Excerpts from an hour with Powerseller Support dealing with Shipping Details for Canadian sellers.

Those of you who've found items ended early or cancelled will find this useful... a conflict exists between Canadapost/eBay/aw2k The only workaround is this: be logged into ebay.ca to create your listings and only add FLAT RATE to US buyers. You will be adding a flat rate to all US buyers and not Canadians. Just fill it in as if you lived in the US. Don't even touch the International stats... it's a mess!

Canada Post or, eBay.CA is not supplying parameters as demanded/dictated by eBay.com at this time and I'm told it may be a week before they sort the bug out...

Here's hoping our shipping dollar rate doesn't exceed some "good shipping" policy of eBay... that could happen.


HERE ARE THE EXCERPTS FROM MY ADVENTURE WITH POWERSELLER SUPPORT: MAKE OF IT WHAT YOU WILL and good luck >:-)

Message: THREE ISSUES: THE USE OF SHIPPING DETAILS AND USING SHIPPING DETAILS AS CRITERION FOR INCREASED EXPOSURE ON EBAY


I've been on eBay and selling for 7 years. I use third-party, American, software to create my listings; do my accounting and upload to my own ISP.. I live in western Canada, in the province of Alberta. While attemtping to relist an item cancelled by eBay (for lack of shipping details), I and Powerseller support rep, Brett, discovered several problems and a bug.

Perhaps my problem is unique...tho it's hard to believe I'm the only Canadian using US software to work on eBay.

Firstly, it was suggested I drop my Auctionwizard2000 (Standing Wave) software and use Turbo Lister in order to accommodate required Shipping Detail changes eBay now demands. This is out of the question as all my income/accounting/and communication is based on this software and I like the service it provides. If eBay no longer supports outside software it would be nice to have at least six months notice for us to make necessary changes... THIS IS A SERIOUS ISSUE.

I then tried to relist the cancelled item from eBay.ca..... this led to our discovering that eBay.ca was not providing Canadapost defaults as needed!!! Wonder about all the other countries worldwide???

Canada post rates vary by all possible factors and the attributes are too copious to for the average person to deal with. I'm an experienced seller/shipper and go thru major hoops each time Canadapost changes rates and parameters... which is typically every six months!!!

If we toss aside the problems I'm having with new demands made of my own auction software; we are left with the shipping issues.

If I am having trouble with this, you can pretty much count on the average person not bothering to sell on eBay because it's impossible to flat rate everything or Specifically Calculate shipping without specific destinations (many that vary greatly within countries, including the USA!).

I am absolutely furious with the elevated level of exposure being granted to sellers who can make such broad calculations and/or offer free shipping!!!! I feel this is very unfair treatment.

IF YOU FEEL LIKE TELLING EBAY WHERE TO GO...PLS DO...I DID...

Hi!

What a pleasure to have you on the AW2000 discussion board! MY! you are a long term AW2K user.. I am so glad you have elected to post..

I know "Brett" he is very helpful.. indeed.. You might consider going to the "Site map | Suggestion box".... at eBay and providing the information about the discrepancy for shipping details at eBay.ca as well as the issues the new policies are causing you..

You also might consider contacting the eBay tech support about the issue. About half the time, the communication level between the Power seller reps, the techs and the engineers is not good at all. The engineers won't "listen" so a seller emailing usually gets their attention. The last issue I worked on with eBay techs took an entire month to resolve. And I had to be one tenacious lady to get someone's attention.

So you might consider using both those means to let eBay know about the issue and how it is affecting you as a seller.

Now to see what we can do about a workaround for you until they get the mess fixed...

I know that Flat Rate isn't always the best option available to everyone.. But have you considered using the Flat Rate and using "Standard Delivery" as the option. The eBay rule states you must use a "Domestic service" and STandard delivery is available on eBay.ca as well as ebay.com. Standard delivery will allow you to use the most economical service in your own country...

I know that no one is wanting to add even a part of the cost of shipping into the item price (and for the record I agree) but to make this work so we can sell, adding even $1.00 to $1.50 to the item price and then using the Flat Rate might allow you to continue listing.

I can't believe Brett told you to switch to Turbo Lister. That is just flat out poor advice.. If you were to take the time to go through the eBay discussion boards, clicking through the posters who are having lots of trouble with DSR's, communication, picture fees out of control, etc, etc, etc, you would find a huge majority use Turbo Lister or Seller's manager.. Both of which are poor auction management choices.. If you want to be successful, you cannot use eBay tools.. And other software programs are running into the same exact snaffus with all the changes. So telling you to change software is just not sound advice. I am glad you took a stand with Brett. Sometimes I wonder about those folks They have their head in the sand on some days...

USPS postal regulations are not much better than Canadian. The USPS rules/regs are so involved about half the time the Postal employees don't know the answers either. So I understand changes and jumping through ridiculous hoops to ship something.

Anyway, will the "Flat Rate | Standard Delivery"... work for you at all.



Judy/blue

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