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.

[dogsab001]

I have been enjoying eBay for 12 years, buying (mostly) and selling and enjoy a 100% rating 🙂  However, since the introduction/promoting of Global Shipping Programme on eBay U.S.A. I simply find it uneconomical to bid on items listed on US eBay.  Only interested/purchased items in the US150 or less bracket and mostly 'TRIFFIC vintage clothing or new/near new

outdoor gear (such as Patagonia clothing).  I can now only justify bidding on US items if the seller is still using USPS First Class International or USPS Priority post because even though their prices went up dramatically about two years ago they are not as exorbitant as Global Shipping Programmes prices.  The lengthy list of 'benefits' of US sellers using GSP are not, in the main,  relevant to items sent to AUSTRALIA .  Over the years I NEVER had a lost item shipped to AUSTRALIA from the U.S. and NEVER had to pay any fees upon receipt etc.  My purchases included clothing, pottery (Portmeirion products) and similiar.  Most of the time, with the light weight Patagonia products the sellers would willingly send USPS First Class which was great....this was after I advised the seller that I had never had a problem and IF it went astray I would simply wear it 🙂  I can't/won't bid on items on eBay US now because it is not economically viable for me, in AUSTRALIA, to do so.  No biggie for me, as I have a full wardrobe of beaut vintage and new clothing I accrued before the postage promoted by eBay went ballistic 😞  Dogs 😉  

[marnotom!]

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@winddancersfancy wrote:

My wish is that the Global Shipping Program would be cancelled. I don't know that e-Bay is ahead with more shipping fees when balanced with losing Canadian and International customer final fees.

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I'm not clear on what you mean by this statement.  eBay doesn't take fees from the Global Shipping Program shipping charges.  It only takes fees from the seller's lowest calculated shipping charge from the seller's location to the Global Shipping Center in Kentucky.  The GSP shipping fees go to PitneyBowes, the GSP administrator.

Can you clarify this statement, please?  Do you mean something different by it than what I'm reading?

[ferrantho]

@marnotom!
Just curious if you are the official thread moderator for the GSP section?

[marnotom!]

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@ferrantho wrote:

@marnotom!
Just curious if you are the official thread moderator for the GSP section?

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Just curious about why you didn't clarify that post for me and possibly others if you didn't find it confusing.

[cerebus]

These are all brilliant points.... well done!  (My own loathing for eBay's GSP knows no bounds.)

[ferrantho]

Clarify which post? My question is are you the official GSP thread moderator ? Every single time someone has presented a view or comment in this thread you are the one who habitually responds... Just curious if you are the moderator or a Pitney Bowes employee. I have gone back many pages and you are always the one responding to ANY comment or question posted in this forum.
@marnotom

[afantiques]

All posters are just normal ebay members, no-one has any special priviledges or ebay or PB employment.

A few of us have taken an interest in the GSP scheme, in my case because I thought  it was the worst idea since very early in the history of bad ideas.

Some may appear to be supporting the  scheme by correcting factual errors about how it works, but this is simply because we dislike published nonsense more than we dislike the GSP.

[marnotom!]

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@ferrantho wrote:

Clarify which post? My question is are you the official GSP thread moderator ? Every single time someone has presented a view or comment in this thread you are the one who habitually responds... Just curious if you are the moderator or a Pitney Bowes employee. I have gone back many pages and you are always the one responding to ANY comment or question posted in this forum.

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Have you checked the title of this thread?  It's called "Comments about the Global Shipping Program."  I haven't responded "every single time someone has presented a view or comment in this thread," have I?  I've even gone so far as to stay away from this discussion for almost two years, so you haven't been reading this thread all that closely.

Good grief.  I think my dislike of hyperbole outstrips my dislike of wack information.

[arlene_v]

Ferrantho,  when I first starting reading and posting to this thread I wondered the same thing.  It seemed odd  that a very small number of posters would regularly step in  or "correct" comments. What's the agenda here, I thought.

After a while it became clear that these are just community members who have a special interest in the GSP.

The .ca Comments thread attracts all sorts (myself included!) EXCEPT  Pitney Bowes and eBay employees! They probably don't even read this anymore. Only the  Lithium MOD who is likely bored out of his or her mind by this thread already, and that's only to make sure that we don't get too nasty or personal.

Honestly, it would be quite exciting to see a post here from an eBay employee, but no such luck.  

[00nevermind00]

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@arlene_v wrote:

The .ca Comments thread attracts all sorts (myself included!) EXCEPT  Pitney Bowes and eBay employees! They probably don't even read this anymore. Only the  Lithium MOD who is likely bored out of his or her mind by this thread already, and that's only to make sure that we don't get too nasty or personal.

Honestly, it would be quite exciting to see a post here from an eBay employee, but no such luck.

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When the GSP first got off the ground, there was an eBay employee named Bennett who was assigned to GSP communications or whatever they called it. He had the courage to come here and face the storm of outrage that came from poster after poster after poster. Most of his answers were canned replies but he was probably very limited in what he could say. But he did listen and he did help with individual problems.

He was later reassigned and replaced by this:

[mater721]

Nailed it!

[zotrack]

Why do you take a Microprocessor in a well packaged envelope by a seller? Then make it travel halfway through the United States, to be removed out of his good packaging? And then... roughly put the microprocessor in a 0.1 mm plastic envelope without ANY kind of protection, send it to Canada, from warehouse to warehouse. Making the fragile item travel 2500km instead of 600km for the normal seller-to-buyer way. And then have to ship it back at my fee because of a destroying service that we all actually pay for... Thanks for the non-working processor that came in two pieces today that I now have to send back at my fee...  YOU ARE JUST DESTROYING EBAY, DECADE LONG CUSTOMERS HAVE TO QUIT BECAUSE WE ARE GETTING SCREWED TIME AFTER TIME. YOU WERE REALLY THINKING GREED ONLY TO CREATE SUCH A SHAMEFUL SERVICE. How what about privacy??? I don't and never did give you the right to repackage any item. This was the last strike, you put down that ridiculous GSP before end of july or I'm out, and for good...

[mater721]

I think you have other options... if it was damaged by PB then you should be getting a full refund - and not need to send item back.

[zotrack]

What you do you mean? The seller is covered or I have to do the claim?

[mater721]

I think it has to do with how you make the claim...

Not as Described or something (as it came to you broken).

Hopefully someone who has actually done a return with GSP can provide more details, but I'm sure I've seen other posting regarding this - in that PB will do a full refund (if they are at fault) and does not require a return.

[afantiques]

Thanks for the non-working processor that came in two pieces today that I now have to send back at my expense... 

You need to make a claim for item not as described citing damaged in transit. You should get a full refund and you will not need to return anything.

A good plan to get more sympathetic and helpful answers is not to call people 'Robots'

I don't and never did give you the right to repackage any item

Read the buyer terms and conditions that you accepted by buying. You did give this permission.

[zotrack]

The robots I was talking about was the robots working for ebay, since there is no way to communicate with humans working at ebay... I wasnt talking about ebay people as robots, not ordinary people...

[pierrelebel]

"since there is no way to communicate with humans working at ebay."

Actually that is pretty easy.  Click on the "Help & Contact" link on top of the page. A telephone number will be provided to answer most inquiries.

However, in your case you do not need to contact anyone,  Just file the claim and the system will take care of you.

[pierrelebel]

"...the robots working for ebay,..."

There is a sign in the front lobby of the office at eBay:

"There are two kinds of people in life!

... people who like their jobs,

and people who don't work here anymore."

[00nevermind00]

I wanted to find out more about what happens when a GSP item is "not as described". More specifically, I wanted as clear an answer as possible (with this convoluted program) about whether or not the buyer gets the GSP portion of his/her payment refunded.

Post #74 of the July 8 Weekly Chat on the .com board:

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Weekly-Chat-with-eBay-Staff/Weekly-Chat-with-the-eBay-Community-July-8-...

Griff@ebay.com wrote:

A GSP payment consists of three parts:

The item price
The cost of shipping to the Kentucky warehouse (if the seller charged for domestic shipping)
The costs of shipping, VAT, duties, etc from KY to the buyer's location.

In a SNAD case (Seller makes mistake in item's description), the buyer is reimbursed for all of the above and eBay recoups the item price and cost of shipping to the KY warehouse from the seller. The cost of shipping, VAT, duties, etc for the portion from KY to the buyer is paid back to the buyer from eBay's pocket.

The seller is only responsible for the payment they received in PayPal. The rest is eBay's responsibility.
Griff