eBay

vintagenorth · ‎02-07-2016

I always ship airmail, NEVER ground for overseas and use "standard shipping from outside USA" but am thinking to change to "Economy shipping from outside USA" to give me a longer ship time. Thinking of doing this for all USA and International listings. I have already had a newbie give me a ding for ship time arrival due to ebay's very short mailing estimates.

Has anyone changed their times and if so has it been very detrimental to your USA sales?

If I changed my International times to Economy do you think overseas buyers will assume I ship by ground? (I never do). To the UK is never a problem but Australia is worrisome.

Do buyers ever really read the shipping information?

ricarmic · ‎02-08-2016

Hi Pocomo!

I don't think eBay is the only site that is lost.... across all the other sites I sell on they all have problems, some are worse than what we have to live with here...... trying to keep up across them is definitely challenging.... eBay remains the best/safest place for me to list and sell, which is why the majority of my stuff is listed here so far.....

hlmacdon · ‎02-08-2016

@pocomocomputing wrote:
Over the past years with all the changes at eBay, it has been suggested by members in the USA forums that an eBay "Classic" site be set up for what the old ebay was famous for. Collectibles, old out of stock items, whatever made eBay great. Save the classic site from what ebay wants to be, just another eCommerce site.

The past few years has driven out so many sellers who made ebay what it one was. And those sellers were buyers too.

But then there would be the problem of what goes on one site and the other, eBay has never been able to handle policing, from overcharging on shipping, to category spamming, what ever sellers do wrong by accident or deliberately. Reporting listing on eBay never see any action.

ebay is lost at what to do. Always changing each year what direction they want to go in. Never finishing a move in any direction they take.

I agree wholeheartedly that for C2C they need to have better segmentation versus B2C. The late shipment defect is just one issue where a program that is better suited to B2C impacts negatively on EBay's C2C market. The way they are designing algorithms becomes pretty useless to a big chunk of the C2C market as you are dealing with a greater quantity of unique or one off items. Medium and long term it is also going to drive away a number of small sellers as they grow dissatisfied with policies that don't fit their model. A great example of this is 30 day returns becoming a requirement for .com TRS. Industry standard for mass retail, but certainly not for smaller sellers.

How you would separate out the two is difficult but would be a worthwhile exercise. If you look at another large competitor they have their own product mix, and then a marketplace product mix, and on a sku level the two tie back to each other where applicable. That part is logical. The tough bit is how you would potentially have a different shopping experience between two groups, while allowing traffic to flow between the two so you aren't losing traffic overall.

It is not an easy task, but I hope they are looking at it seriously. From the outside it just looks like they continue to drop heavily in C2C revenue, while B2C business is not bringing in any additional marketing revenue. Combine that with low growth and you've shed much of what makes unique, while neither growing substantially nor bringing in net new sources of revenue.

hlmacdon · ‎02-08-2016

@block36 wrote:
@pjcdn2005 wrote:

It wouldn't affect your global TRS status. The only time that the one day handling comes into play is if you are a TRSplus on .com and unless you use tracking for the majority of your items, it is difficult for most Canadians to be a TRSplus.
Some may think that if you have one day handling that you are rated higher in search when a buyer is using best match but I don't think anyone knows that for sure or how much of a difference it would make.

In your case, you might be better off just to change the shipping methods on your listings. Instead of lettermail,, one of the generic choices might work better for you.
Thank you very much for your guidance!

Additional question ( I am absorbing it step by step):
Did I understand properly that although I can allocate light packet or small parcel shipping method, I can indicate the same shipping cost as I do for letters?
And the light packet or small parcel selection will give me a day or two more for delivery?

Thank you again.

For comparison on the subject: I purchased a set of stickers for my granddaughter from seller in China on January 13, 2016... This is obviously LETTER type shipping... The system indicates that I should get it Feb 5 - Feb 25 (quite generous time frame) and it is ECONOMY SHIPPING as marked on the item.
I guess this is the example of what I should do?

Start by having a look at all of the available shipping options to you when you select flat versus calculated. You'll notice a number of them do not have carrier names in them, ie standard international shipping, small packet international air/ground, expedited international shipping. Experiment with those to see what the displayed etas are and what best fits for you. We currently do not have the economy option on .ca, Raphael at ebay is looking to get that implemented for us.

pjcdn2005 · ‎02-08-2016

@block36 wrote:
@pjcdn2005 wrote:

It wouldn't affect your global TRS status. The only time that the one day handling comes into play is if you are a TRSplus on .com and unless you use tracking for the majority of your items, it is difficult for most Canadians to be a TRSplus.
Some may think that if you have one day handling that you are rated higher in search when a buyer is using best match but I don't think anyone knows that for sure or how much of a difference it would make.

In your case, you might be better off just to change the shipping methods on your listings. Instead of lettermail,, one of the generic choices might work better for you.
Thank you very much for your guidance!

Additional question ( I am absorbing it step by step):
Did I understand properly that although I can allocate light packet or small parcel shipping method, I can indicate the same shipping cost as I do for letters?
And the light packet or small parcel selection will give me a day or two more for delivery?

Thank you again.

For comparison on the subject: I purchased a set of stickers for my granddaughter from seller in China on January 13, 2016... This is obviously LETTER type shipping... The system indicates that I should get it Feb 5 - Feb 25 (quite generous time frame) and it is ECONOMY SHIPPING as marked on the item.
I guess this is the example of what I should do?

If the seller was listing on .com they have specific categories for the Chinese sellers so that could be what they used.

If you look at post 8 in this thread, poco lists the delivery times with standard shipping on .com. On .ca the standard shipping times are the same but we don't have an economy shipping category right now. I don't think that we have any choices that are comparable to the time that you were quoted.

I don't think it matters to the buyer outside of Canada if you put small packet instead of light packet or lettermail because the Canada Post services don't mean anything to them anyway. I don't know what the specific times are to each country for each service but you might want to check a few of the countries that you ship to most often. (or Poco might know and post them later)

pocomocomputing · ‎02-09-2016

Here is my table of estimated delivery in days for ebay.ca Canada. It has the various Canada Post shipping options. Countries not in the table below has "varies" for delivery estimates. I used 1 day handling time.

The table has the ebay countries in the left column. The top column has ebay shipping options. I have abbreviations there so I will explain them.

Std Int'l = Standard Int'l Shipping (Flat Rate Shipping)
CP Lm/Lp = Canada Post Lettermail (Canada only) / Letter-post USA (USA only) and Letter-post Int'l (Flat Rate Shipping)
CP LP Flat = Canada Post Light Packet USA (USA only) and Canada Post Light Packet Int'l (Flat Rate Shipping)
CP LP Calc = Canada Post Light Packet USA (USA only) and Canada Post Light Packet Int'l (Calculated Shipping)
CP SPA Flat = Canada Post Small Packet Air USA (USA only) and Canada Post Small Packet Air Int'l (Flat Rate Shipping)
CP SPA Calc = Canada Post Small Packet Air USA (USA only) and Canada Post Small Packet Air Int'l (Calculated Shipping)
CP SPG Flat = Canada Post Small Packet Ground USA (USA only) and Canada Post Small Packet Ground Int'l (Flat Rate Shipping)
CP SPG Calc = Canada Post Small Packet Ground USA (USA only) and Canada Post Small Packet Ground Int'l (Calculated Shipping)

The USA is listed twice because the eBay Listing system treats the USA sometimes as an International country as well as a USA only country. So a listing can show the USA with two shipping options and the estimates are different.

The table shows that the Standard International Shipping option is longer for most other options (green) with a few countries having this option within one day of the maximum days for the other options for that country (yellow) and some countries having the standard way under the individual options (pink).

pjcdn2005 · ‎02-09-2016

Thanks poco!

I had a feeling that you would have all of that info already.

pocomocomputing · ‎02-09-2016

When you look at the above table, you must be wondering what to do with the information when listing on eBay.ca.

For International shipping (exclude Canada and the USA)

My conclusion is a seller should not use the ebay generic Standard International shipping.

Why? The estimates are so short for Germany and Italy by a large number of days, Australia is short by 3 days, countries like Austria and Poland have an estimate in days where the named Canada Post options are varies and cannot have the on time question asked.

If you look at each named Canada Post option, there are more countries with varies and will not have the on time question asked. Germany and Italy have much better estimates, the rest have slightly better or worse estimates but within a couple of days.

For the USA, it does not matter if you use Standard or a named Canada Post option since the estimates are all very close. But you have to look at the side effects of using Standard for the USA versus a named Canada Post option like Small Packet USA or Light Packet USA. All the territories and possessions of the USA are part of the USA and the USA mail system. If you use Standard Int'l Shipping, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Island and so on will show international shipping costs. If you use Canada Post Light Packet USA, then all the territories and possessions get the USA rate versus the international rate in your listing.

So I conclude that a seller should not use Standard Int'l Shipping for the USA.

For Canada, if using Flat Rate shipping, use Standard or Economy International Shipping to get the longer estimates for Lettermail and Parcel services.