Shipping with DHL?

ez-robot
Community Member

Hi,

 

I'm currently selling a few things on eBay and I use DHL shipping. I noticed that the only options for shipping services were Canada Post though (This is in the drop-down menu). How do I select a DHL shipping service?

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Shipping with DHL?

You don't.

Canada Post (and UPS and recently FedEx) have contracts with eBay and more importantly with Paypal that allow sellers to print out shipping labels and usually get a discount on shipping costs.

Canada Post gives discounts from 5% to 18% off PO counter prices for some services.

DHL has no such contract.

 

You should be aware of two things.

Within Canada, most couriers do not deliver to rural or isolated communities. Instead they subcontract deliveries to ..... Canada Post. Why not cut out the middle man?

When shipping to international destinations, couriers must by law charge the receiver applicable duty and sales taxes. For this 'brokerage' service they charge quite high service charges. (Check out the thousands of postings about UPS charges on the Buyer Board.) The courier will not hand over your customer's purchase until these charges are paid. And your customer will blame you.

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Shipping with DHL?

Is there a way to manually input the shipping cost instead of having eBay automatically calculate it?
 
Yes. But it can be tricky for parcels. I assume you are sending parcels since you are using a courier.
Just use Fixed Price instead of Calculated Shipping.
However, before you do that, look carefully at the costs for shipping to different destinations. Just as Regional and National domestic parcels can have wide differences in cost with Canada Post, destination can make a huge difference with US destinations.
With Fixed Price you will have to find an average that may lose you money on some shipments and overcharge buyers on some shipments, to have the total cover your costs.
Or, you could use Contact Seller for Shipping Cost, which tends to be a backbutton trigger.

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5 REPLIES 5

Shipping with DHL?

You don't.

Canada Post (and UPS and recently FedEx) have contracts with eBay and more importantly with Paypal that allow sellers to print out shipping labels and usually get a discount on shipping costs.

Canada Post gives discounts from 5% to 18% off PO counter prices for some services.

DHL has no such contract.

 

You should be aware of two things.

Within Canada, most couriers do not deliver to rural or isolated communities. Instead they subcontract deliveries to ..... Canada Post. Why not cut out the middle man?

When shipping to international destinations, couriers must by law charge the receiver applicable duty and sales taxes. For this 'brokerage' service they charge quite high service charges. (Check out the thousands of postings about UPS charges on the Buyer Board.) The courier will not hand over your customer's purchase until these charges are paid. And your customer will blame you.

Message 2 of 6
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Shipping with DHL?

Is there a way to manually input the shipping cost instead of having eBay automatically calculate it?
Message 3 of 6
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Shipping with DHL?

Is there a way to manually input the shipping cost instead of having eBay automatically calculate it?
 
Yes. But it can be tricky for parcels. I assume you are sending parcels since you are using a courier.
Just use Fixed Price instead of Calculated Shipping.
However, before you do that, look carefully at the costs for shipping to different destinations. Just as Regional and National domestic parcels can have wide differences in cost with Canada Post, destination can make a huge difference with US destinations.
With Fixed Price you will have to find an average that may lose you money on some shipments and overcharge buyers on some shipments, to have the total cover your costs.
Or, you could use Contact Seller for Shipping Cost, which tends to be a backbutton trigger.
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Shipping with DHL?

OK, thanks!
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Shipping with DHL?

Yes.

But you have to use Fixed Price.... Hmmm.

You could cross check the pricing of DHL and UPS.

If they are reasonably close (or if DHL is cheaper than UPS, most of the time, under your contract) you could just use the UPS listing.

Basically, you are telling your customer that you are using one company but actually using another. If the costs are the same, no problem. If the costs are lower, you can do a partial refund as appropriate.

Your customer won't much care which courier is delivering as long as he has tracking (which is actually useless for him other than emotionally) and is not charged MORE than your S&H shows.

 

You will not be able to print out a Paypal shipping label, but you are used to the DHL system in any case.

You will have to manually mark the item as shipped in eBay and manually insert the tracking number and company in the Paypal record.

 

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