In Business Policies Can You Set Flat Rate From Canada To USA & Exclude Alaska, Hawaii & P Rico?

[intimewithmusic]

In Business Policies Can You Set Flat Rate From Canada To USA & Exclude Alaska, Hawaii & P Rico?

   After struggling for a long time to set up shipments of musical instruments to the US which are larger than Canada Post handles I have an account with UPS. If you have an eBay store on eBay.ca calculated shipping using UPS to the USA does not work.  The alternative for me is to use Flat Rate shipping costs. 

  Example: I have a smaller xylophone crated to ship.  Box size is 41" X 26" X 14". Weight = 46 lbs. It's 7 " too high to go Canada Post Expedited Parcel to the US. Freight cost via UPS is $236 BC to Orlando Fl. It is what it is. So my flat rate is $150 anywhere in the 48 contiguous states . The other $86 is built into the price.

  The eBay help solution says "Go to business policies. Select International Exclusions/USA . Select the check boxes for the states you do not wish to ship to. Doing so will disallow purchasers in those areas from buying your widget. "  The problem is those check boxes do not exist on eBay.ca. They aren't next to USA in either Business Policy exclusions or Shipping Preference exclusions. You can only exclude ALL the USA or nothing. 

  I checked and if someone in Hawaii sees the listing they will see the flat rate of $150.  The actual cost to ship it there is 482.26! I clearly printed the exclusions in the listing but I doubt eBay would back me up if someone from outside the continental US has made the purchase. 

  Does anyone have a solution to excluding the US non contiguous states?

   Thank you a whole lot!!

[ypdc_dennis]

If you are not in Managed Payments yet, list on ebay.COM  and set up a shipping rate table for the USA (domestic).

[kawartha-ephemera]

Have you considered setting up some shipping rate tables for your instruments? I imagine it would take some time and research to do but it might be worthwhile in this case. 

If you create listings on ebay.com you can create shipping tables on .com that could be enabled for those listings. Pricing can be adjusted state by state and even regionally within states. Higher rates can be set for Alaska and Hawaii with tables. For some strange reason Puerto Rico is not available in the USA section, PR can be added to a shipping exclusions list though ... it's listed in the Caribbean section. It could be included in a Caribbean shipping table too I suppose.

For whatever reasons there is not any way that I can see to setup U.S.  shipping tables for ebay.ca listings.

[reallynicestamps]

I wonder, if you want to list on dotCA, if "Problem with Address" cancellations would be any help ?

Combined with your exclusions in the description.

I don't suppose you get a lot of orders from AK , HI and PR so that might be acceptable to eBay, even though it isn't a happy situation for the buyer, which means he can leave feedback.

[kawartha-ephemera]

Puerto Rico can be blocked using the ebay.ca shipping exclusion list, it is listed in with the Caribbean & Central American countries. The only way to block AK and HI using the exclusion list is to exclude the whole of the USA which is of course not very helpful.

I found this out after selling (flat rate) an item requiring parcel service to PR.  I was hopeful that the shipping tables available on ebay.ca would do the trick for AK , HI and PR too but there is no means provided to differentiate between states which pretty much defeats the point of setting up a U.S. table.

The ebay.com tables are very flexible in this regard, totally different from what is offered on .ca.

[intimewithmusic]

Thank you. I've received excellent suggestions from everyone. I'm researching the best way to go and will post more information below. I'm going to chat with eBay and see what they say.

[intimewithmusic]

thank you. Lot's of great input! I'm going to post my results below.

[intimewithmusic]

Thanks to all of you!

   In the meantime I've changed my listing to "Free Domestic Shipping and took the US out of the mix. I'll probably never sell a xylophone in Canada and will fix this. 

   I've found another very similar seller in Ontario. He/she sells a lot of large musical items.  They have about 850 active listings and 850 Sold listings all with flat rates. It looks like they've done very well.

  I think they list on eBay.com because when I look up a listing there the price in USD is $999.00. When I look up the same listing on eBay.ca the price is $1310.44 with the exchange. 

All their prices have flat shipping rates stated in USD. The rate is exactly the same for Canada and the US. This particular listing is for a drum set. The flat shipping rate is $100usd to anywhere in Canada or the US. The seller has a printed statement in the description that says "Continental United States Only".

  Out of curiosity I entered a zip code for Honolulu under "Shipping" . The shipping cost came up as $100usd. The actual cost would be about $800. I'm just speculating but it appears they are getting away with just using a written exclusion. If they had set up rate tables the costs wouldn't be the same for all of the USA and all of Canada. It looks like they are listing everything on ebay.com. There all of  their prices are in even regular digits (ie: $999.00 usd but all are converted to wacky figures in Canada (ie: $1310.44) due to the varying exchange. 

    I'm going to give eBay a call and see if that is all I need to do. 

 I'll post the results here.

Thanks again everyone!

[reallynicestamps]

I'm just speculating but it appears they are getting away with just using a written exclusion.

Or the problem may not have come up.

If they are listing on dotCOM, they may not have noticed that they can exclude AK/HI/PR. I think this is a relatively new exclusion, less than a decade old?

[intimewithmusic]

Good news! I spoke to "Rogene" at eBay. She looked at the listing and said the written exclusion is all I need. "USA SHIPPING VIA UPS TO UPS STANDARD DELIVERY POINTS WITHIN THE 48 CONTIGUOUS STATES  (excludes Hawaii, Alaska & Puerto Rico) is $150CAD.

If someone in Alaska or Hawaii purchased it I would be covered as long as I have a clear exclusion to those regions. 

Thanks again for all the great ideas. I'll try this and see how it goes!

[aclily19]

I just chatted with support and they said

"Yes you can exclude Puerto Rico on your listing by proving it to the excluded location on your listing. You can also set this on your Shipping preferences by going to Account settings and click on Site preferences and scroll down to shipping preferences.

[intimewithmusic]

Thanks. I've just spent time going through sales to the US. I'm thinking excluding the non contiguous USA may not be necessary.  I'm not quite sure yet but it appears Canda Post may incorporate the USPS subsidies to those areas into the cost of Tracked Packet. It doesn't look like sales to Puerto Rico or Hawaii cost any more than to Florida so a flat rate may be OK. I hope that's the case and also for Alaska. Should have this figured out withing the next few days. 

[intimewithmusic]

Of course this solves only shipments under 2 Kg not the expedited stuff...