly reduced price along with pay pal reduction fees for those package items.

For example last month I listed 60 items that did not sell. It ate my profit pretty fast.

I think Ebay must find a profitable solution fast.