Import Charges **bleep** GSP??

[mission01]

I'm in Canada and trying to buy a used hockey jersey on eBay. Jersey is $103 after exchange rate, shipping is $29.26 CDN and Import Charges are $24.01 US. So in the end shipping will cost me about $70 CDN for shipping. How can they justify $24 US for import charges. What a crock. I emailed the guy and told him to stop using the GSP and just go USPS but when he relisted he defaulted back to GSP.

Obviously eBay must be in cahoots with PB. Biggest piece of **bleep** they ever implemented. I want the jersey but refuse to pay that much on shipping and import charges.

[ypdc_dennis]

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mission01 wrote:

I'm in Canada and trying to buy a used hockey jersey on eBay. Jersey is $103 after exchange rate, shipping is $29.26 CDN and Import Charges are $24.01 US. So in the end shipping will cost me about $70 CDN for shipping. How can they justify $24 US for import charges.

I emailed the guy and told him to stop using the GSP and just go USPS but when he relisted he defaulted back to GSP. I want the jersey but refuse to pay that much on shipping and import charges.

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USED is TAXABLE coming into Canada. GSP collects the tax, duty (most likely none for this), processing and shipping charge.

If you are lucky, something like that might come across the border into Canada via USPS/Canada Post and not get charged, but if not, it would have taxes (on item cost + shipping) + $9.95 collection fee = $30 in a 15% province or as low as $17 in 5% province/territory.

Telling a seller not to use GSP will not work. Ask the seller to exclude Canada from GSP and point them to the eBay.com help file that tells them how to do it.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/shipping-globally.html -- Shipping exclusions section

...

As for PB being in "cahoots" with eBay -- no surprise, since Pitney-Bowes runs the Global Shipping Program for eBay.

-..-

[femmefan1946]

Obviously eBay must be in cahoots with PB.

Well, yeah.

EBay hired PB to run the program.

PB gets about $5USD for each item processed*.

The Canadian government gets whatever duty and Sales Taxes (on a used item mainly sales taxes**) are collected from the buyer before the seller ever ships the item to the GPS plant in Kentucky.

Does eBay get a cut of the $5? Probably.

More certainly, they get more fees from US sellers who got more international sales and higher auction bids when they started  accepting international sales, because of this Seller Protection program.

And the reason we can believe it is successful, is that it has been extended to take in UK sellers, another group which was historically nervous of shipping outside their own borders.

CBSA and Canada Post have an informal agreement that they will ignore low value and small parcels, apparently on the basis that to process them would cost the taxpayer more than they could possibly collect.

With a hockey sweater valued at $103 USD (about $130CDN) you could expect the parcel to be stopped and assessed at Customs because it is over $20CDN value (the duty free limit) and bulky.

And then there is the actual mailing cost.

Your seller might go for First Class International Parcel, which does include the all-important Delivery Confirmation, but he is equally likely to go for the easier to find Priority International. Here are those costs.

https://postcalc.usps.com/?country=10440

Is the GPS a good thing?

Not for buyers. And certainly not for Canadian buyers.

But it was never designed for buyers.

It is a Seller Protection program.

BTW- your seller would have to cancel (at buyer's request) the listing you won. Then he would relist as Fixed Price, being sure to remove the automatic GSP option, and insert USPS Calculated Shipping.

If he then uses your name as the title and tells you it is up, you can find it and buy it easily.

Up to the seller whether or not the sale is worth the extra work.

** At 15% HST that's about $20 plus the $9.95 Canada Post service fee.

*This compares with $25 with UPS and $9.95 with Canada Post.

[Anonymous]

I just bought items that are less than $18.00 and I get charged around $4.50 for import fees which confused me.  Other time I bought items for over $20.00 and was not charged import fees.  It seems that eBay and GSP don't know what they are doing??

[marnotom!]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I just bought items that are less than $18.00 and I get charged around $4.50 for import fees which confused me.  Other time I bought items for over $20.00 and was not charged import fees.  It seems that eBay and GSP don't know what they are doing??

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Are you quoting prices in US or Canadian dollars?  

The tax/duty-free exemption applies to most (but not all) items sent by mail or courier with a declared value of less than C$20.00.

Items sent through the GSP are not transported by mail or courier to Canada, so that exemption may not be applicable.

Besides, all items sent through the GSP incur "import charges" of some sort.  It's not just tax and duty you're being charged for, it's processing and customs clearance fees.  Sometimes those charges will be buried in the item's shipping charge, which is why the listing appears to have no "import charges".