Comments about the Global Shipping Program

[kalvin@ebay.com]

Feel free to share your thoughts about the Global Shipping Program here. 

A few questions to get the ball rolling:

• What has worked well for you with the Global Shipping Program?
• Any ideas to help improve the experience for Canadian buyers?
• What has deterred you from buying items offered using the Global Shipping Program?
• How have you managed to search for items outside the program?

Please try & keep the comments constructive 🙂

If you have any questions about the program, please post them here.

[walker0017]

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kxeron wrote:

For all we know, all the import charges collected by PBI on items under $20 en-route to Canada or $1000 in Australia could be funnelled into PBI's profits if customs doesn't ask for money upon determination.

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I have never thought of it that way, I always assumed that eBay/PBI would automatically forward the required duties/tariffs and PST/GST/HST to Revenue Canada with an itemized list showing a breakdown of amounts. If they are not doing that, then maybe Revenue Canada should take a page from the Germans and launch an investigation into PBI/eBay for tax fraud. It does explain that statement in Para 3i of the Buyers GSP T&C as them trying to "legally" do this.

Thanks for bringing that possible angle up. 

[rick31797]

I would like to see a Canadian program such as W5, or Market place do an investigation, on PB and report what they can find out. 

[Anonymous]

It is now nearly 100 pages here and not to mention more pages on other boards.  It shows clearly GSP is a "suck" issue and I am not seeing eBay do anything about it like "retiring" it like they did "retired" with eBucks!!

It is clearly that it is a lucrative program for eBay to make extra $$ and at the same time hurting small business, causing them to lose many potential buyers from Canada.   I know because I am one of them that wouldn't touch US sellers with GSP if they don't opt out of GSP.  I often asked many of them if they would considered to opt out of GSP and most of them were willing.  And for those who won't opt out of GSP, it is their loss and I have seen their same items being relisted over and over and over and over nad over not being sold.  Had they opt out of GSP, they would be sold.  That is their choice and their loss.

Many of them said they didn't want to fill/write out custom papers which is so ridiculous for an excuse!  That is their loss!

We knew that we don't have to pay the so-called import charges for any items for $20.00 or less and yet I am seeing the import charges for them all the time.  That is what I consider GSP as a bogus scam just to get extra $$$.

Now will eBay do something about it like retiring this insane bogus scam which is GSP?

[pocomocomputing]

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@i*m-still-here wrote:

Bennet:  Is that a typo or are there two Lebels?

In any case, what do you think of all the complaints by Canadian buyers about the GSP?

There are a lot of them.......... eh?

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Serge Lebel, name signed in post 1948 posted by eBay id nscalebuff

If you click on "in reply to" in any post like the bennet4612 reply, it takes you back to the post being replied to. Assuming of course that the reply is made to the correct post by the person replying.

As for two lebels posting in the forums, a bit much to take, one is enough, lol.

[walker0017]

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rick31797 wrote:

I would like to see a Canadian program such as W5, or Market place do an investigation, on PB and report what they can find out.

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I sent a story suggestion. Let's see what happens.

[marnotom!]

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@walker0017 wrote:

I have never thought of it that way, I always assumed that eBay/PBI would automatically forward the required duties/tariffs and PST/GST/HST to Revenue Canada with an itemized list showing a breakdown of amounts. If they are not doing that, then maybe Revenue Canada should take a page from the Germans and launch an investigation into PBI/eBay for tax fraud. It does explain that statement in Para 3i of the Buyers GSP T&C as them trying to "legally" do this.

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AFAntiques' understanding of the GSP is that the item would be cleared as part of a bulk cross-border freight shipment.  The calculations of tax and duty owing would be on a customs manifest given to Canada Border Services or someone contracted out to do inspection work on its behalf.  The paperwork would be checked for irregularities; the item itself would likely not be separated from the container or sealed pallet in which it's travelling until the shipment reaches its delivery hub.

My guess is that if payment isn't done at the time it goes through customs, it's put on the tab of the importer or importer's agent.

In essence, the way a GSP item clears customs is as part of a larger shipment, and the way that larger shipment enters Canada and clears customs is in a manner very similar if not identical to how a commercial freight shipment would.  I'm not yet ready to trot out any conspiracy theories in the matter of paying and collect taxes and duties due.

[walker0017]

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marnotom! wrote:

In essence, the way a GSP item clears customs is as part of a larger shipment, and the way that larger shipment enters Canada and clears customs is in a manner very similar if not identical to how a commercial freight shipment would.  I'm not yet ready to trot out any conspiracy theories in the matter of paying and collect taxes and duties due.

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Sir: I am definitely not trying to promote any conspiracy theory but because none of us really know what exactly eBay/PBI are doing with these fees because of the lack of transparency. Your guess is as good as anyone else's and just as right, like I said I had assumed the money was going to the right agency but although the larger shipment idea would work going to Europe and elsewhere I think those items coming to Canada arrive on a truck/tractor trailer rig with them in a cardboard tri-wall pallet to the nearest Canada Post warehouse for mailing out instead of a steel sealed container. Now how itemized will that list be, as in x packages under $20 etc, etc., we just don't know and you have to admit their tracking numbers are totally useless when compared to the ones the professionals use.

I wonder if W5 or marketplace will look into this further since they do have the resources and connections though. 🙂

[jmlart]

I am very disappointed at the shipping procedures that eBay enabled with the GSP and I am looking more and more into not buying on eBay anymore,  I have bought 4 or 5 items from US sellers lately, I paid enormous shipping fees, I hope to receive everything, after that I will think long and hard before buying items on ebay.  US sellers your business must be going down.  I'm afraid eBay is killing your business.

[marnotom!]

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@walker0017 wrote:

Sir: I am definitely not trying to promote any conspiracy theory but because none of us really know what exactly eBay/PBI are doing with these fees because of the lack of transparency. Your guess is as good as anyone else's and just as right, like I said I had assumed the money was going to the right agency but although the larger shipment idea would work going to Europe and elsewhere I think those items coming to Canada arrive on a truck/tractor trailer rig with them in a cardboard tri-wall pallet to the nearest Canada Post warehouse for mailing out instead of a steel sealed container. Now how itemized will that list be, as in x packages under $20 etc, etc., we just don't know and you have to admit their tracking numbers are totally useless when compared to the ones the professionals use.

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While it's fair to question how Pitney Bowes remits taxes and duty to CRA, I think that someone speculating that it could be pocketing these fees instead amounts to the villagers going after Frankenstein's monster with torches and pitchforks.  Someone's going to get the wrong end of the stick reading such a statement and this is going to get spread as "fact".

How would a non-postal import get across the border without a guarantee that taxes and duty owing were paid or to be paid on it, anyway?  There'd have to be an awful lot of collusion going on.  There's a lot of fingers in the GSP pie besides that of Pitney Bowes.

[Anonymous]

My only question is when eBay remove this GSP program from Canadians?

I boycot any US sellers that use this program and ask anyone do it the same.

[kxeron]

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@marnotom! wrote:
(snip)

While it's fair to question how Pitney Bowes remits taxes and duty to CRA, I think that someone speculating that it could be pocketing these fees instead amounts to the villagers going after Frankenstein's monster with torches and pitchforks.  Someone's going to get the wrong end of the stick reading such a statement and this is going to get spread as "fact".

How would a non-postal import get across the border without a guarantee that taxes and duty owing were paid or to be paid on it, anyway?  There'd have to be an awful lot of collusion going on.  There's a lot of fingers in the GSP pie besides that of Pitney Bowes.

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However consider this scenario:

PBI charges a consumer for both taxes and duty (legally wrapping up the cost as "Import Charges"), but the law mentions that the item is duty-exempt. PBI then could easily keep the duty portion of the "Import Charges", and the consumer wouldn't be able to point out to any paperwork to say they were charged for duty by mis-application of non-US law. This is fraud that is difficult to prove due to lack of transparency.

As I illustrated earlier PBI and eBay are not taxation or duty authorities, they are US Companies that simply has interests in other countries, they can be wrong about their accounting and calculations just like you or I can be on our interpretation of the law. Even customs has mechanisms where the importer can challenge customs' analysis of the import, but PBI lacks any and all due process.

Accounting is not all about the bottom line, accounting is about ensuring that bottom line is correctly calculated and that all that needs doing has been done, and through endless eBay Terms and Conditions that cover their rear end contractually from recourse and challenge from consumers, they have done nothing to earn our trust and we can only summise that the programme is deliberately obscure to ensure that it cannot be challenged.

Neither PBI nor eBay has been fully honest about the programme if you read how much the T&C's ensure eBay/PBI are never responsible for any damages/issues/etc. The fact that PBI pays the consumer upon damaged items is done at the aforementioned organizations' sole discretion and do it just as a PR measure to keep the heat lower on the GSP, something to be capable of claiming "We don't commit fraud! look, we refunded all these people!" but through the T&Cs could rationalize to a court that they owe nothing to someone who received a broken item.

The T&C's read like a gotcha if you agree to buy from a GSP seller.

While we may not have definitive proof, a business operation like the GSP with how secretive and obscure it is to get any information about a transaction is ripe for abuse, and until we receive transparency the rear-end covering and so forth I just mentioned is a significant red flag.

Trust MUST be earned, it isn't granted in business transactions. PBI and eBay have done nothing to earn that trust and in fact through the T&Cs among the legal loophole abuse have done the opposite, in my case they have earned my distrust.

[walker0017]

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marnotom! wrote:

While it's fair to question how Pitney Bowes remits taxes and duty to CRA, I think that someone speculating that it could be pocketing these fees instead amounts to the villagers going after Frankenstein's monster with torches and pitchforks.  Someone's going to get the wrong end of the stick reading such a statement and this is going to get spread as "fact".

How would a non-postal import get across the border without a guarantee that taxes and duty owing were paid or to be paid on it, anyway?  There'd have to be an awful lot of collusion going on.  There's a lot of fingers in the GSP pie besides that of Pitney Bowes.

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While I am not coming right out and saying that they are pocketing these fees, there have been people posting earlier about paying the equivalent of HST on items below the threshold for such but it is not being refunded to the buyer so then where did they go, the CRA would not be expecting it as it is below the minimum amount.  Either way it is just speculation on our part or more specifically my part and I could be completely wrong but the question is there. I do not believe there is any collusion occurring but with any large company or companies sometimes the left hand if oblivious to what the other hand is doing because no one thought about all the variables. The only fingers in the GSP pie are PBI, eBay and whoever they have hired to administer the program on their behalf, all the other players have always been there so nothing about that aspect has changed.

The one fact we should keep in mind is this, there have been almost 2000 posts dealing with the GSP on this board alone and not once even when asked directly has anyone from eBay addressed a single concern except to parrot the canned company line or attach a link to the PBI site for their propaganda. If this program was so good, so honest, so aboveboard, so fair and such a positive thing to buyers and sellers why have they been so quiet. It is not just buyers here asking questions but on the .com boards they are as well, and I know you have read them as have I, this is bigger than a small bunch of Canadians complaining.  Still eBay says nothing to even partially address the issues so it really makes you wonder why and when that happens and people start to wonder then speculation and innuendos start creeping in and voila here we are. 🙂

[marnotom!]

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@kxeron wrote:

However consider this scenario:

PBI charges a consumer for both taxes and duty (legally wrapping up the cost as "Import Charges"), but the law mentions that the item is duty-exempt. PBI then could easily keep the duty portion of the "Import Charges", and the consumer wouldn't be able to point out to any paperwork to say they were charged for duty by mis-application of non-US law. This is fraud that is difficult to prove due to lack of transparency.

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I think it's also difficult to prove any intention to defraud.  Remember, the GSP charges are based on the information the seller provides Pitney Bowes.  If the seller fails to indicate that their item was manufactured in a free-trade zone, that's not Pitney Bowes' fault.  The import charges were (presumably) calculated to the best of PBI's ability based on the information it had at its disposal.

Of course, the item may be examined at the Global Shipping Center to see if this information can be obtained.  If it's not because, say, there's no documentation with the item, that's not PBI's fault.  Of course, it gets dicier if it CAN be ascertained that the item should be duty-free, and I guess PBI in its defence would fall back on its role as "agent" for the buyer or "importer of record."  I'm not trying to justify PBI's actions here, but just explaining that they've given themselves an "out" here.  It remains to be seen if it really does have a legal leg on which to stand.

My (very wild) guess is that as things stand, an overage that PBI finds in the calculation of taxes and duty will be put into some sort of contingency fund to cover the occasions where taxes and duty have been undercalculated.  (Not sure if my recent purchase would be considered that or not.  I was charged just HST on an item that I think should have been charged HST and GST, possibly because the item may end up in Calgary before making its way to BC.)

[marnotom!]

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@walker0017 wrote:

The only fingers in the GSP pie are PBI, eBay and whoever they have hired to administer the program on their behalf, all the other players have always been there so nothing about that aspect has changed.

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Actually, PBI is the administrator of the program.  They contract out the services for delivery to the destination country and I suspect the processing of GSP items.  I consider those parties contracted out by PBI to be fingers in the GSP pie, as well.

With a bit of internet sleuthing, you'll find that there are a number of shipping and logistics services in the neighbourhood of 1850 Airport Exchange Boulevard.

[pjcdn2005]

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@marnotom! wrote:

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I think it's also difficult to prove any intention to defraud.  Remember, the GSP charges are based on the information the seller provides Pitney Bowes.  If the seller fails to indicate that their item was manufactured in a free-trade zone, that's not Pitney Bowes' fault.  The import charges were (presumably) calculated to the best of PBI's ability based on the information it had at its disposal.

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I would blame ebay for that one.  If they can prevent a listing from being posted because a picture is too small I'm sure that they could prevent a gsp listing from being posted if it didn't state where the item was manufactured.

[afantiques]

Do other countries have similar programs?  I suspect that is true for the UK.  It seems that I often see minor coins listed that I'd like to bid on, but shipping is listed at $14.14 for them.

No other country has a similar program, but a lot of UK sellers use "International Signed For" postage which is expensive; I'd charge a couple of dollars to ship a minor coin.

The sellers are the fools there.

Although you are also unwise to use Registered, which is just normal mail outside Canada when you can insure numismatic items for about $1 per $100 value with a transit insurer. Far cheaper.

[afantiques]

Do not excuse them so readily.

It's a seller's job to be sensitive to a buyer's experience.

Justifying the ignorance of the way all buyers see the listings other than US buyers suggests that only Americans count.

Again:  What does this say about American sellers?

My point is that sellers don't even know they are enrolled. Many people can't learn things because they simply do not know the things are there to be learnt. It's the 'unknown unknowns' that get you, the 'known unknowns' you can try to do something about.

[afantiques]

Why should an American company dictate how governments collect taxes for everyone but their own?

They don't. All that is done is to ensure there are funds available to cover the taxes due on import, as laid down by the other countries laws.

In other words:  Why should Americans not be forced to pay taxes by some GSP even though their own government has chosen not to enforce the law?

They have to do it because the taxes are legally payable. There is no leeway for some items to pass untaxed because the items are imported as commercial freight, not as individual postal packets. It has nothing to do with the country of origin. If the Australians had a similar scheme it would have to be funded and operated in much the same way.

[kxeron]

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@pjcdn2005 wrote:

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@marnotom! wrote:

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I think it's also difficult to prove any intention to defraud.  Remember, the GSP charges are based on the information the seller provides Pitney Bowes.  If the seller fails to indicate that their item was manufactured in a free-trade zone, that's not Pitney Bowes' fault.  The import charges were (presumably) calculated to the best of PBI's ability based on the information it had at its disposal.

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I would blame ebay for that one.  If they can prevent a listing from being posted because a picture is too small I'm sure that they could prevent a gsp listing from being posted if it didn't state where the item was manufactured.

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Actually, I'd blame both:

eBay for as you said, processing a GSP item without the adequate information entered.

eBay has demonstrated they have capabilities of filtering or auditing entries with striking precision and efficiency. Given my experience in the IT industry in operations, it's very trivial and a small task for a web developer to add a check into a form to require a form field to be filled in before it may be submitted successfully.

Therefore I believe that eBay should require a seller to be more intimately knowledgeable about the items they're selling to ensure records are accurate prior to sale completion. eBay is attempting to make the GSP more convenient by making the seller not responsible for that knowledge which by rights is an incorrect approach as eBay does not have experts on hand at all times that are aware of every item's country of manufacture.

PBI for accepting an item with insufficient paperwork completed in the first place.

Pitney Bowes should make no assumptions about an item's origin or nature, if the records they get from eBay are incomplete, the item should be refused and returned to the seller and PBI should instruct eBay to cancel and reverse the transaction as the consumer was purchasing the item under the original terms which had inaccurate information that cannot stand legally.

Again, PBI is attempting to make the GSP more convenient by making the seller not responsible for that knowledge which by rights is an incorrect approach as PBI does not have experts on hand at all times that are aware of every item's country of manufacture.

Thus it is only logical to make the seller soley responsible for that information.

The problem overall is that the GSP is trying to shield sellers from too much and eBay and PBI are both trying to dumb the process down far too much and thus not requiring information that by rights, they should require as a matter of force: Don't enter the country of manufacture? Can't list the item through the GSP.

I don't care about seller education if the site software itself doesn't enforce basic elements of duty and taxation, yet calculates these figures every day through "Import Charges".

[kxeron]

As much as I hate double-posting:

While doing some research, I came across this thread:

https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Off-Topic/GSP-fraud/td-p/714115

Quoting the original thread:

I won an ebay auction for a Taylor guitar. Everything was great, price was fair, seller informed me about everything needed and the guitar was shipped out the next day after sending the payment. All this ended when GSP broker decided that the package dimensions are not acceptable for postage to EU (seller is in USA, buyer in Estonia). I was refunded my money and the seller was able to keep the money I sent but GSP broker is not going to return the guitar to the seller. The seller asked them to return the guitar and GSP could instead keep the money I sent.

GSP broker decided to keep the guitar and sell it. This type of fraudery is absolutely unacceptable. This way the broker could simply make money by keeping everything that has been sold below the marketvalue. 

I'm absolutely amazed that this type of behaviour is tolerated by Ebay.

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The above noted post should be alarm bells for everyone, the fact that PBI, once they have possession of an item can unilaterally and with impunity steal the item while being protected by contracts if they deem they cannot ship the item while paying "make whole" to the needed parties while depriving both parties of the item.

The seller wasn't paid by PBI for the item, they were paid by the buyer with the expectation that the item would go through, and if eBay's site software made claim that the item could be processed by the GSP, then this is upon eBay as well. But of course they along with PBI are protected via the "Warranties" section of the T&C's as per usual.

All the further reason more transparency is required more than ever as this situation likely goes on more than we can estimate. Money is not a definitive replacement for an item that does in fact have sentimental value or possibly an irreplaceable item that gets snagged and sold by PBI in its disposure.