Inflated Shipping costs

[geosw-7172]

Is anyone else getting fed up with the ridiculous shipping costs attached to many items for sale?   I have attached a photo of the most ridiculous one I have found to date.  There are so many of them it is hard to keep track, but I have started saving screenshots.  I have contacted a few of the sellers who did not seem aware.  A few others said they would reduce the charge and others do not seem to care.  I have sold on EBay and always manually entered shipping rather than use the EBay suggestions.   I am at the point of giving up on EBay.   I have a bunch of items saved that I want to buy but will notm because shipping is ridiculous, often twice or three times the price of the item.   Would be interested in others thoughts.  

[femmefan1946]

https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/information/app/far/business/findARate?execution=e1s1

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

The price of the item has no bearing on the price of shipping.

That is based on dimensions, weight, destination and service chosen.

The price of the item has no bearing on the price of shipping.

It's not clear what service is being used by this seller, but $55 sounds about right - check on the USPS rate list above.
Note that USPS puts the most expensive service at the top of their list, and the least expensive (First Class International Package) at the bottom.

The price of the item has no bearing on the price of shipping.

While this item would not attract import fees *, higher value items would be charged on your doorstep.

The price of the item has no bearing on the price of shipping.

It is also worth noting that $19.99 is just the opening for this auction. The seller probably expects the value to go up by the time bidding ends.

For the best deal, go to Fixed Price and check the shipping cost to your location before paying. And look at the bottom line, not what goes into that final price.

*For imports from the US, CBSA has a duty-free allowance of $150 and a tax-free allowance of $40.

The price of the item has no bearing on the price of shipping.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@geosw-7172 wrote:

Is anyone else getting fed up with the ridiculous shipping costs attached to many items for sale?   I have attached a photo of the most ridiculous one I have found to date.  There are so many of them it is hard to keep track, but I have started saving screenshots.  I have contacted a few of the sellers who did not seem aware.  A few others said they would reduce the charge and others do not seem to care.  I have sold on EBay and always manually entered shipping rather than use the EBay suggestions.   I am at the point of giving up on EBay.   I have a bunch of items saved that I want to buy but will notm because shipping is ridiculous, often twice or three times the price of the item.   Would be interested in others thoughts.  

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What has been happening forever is US sellers do very little research when it comes to the options they choose to offer for shipping internationally. The dot com dropdown shows the pricier options first. Cheaper hidden towards the bottom. After the first listing is created it becomes a natural habit to keep using the same procedure. Basically set it and forget it. Or the mentality all the other sellers are doing it so it has to be the way to go.

In the past it was very easy to find US sellers offering multiple services. Now that's extremely rare. Or they just go with GSP or Intl Standard without understanding the grief they cause International buyers or the costs involved. I've spoken to many sellers who are very shocked on the problems those problems can cause. In some cases they were open to offer "normal" shipping. Others had no idea how they could switch. Once you are enrolled with something  within eBay, it is not always easy to un-enroll.

-Lotz

PS. Really good bad example. Free shipping anywhere in USA for pocket books.....Through the roof shipping  majority of US sellers to Canada. Search only filters so well.

[marnotom!]

The problem isn't so much that the shipping charges are "inflated" as it is that US sellers are finding and using shipping methods that are inappropriate for the items they're listing.  The (literal) screen shot that you posted shows an item with eBay's International Standard Shipping service as the shipping method, and it appears to be the equivalent of Parcel Post that's being employed here, whereas the item would probably be shippable by what most countries' postal services refer to as Small Packet and what USPS refers to as "First Class Package International".

The issue a lot of American sellers seem to have with FCPI service is that it's only trackable to certain countries.  South American countries are absent from the list as are countries with more problematic postal/customs systems such as Italy.  Many sellers are unwilling to ship internationally without tracking, and to an extent this is understandable, as shipping within the US without tracking is generally acknowledged as being pretty foolish.  Besides, delivery confirmation for US domestic shipments comes pretty cheap, so why not use it?

Back in the day when the .com site had an International Trading discussion board, a lot of non-US boardies and I tried making cases that fraudulent INR claims for international shipments were extremely rare, particularly for the low-value, low-fraud risk items being sold by most sellers coming to the discussion board, but it was largely a lost cause.  Sales outside the US tend to be the exception rather than the rule for American eBay sellers, after all, and as suggested earlier, are often treated as an afterthought by many eCommerce sites.  I think COVID and changes to the taxation system for casual imports in some major international markets are also putting a crimp in international sales.

[theoldestfart]

As others in this thread can attest to eBay customer reps frustrated me to no end and I got more meaningful answers from the community than official eBay reps.

I nearly had to purchase an item to repair a client's laptop and dreaded looking on eBay for a replacement for the item.  Thankfully the item did not need replacement. 

It is bad when an eBay user of 14+ years actually dreads using the service and feels that having to submit a list of questions to eBay sellers that have filtered through the prescreening including eliminating excessive shipping charges listings which according to eBay is fine to charge whatever the seller wants.

It was not always this way with me and eBay but from this user, the excitement has long gone from using eBay.

[pjcdn2005]

With eBay international standard seller ships to a Center in the US and then it is forwarded, usually by DHL.  I'm not certain if DHL always handles it the last part of the journey.

That service is usually slightly less expense than first class international.   It looks like the seller of the item in the screenshot (and for almost every listing ) set one rate for everywhere other than the US so the $55 charge is for Canada or anywhere else that the seller ships. The seller must not care that much if they sell international as they don't appear to put any effort in figuring out accurate shipping costs.

[marnotom!]

Good catch. What’s possibly going on with this particular listing, then, is that the seller is using a medium Priority flat-rate box for both domestic and international shipments and basing their flat international shipping charge on the Canadian rate. They may have chosen International Standard Shipping in the shipping description in error or without a full understanding of how the service works.