CONVERSION RATES US DOLLARS TO CANADIAN DOLLARS

[skippy527]

I'm aghast!! Just sold an item which, with shipping costs, totalled $129.50.  I sell and get paid in USD which is then converted to Canadian dollars and paid to my Canadian account.  Today's official exchange rate is 1.37 from US to CAD. Doing all the calculations, including converting the Ebay Fee according to this exchange rate, I should have been paid $145.91. Instead Ebay paid me $128.24 CAD.  When I contacted Ebay to ask what their exchange rate is, they hemmed and hawed and said they don't actually have an exchange rate that they can cite - that it changes by the hour or minute! WHAT A SCAM!! How can this be allowed?

[chapeau-noir]

@skippy527  Although the page looks like 2001 all over again, it's eBay's currency converter - it's a version of XE which eBay uses and redirects to XE, and is supposed to be current. It also cites 1.37 Canadian to 1 USD. I'd look again at the breakdown to see what happened.

eBay front line CS is awful and they probably had little idea what you were talking about, though exchange rates do fluctuate.

[richard1rst]

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@skippy527 wrote:

I'm aghast!! Just sold an item which, with shipping costs, totalled $129.50.  I sell and get paid in USD which is then converted to Canadian dollars and paid to my Canadian account.  Today's official exchange rate is 1.37 from US to CAD. Doing all the calculations, including converting the Ebay Fee according to this exchange rate, I should have been paid $145.91. Instead Ebay paid me $128.24 CAD.  When I contacted Ebay to ask what their exchange rate is, they hemmed and hawed and said they don't actually have an exchange rate that they can cite - that it changes by the hour or minute! WHAT A SCAM!! How can this be allowed?

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Well. let’s see. The exchange rate changes by the minute according to the FOREX Exchange. Just like stocks and bond prices change by the minute based on trading on the New York Stock Exchange. There may be an end of the day quote, but it is valid only in that one minuscule moment.

Next, even assuming that your $145.91 is correct - there would have been a 13.5% FVF plus 40 cents deduction. ($20.09). $145.91 less $20.09 equals $125.82. Allowing a few cents variance in the actual to the minuter exchange rate, what you got sounds about right.

[slippinjimmy]

Canadian Sellers also pay GST/HST on fees so you can add 5 - 15% on top of the calculated fees.

[skippy527]

Well no, I'm a Canadian selling to the US, so as far as I know, there's no GST or HST in this scenario.

[skippy527]

Nope, I included the FVP. Had there been no final value fee taken off I actually should have been paid $177.42!!

[hartungcards]

You never said there was going to be math on this quiz.

[sin-n-dex]

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@skippy527 wrote:

Well no, I'm a Canadian selling to the US, so as far as I know, there's no GST or HST in this scenario.

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No, the buyers don't pay HST. When you pay eBay your fees, you pay HST/GST on that. It will show in the fee breakdown.

C.