Hello, hopefully I can convey some of the most useful info yet.
From a sellers point of view (Aussie in Taiwan selling for 3 years now with a growing business).
75% of our customers are in Australia or USA. About 5-10% are in Canada.
Delivery to Western countries take 1-4 weeks 90% of the time. USA is by far the fastest. Formerly, in 2013, delivery to Canada was almost the same speed as USA.
(we always use the same unregistered airmail postage service from Taiwan, which may or may not be put in same boat as China)
(our items are mostly $25 or less so we "self insure" and put trust in the 99% of customers that are sweet and have a brain)
In 2014 we started having more common issues with items to Canada. It got worse in 2015, and now this year about half of Canadian customers complain about items not arriving, mostly in messages, some with opening cases (poor communicators generally, that risk my account being torn apart by merely a few "unresolved cases" marks, but that's a separate major issue.)
Probably half of our Canadian customers forget to complain at all. But everyone gets their item eventually if their address was correct.
In any case, I'm quite certain that it's Canada's customs/mail service's problem.
My brother lives in Vancouver, even he has had trouble getting items mailed from Australia (about 2 months+ when it should take 1-2 weeks). Probably only items from "across the border" are coming at normal speed.
For my part, we have no other outstanding issues with delivery to other countries (South America, Italy, Spain are always and still the worst and we require registered service paid, ie $3 extra, for them). This new issue has been a slowing down exclusive to Canada.
Until today I didn't know it was because "China didn't pay Canada Post enough money" etc - does anyone have evidence/official news about this?
My solution currently: Last month I started forewarning all Canadian customers upon purchase that items may take over 1 month, and offered $3 extra for registered postage only if they wanted (should keep items under 1 month, even now - they get priority it seems).
This month however, because of cases risking my account going below standard simply because of "unresolved cases", I won't send without Canadian customers paying the extra for registered. It's a real bummer, as it was never needed before. But I'm going to do this for the next few months. That and auto-refund alot more customers (which I only did a couple times a year previously).
You might expect eBay to care, as threats to my account from Canada's situation could undo all their monthly revenue from me. But I've seen nothing from them about what must be an obvious pattern/problem by now.
I guess in the short term they don't care - items not received cases, and seller refunds (us losing money) still keep them their fee from sellers...
In the long run, they're not helping sellers as usual.
So in conclusion - I have my solution, but its going to be a bother and hassle to communicate more with Canadian customers, registered their items (at the Taiwan post offices which are like a retirement home in terms of workers 😉, and raise their costs through registered mail.
Better than have my family business shutdown, right?
I'm quite sure there's no way to make customers in Canada exclusively pay $3 more before they buy, right? At least not for items on ebay.com or ebay.com.au
I don't want to ban them, but that is an option, which perhaps some Asian sellers have taken. I hope it won't become a trend 🙂
Hope we can all continue to share thoughts.
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