eBay

theedgecine · ‎10-06-2020

I’ve been an Ebayer for over twenty years and EBay does so many things well. Shipping isn’t one of them. The global shipping program is a waste of time and money for us buyers outside of US. Shipping takes much longer, it’s inefficient and expensive. I live in Western Canada and parcels from the US usually take about a month to arrive, usually around the latest date estimated. Parcels from the western states should only travel a couple hundred miles to me end up cross-crossing the continent with GSP. Tracking beyond the Pitney Bowes Centre in Kentucky is usually impossible. . When I’m trying to fix my car, I need to know when the part will arrive...and frankly, a month is too long to wait. I’ll be buying from car-part.com and rock auto.com from now on. I hope EBay is paying attention here because they need to provide a better shipping option for international buyers or risk losing a lot of business.

femmefan1946 · ‎10-06-2020

You are probably right to buy locally, even if the price is higher, when you have a time constraint on your purchase.

With the Global Shipping Program there are a few things in play.

First and most important, the GSP is a SELLER PROTECTION program set up to protect a Seller who is terrified of selling outside the Lower 48 states.
Many US sellers will not sell to AK or HI, don't think PR is a part of the USA, and will not ship to military addresses.

And to Canada ? Not a freakin' chance!

The GSP allows those scardey cats to ship to a domestic address (in Kentucky, nice and central) where the seller's responsibility for shipping and damage in transit ends.

If the GSP did not exist, those snowflakes would not sell to Canada at all.

The additional costs should be a little better now that the new NAFTA is in force. The buyer is paying up front appropriate duty, SALES TAXES, and a ~$5 US service charge to GSP/Pitney Bowes for pre-clearing the item through customs.

While we used to pay duty and sales taxes on any item valued over $20, under the new NAFTA, items manufactured in the USA/Mexico/Canada are now duty free and item manufactured elsewhere only are charged duty if they are valued over $150 (and sales taxes if over $40).

Items sent directly through the postal system would be charged duty and sales taxes on the doorstep. Canada Post has a further service charge of $9.95. Couriers charge $25 and up.

And yes, your purchase does go to Erlanger KY for redirection. This is a shipping method called spoke and hub.

It is used by Canada Post and USPS , and famously FedEx, because while it looks weird , it is more efficient than sending each item separately but directly.

The crazy one to my mind is here on Vancouver Island. If I want to send a birthday card to my SIL in Comox, it leaves the postbox here in Victoria, goes northeast to Sydney, catches the ferry, travels to Vancouver then to Richmond, then is processed, back to the ferry, back to Sydney, and finally wends its way up-island to Comox. Our homes are only about three hours apart, but the card would take four days at best.

Again, I agree that buying internationally is probably not the best way to get something needed immediately. I prefer to avoid those sellers as well.

I hope you understand more of what is really happening when you buy from a seller who has opted to use the GSP.

theedgecine · ‎10-09-2020

Thanks for explaining all this, I really appreciate it. Sadly, it appears that the global shipping program does less to benefit the customer than it does for EBay and the seller. But hey, what do I know? I’m just a customer.

femmefan1946 · ‎10-09-2020

Well, yes.

It's a Seller Protection program.

It was never intended to provide any benefit to buyers, with the minor exception of making items available that the seller would not otherwise consider selling internationally.

Which just means the international buyer is dealing with a seller who is afraid of direct international selling.

When Searching for auto parts use a laptop or desktop, rather than a phone, use List rather than Gallery and beware of listings in Search with the words:

Customs services and international tracking provided

Which means the seller will use the GSP.

marnotom! · ‎10-10-2020

@theedgecine wrote:

I’ve been an Ebayer for over twenty years and EBay does so many things well. Shipping isn’t one of them. The global shipping program is a waste of time and money for us buyers outside of US. Shipping takes much longer, it’s inefficient and expensive. I live in Western Canada and parcels from the US usually take about a month to arrive, usually around the latest date estimated. Parcels from the western states should only travel a couple hundred miles to me end up cross-crossing the continent with GSP. Tracking beyond the Pitney Bowes Centre in Kentucky is usually impossible. . When I’m trying to fix my car, I need to know when the part will arrive...and frankly, a month is too long to wait. I’ll be buying from car-part.com and rock auto.com from now on. I hope EBay is paying attention here because they need to provide a better shipping option for international buyers or risk losing a lot of business.

Let's call the Global Shipping Program what it really is: a glorified forwarding service. I think if those in charge of promoting it to Canadian buyers had been more up-front about this from day one, this would have kept in check a lot of unrealistic expectations of the program and a lot of confusion about the program's charges, which way buyers' packages are going and why they're taking as long as their taking would have been mitigated.

Keep in mind, though, that Canada and possibly Mexico are the only countries of the 100 or so served by the program where the "directionality" of a GSP-forwarded item may be questionable. I doubt that the fact that GSP-forwarded items are sent to a hub in Kentucky is going to make much difference to the transit time for items headed elsewhere. In addition, many non-Canadian eBayers in countries with problematic postal services or customs bureaux actually don't mind the program as it bypasses these hurdles.

By the way, there is another international shipping option available to US sellers that's being pushed more on the basis of price. It appears to be a mail consolidation service and thus far, it seems to be slower than the Global Shipping Program in some cases.