@afantiques wrote:
Yes a Cash Grab! Someone at ebay have thought up another way to get more money from buyers. Extra costs that were not there previously. Had no problem having items shipped directly to me in the past. Now with this GSP--- That is a cash grab!
The GSP is an entirely different service, so it has different costs and charges. Ramping up the charges for the same service could be called a 'cash grab' I suppose, but I doubt if anyone is making much if any extra cash from the GSP.
I'm not saying it is a good service, just that buses and taxis charge different prices.
If the GSP isn't a cash grab, then at minimum it's about control and ensuring that eBay and PBI get *some* money and to keep eBay appearing progressive...
eBay has always throughout all of their policies they introduce have a common trend: Keeping as much of the process "in house" as possible and insultating them and their partners (e.g. PBI) and subsidaries (e.g. Paypal) from outside influence, scutiny or decision. Another example is some years ago eBay made it harder for sellers to accept non-paypal payment methods.eBay has always done these kinds of things under the guise of applying protection but often times it's applied in a very authoritarian way.
Consider how if a buyer trusts a seller and vice versa and mails a cheque and the seller then mails the item, eBay has no records, nothing to enter into their bureaucratic process to say that the sale took place and nothing to be able to claim their fees against, no final value and they've been relegated into being a mere classifieds site, rather than the famed auction house they identify as. This was a decision that was made outside of eBay control and process.
Now with the GSP, eBay and PBI have inserted themselves into shipping for the purpose of being relevant end-to-end of more of the process, they make it optional now, but so was using paypal at one point, eBay/PBI want to continue to maintain relevance and further wants to be able to appear innovative as well as a source to increase cash flow for the investors to invest more. Business doesn't get growth by doing one thing and one thing well, that's why stocks on grocery store chain (e.g. Loblaws) stocks are fairly flat in nature, they really don't "innovate" in a way business leaders and investors appreciate, nothing that looks progressive and good on powerpoint slides.
While to consumers it may appear that eBay/PBI are being malicious, I wager they're not being purposefully malicious, but rather negligent through process, designing really no valid or empowered "feedback process" into the programme, so the C-level management at both organizations fail to actually see any numbers that indicate anything is wrong with the programme and too, investors don't see anything wrong either given all they see is the "big picture".
It's often very, very easy to create a programme but implement no real process/procedure to determine if it is effective or if it generates problems. The only numbers that the C-levels see most likely is "X number of sellers using programme" or "Buyers purchasing through the programme" and a chart with lines pointing up. There's no chart most likely to indicate satisfaction with the programme so theres again, no problem visible: Negligence through process.
Too, at the Erlanger, Kentucky shipping center, most likely the employees there are not experts or authorities like a customs agent would be as those personnel would demand higer wages, so PBI to keep external influence or interference out of the picture (e.g. government from breathing down their necks) while hiring non-experts, they most likely have designed an exclusively internal policy document set that seldom refers to outside law or the like so they don't need to pay their employees higher wages for being trained on customs law. These documents are likely very broad and blankey in nature to cover PBI from said outside interference.
Consider for instance most likely employees are just handed a list of item/item-types that won't be shipped and to set those items into a seperate room or someting of the sort and that's that - even if an item arrives with a certificate indicating its legality to ship, the employee isn't an authority to make that determination and is thus compulsed by policy to exclude the item from shipping. Too, the employees at the shipping center most likely have quotas of how many packages they must clear per day or be written up, thus the rough handling of many packages.
So with these three elements combined (non-experts combined with quotas combined with internal policy that doesn't refer to actual law) shipping appears to be chaotic and non-deterministic or in some cases brutal to someone who doesn't have access to those policy documents (employee handbooks, etc) as public law isn't being followed, public norms aren't being followed, commerce norms aren't being followed, everything is internalized for control purposes inside of PBI and eBay.
And again, for another item of control and ensuring there is minimal interference as to ensure legal receives no complaints, they provide tracking numbers that cannot be used by an outside party to scutinize performance or travel speed. Likewise they issue receipts that are not itemized again, so they cannot be used externally to ensure that they're in control of any complaints and the entire complaint process to which they have exclusive control over what is considered "Relief" which goes onto another item...
The T&C's of eBay are written to maintain internal control of any complaints or redress mechanisms as to prevent external interferance that could call into question eBay's own mechanisms that could disrupt business and thus investor faith in the company or their partners. Likewise the GSP terms are written to sign power of attourney over to PBI so that they can have unilateral control over whether the item makes it to the consumer or if it is to be disposed as according to internal policy or if the item is damaged by PBI employees what is to happen from there or even details like wat they are to charge for the GSP shipment service which allegedly contains money that is alleged to go toward duty and taxes (there's no documentation proving it ever does though).
Through the T&C's, eBay and their partners can unilaterally decide what is considered "fraud" or "deceptive advertising" or "correct shipping methods" or "will the item be shipped" or "how much is to be charged for shipping" or the like. eBay doesn't want to be tasked with having to manage tens of countries laws and to ensure seller A in country A with seller B in country B are following their local laws, so they centralize everything around US law (look at the Jurisdiction section of the main T&Cs) which lends itself to be very laxed about protecting consumers and too creating an environment where companies may essentially lay down policy which has quite a bit of force behind it, perhaps close to being that of a law when a company has a monopoly.
I believe that eBay is being negligent due to the fact there is no complaint process for the GSP, theres no valid internal method to call eBay or PBI out on a failure to perform, and to eBay, in the "world of eBay", there is no such thing as external influence, you can call the CBSA about an item's cost but at the end of the day, what eBay's website says is all that they care about because that's their process.
To pay PBI for the GSP is to take on a liability because you're not paying taxes, duty, nor a shipping service. You're paying into an programme fund and that's as much as anyone outside of eBay and PBI can observe.
Finally, the eBay/PBI employees you can call and that are available on these forums (kalvin, bennet4612, etc) have little to no control over any element of the programme, even the "GSP Specialists" have no control as they aren't the C-level personnel who sign off on what the program is to do or is not to do, they can only follow the process laid in front of them just as the PBI personnel at Erlanger must follow their employee handbooks even if they have knowledge of external law and know something should happen in the real world, they must follow eBay world policy. Even the moderator on this forum (li-leslie) is at the behest of policy and procedure that states that only 2 GSP threads may exist on this forum and must ensure that is to happen at all costs or may lose their jobs or earn a significant reprimand.
In summary, the GSP's failings aren't due to malace, they're due to an over-complication of process and procedure that I could write a whole book on and only scratch the surface of. eBay/PBI's C-levels want problems to remain inside so that they don't have to deal with boat rocking of external authorities so that investor relations and "innovation" continue upwards. Control is key to cornering a market in today's business world and appearing good to investors and to keep one's own liability down.
Considering eBay is introducing a liability to consumers, I would strongly advise consumers to avoid entering into the programme because of its lack of external oversight and scrutiny and consider ways they can bring eyes to the issue in ways that will show up as a significant blip to the stats the C-level executives see. Of course this would involve introducing more international attention to the issue at hand and require some coordination amongst eBay users who care about the site in ways more than just statistics and sales, but at the end of the day the community needs to act in ways that eBay will understand in their own language as a company, to force a process path to be created to measure the GSP's performance better. If this requires 1000s of phonecalls to eBay's callcentre in concerns about the programme's accountability from each eBay user one can muster, so be it.
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