Ebay help please

[Bea]

You guys have been great helping me with my new endevour of selling on ebay and my selling has been going okay. I haven't had too many glitches, however, I just sold 4 items on Sunday and although I have made contact with the buyers, I haven't received any payments yet. I think the problem is that I mistakenly said I would accept personal cheques from Canadians, and I am thinking maybe they are all sending me cheques. So this is my question, if this is so, what rate to do I use for the exchange rate?

I don't know forsure they are paying by cheque but am considering emailing and letting them know what the total should be in CDN if that is what they are doing. 3 out of 4 auctions are to newbies and one has -1 for feedback!!! I guess this is all a big learning curve.

With the other auctions I did recently, everyone paid by paypal and they all paid in the first few days so I guess I was kinda expecting this to happen this time.

 

[DutchsMommy]

Just to make sure I understand - the people that bought your items are from the USA and are sending you personal cheques? Is that where the exchange rate issue is coming from? Or are the people from Canada, bought in US funds, and now will be writing you cheques in CDN and you then need to tell them the price in CDN?

For the exchange rate I would suggest you go to/call your local bank to get the rate.

As for accepting personal cheques - I would totally stay away from it. Most ebay'ers only accept Paypal now. A few years ago it was alot more common to accept cashiers cheques/money orders but now it is so easy to deal with Paypal I would highly recommend only accepting that.

One more thing - if your buyers are sending personal cheques from the states you have a bigger problem. Your bank will likely hold the funds from those cheques for 30 days, and if they are US cheques written in CDN funds it will probably take even longer. It takes FOREVER for cheques to clear btwn countries.

As for the current issue you are dealing with, generally you would e-mail them buyers with the exchange and the total in CDN. You could try and be a bit sneaky and say you want a money order or certified cheque and see how that goes over - or state that you won't ship the merchandise until the funds clear (for normal CDN cheques in CDN funds this should only take max. 4 days (business days).

HTH

 

[Bea]

I am selling to Canadians, but in US funds. I should have known better than to accept cheques . I will change that. I guess I should email them and mention that if they are paying by cheque to let me know so I can do the conversion?

 

[wee-haggis]

I am selling to Canadians, but in US funds. I should have known better than to accept cheques . I will change that. I guess I should email them and mention that if they are paying by cheque to let me know so I can do the conversion?

I have done 81 transactions on Ebay and I stongly suggest you do not accept cheques from anyone.
Set yourself up with Paypal (if you intend to do more transactions) and/or Money Orders.....but definitely no personal cheques.

 

[Bea]

I got it...no more cheques . I do accept paypal but, for whatever reason, checked off the "accept cheques" button when setting up my first auction and from there it just stayed, but I will definately refused cheques from now on. What a headache

 

[pxlbarrel]

Actually....we accept personal cheques all the time and if they're from the States...even better! We just won't send their stuff until it finally clears from the bank...and we tell them that in the auction so they're not pestering us every few days for the package.

We like American cheques because we just cash them for American cash that we can use on our vacations or trips to the States. Also Paypal (we use that too), while being very convenient, takes a HUGE chunk out of your pocket from fees and their very crappy exchange rate.

As for Canadian cheques, we also don't ship them until they clear the bank which is typically a week or so.

For exchange rates we figure out how much it would cost if your buyer has to buy U.S. dollars and then sweeten it for them. ie, if it costs them $1.19 to buy a dollar but the actual exchange rate is 1.17, we use 1.18. If you were to cash in that as a Paypal payment, Paypal would probably convert it to Canadian for you at 1.13 or something.

 

[DutchsMommy]

Actually....we accept personal cheques all the time and if they're from the States...even better! We just won't send their stuff until it finally clears from the bank...and we tell them that in the auction so they're not pestering us every few days for the package.

We like American cheques because we just cash them for American cash that we can use on our vacations or trips to the States. Also Paypal (we use that too), while being very convenient, takes a HUGE chunk out of your pocket from fees and their very crappy exchange rate.

As for Canadian cheques, we also don't ship them until they clear the bank which is typically a week or so.

For exchange rates we figure out how much it would cost if your buyer has to buy U.S. dollars and then sweeten it for them. ie, if it costs them $1.19 to buy a dollar but the actual exchange rate is 1.17, we use 1.18. If you were to cash in that as a Paypal payment, Paypal would probably convert it to Canadian for you at 1.13 or something.

Don't you find it takes up to a month to clear the USD cheques through your bank acct? I guess if all parties are OK with waiting that long then it is OK. You could also jack up your 'shipping' by a few $ to cover the exchange/fees issue with Paypal I suppose - but maybe that's not ethical? Anyway for me I would rather not have the hassle of cheques and pay the Paypal fees. JMHO

 

[pxlbarrel]

Don't you find it takes up to a month to clear the USD cheques through your bank acct? I guess if all parties are OK with waiting that long then it is OK. You could also jack up your 'shipping' by a few $ to cover the exchange/fees issue with Paypal I suppose - but maybe that's not ethical? Anyway for me I would rather not have the hassle of cheques and pay the Paypal fees. JMHO

Yes, we wait about 2-3 weeks before send the item. We also don't accept cheques from anybody who has a negative for non-payment. Some people don't have credit cards or refuse to pay online and would prefer money order or cheque. If they don't mind waiting, they can save a few bucks by sending a cheque. I like to give the buyers flexibility on paying so that I can get more people interested in the auction.

Sure, we could jack up the shipping to pay for the Paypal fees but then you'd get people complaining about the shipping. Since our dollar's been so high lately, our shipping to the States is no longer competitive...we look like we're already charging too much.

Don't get me wrong...we like Paypal a lot and we like the fact that we know it's been paid so quickly. However, there are drawbacks to Paypal and we don't mind getting some American cash in form of a cheque every now and then.

 

[CJK]

Could someone briefly explain how paypal works with Ebay? I already have a personal account. Would I have to open a new business account for Ebay? What are the fees? TIA