I'm obviously a numpty because I didn't know . . .

[everard6920]

All this time, I've been thinking that when a buyer clicks on "Australia Only" to refine search results, that they'd get items/sellers in Australia only.

Wrong.

I noticed that, when searching for my own items, they would not come up when clicking "Australia Only". Instead, they were listed under "items from eBay international sellers". Yet, I was on the Australian site with an Australian account and all of my items (and addresses!) are in Australia.

So . . . after speaking to eBay, I found out that "Australia Only" shows sellers that post only to Australia. If you post to any other country, your items will show up under "international sellers", they said.

The implication is that if you have a seller who is located in China (and is posting from China) but that is targeting the Australian market and only posting to Australia, their items will show up if a buyer clicks "Australia Only". And if you're an Australian sellers in Australia but you also post to Azerbaijan and Nepal, your items won't show up.

Silly me. Here I was thinking that clicking on "Australia Only" was useful because buyers could find items located in Australia. No, instead it allows them to find sellers that only post to Australia, and nowhere else. Because who wants to buy from an Australian seller who posts to Australia and Russia? Gross.

/end rant

(Seriously, am I just being really daft and missing something important here?)

[everard6920]

Because this is so bizarre, I'm going to detail very specifically, the settings that I had, and what eBay told me to change.

First of all, all of my listings were set to post to Australia only (I went into settings and excluded every other country but Australia). However, my listings still said that I posted worldwide (and just listed every single other country as an exclusion).

With my settings as above, I noticed that my items did not appear when searching with the "Australia Only" box selected. So I contacted eBay.

eBay told me that it was because I was posting worldwide. I pointed out that I actually wasn't. They insisted that I was. So I said, "okay, I only want to post within Australia. How do I do that?"

They told me to un-check the "display international postage options" box, and when I did, my items started showing up when "Australia Only" was selected in a search.

I haven't changed over all of my listings yet, because there is no way to do it in bulk. Each listing has to be changed manually. The ones that I have changed show up, and the ones that I haven't changed still show up as "items from eBay international sellers".

Good times.

[mbselections00]

That really is bizarre - how does one make sense of that ?  All of my listings are set to post to certain countries - screenshot below.

I haven't checked since reading your last post, but when I checked the other day, my listings were showing when I ticked 'Australia Only' - but as I said, on other occasion not a single item appears !  Based on what you're being told, if I'm interpreting correctly, my listings shouldn't show as Australia only    Even though as we've mentioned, it should be Australian Sellers only. 

In all honesty, I sometimes wonder if they actually know themselves what they're doing & I am convinced 'things' keep changing . . . .

Lol, now I have no idea whether I should revise all my listings & stop selling Internationally or not - I don't sell much overseas, but every sale is valuable these days - but if it's costing in Search results the few sales are not worth it . . . . .

[beautysecretfashion]

I notice sometimes for certain items when selecting Australia only... OS sellers do appear as they ship to Australia.

Another case of ebay being unfair to us Aussie sellers.

However in other categories - Australia only, there are only Aussie sellers.

Who knows the logic with ebay... I just don't give a hoot anymore as I am just sooooooooooooo over the ebay carp that goes on.

I do sell certain items to OS customers... but have some countries excluded like Russia, Germany, Italy etc..

My thoughts lately regarding ebay and how they treat Aussie sellers is unfair and just makes it much harder to sell.

Why have a option to choose Australi only when it is not true????