eBay

jt-libra · ‎06-22-2017

This is what I woke up to this morning:

The e-mail has my full name on it, the tracking number is valid but ............. wha-a-a-a-t?

It was a parcel shipped and delivered to Halifax at the end of May. I paid $14+ for expedited postage.

I checked my PayPal account and they haven't taken any money out. I wouldn't have had enough to cover anyway, so I checked my bank account and they didn't take anything from there.

BUT, seeing as this was a valid e-mail, I clicked on Pay Now, which link took me to a blank web page.

Honestly, I haven't even had my morning coffee. And now I have to start making phone calls.

Has this happened to anyone else?

hyperrush · ‎06-22-2017

if your paypal is ok, log in and see the values. this smell very fisherman. very well done pishing

snoopwiz · ‎06-22-2017

My educated guess is, that when you inquire, you just may find out that someone, somewhere, somehow, added a zero to the end of each of the 3 dimensions of the package that you had entered. It is a PayPal issue. And no, you are not alone in this Mess 101. No phishy.

revaud · ‎06-22-2017

I got one this morning for $160.00 after I paid $24.97 for shipping a couple of records to the US. When I looked on the detail page for the postage paid to PayPal, someone had changed the dimensions of the shipping box by a huge amount. I reported it to PayPal and they said contact Canada Post. I did, and they said it was a PayPal issue so it is back in their court.

jt-libra · ‎06-22-2017

@revaud wrote:
I got one this morning for $160.00 after I paid $24.97 for shipping a couple of records to the US. When I looked on the detail page for the postage paid to PayPal, someone had changed the dimensions of the shipping box by a huge amount. I reported it to PayPal and they said contact Canada Post. I did, and they said it was a PayPal issue so it is back in their court.

Oh my gosh! I'm still on the phone with PayPal (I was able to determine quickly that it was valid) and they have now directed me to the their shipping area which works with Canada Post regarding postage costs. The first person I spoke to said, although he was aware of the notification to sellers about insufficient postage on the label creation page, this was the first call he had received. He wondered if maybe it was just a typo.

This was quite a large parcel, but not unusually heavy, and I'm wondering if there was a problem with volumetric vs gravimetric measure which has been discussed several times on this board, but which I don't entirely understand. That could have resulted in a $3.00 undercharge.

UPDATE !!!

While I was typing this, a representative from the shipping area got on the phone and apologized for the error. Evidently, when the information was received from Canada Post and communicated to PayPal users, the decimal point was put in the wrong place. So a lot of users received the incorrect amounts in their e-mails.

He said that the next time you create a label on PayPal, the amount due will be added to the total cost of the label, so no separate payment is required.

Whew! We did have a good laugh about it though!

revaud · ‎06-22-2017

If they allow you to use the service. At the moment , it is blocked.And I do not owe the extra money so I don't want to have it added to my next shipping label.

jt-libra · ‎06-22-2017

@revaud wrote:
If they allow you to use the service. At the moment , it is blocked.And I do not owe the extra money so I don't want to have it added to my next shipping label.

So you don't owe $1.60? I just assumed that if you got that e-mail, the decimal point was in the wrong place, just as mine was.

I don't have any new labels to create today, but when I logged in as a test, I saw the following message:

pjcdn2005 · ‎06-22-2017

How do you know that you actually owe them anything? Did you realize that the measurements you inputted were incorrect or.....??
As long as you entered the numbers correctly the paypal/canada post calculator should have figured out the correct volumetric postage so I don't think that could have been the problem. I'm just curious because if they are going to charge us extra we should know exactly what the mistake was.

healthandbeauty · ‎06-22-2017

So what I understand is that at the time of purchasing the labels, the dimensions and weights we enter may not be fully accurate. Once Canada Post gets the shipments and they catch the error, they notify PayPal about the mismatch and ask PayPal to collect the remaining amount. What the call center confirmed was there was this decimal error in the emails but the shipping platform is quoting the right amount and one can clear all the dues on the PayPal shipping platform. Everything is like the normal flow once the dues are cleared.

ricarmic · ‎06-22-2017

Things like this make me happy to still be a "stick the stamps on the box" kinda guy!!!

pjcdn2005 · ‎06-22-2017

No kidding!

revaud · ‎06-22-2017

No, I own nothing. The problem is that PayPal accidently changed the measurements of the package after I paid the correct amount, and Canada Post received the statement with the wrong measurements. PayPal had added a zero to each number , so instead of the package showing as 33 x 33 x 5 CM, it shows as 330 x 330 x 50 CM. I discovered it by going back to my statement in my PayPal account and it shows the measurements. They are working on it now.

revaud · ‎06-22-2017

A lot cheaper to use PayPal shipping if you are shipping packages.

ricarmic · ‎06-22-2017

@revaud wrote:
A lot cheaper to use PayPal shipping if you are shipping packages.

@Well that depends, I'm a stamp guy, it is "easy" in the field to get postage @ around or below 50% of face now (real fully gummed postage, not uncancelled stuff being reused which is illegal). That's better than any/all the deals out there right now....

Having said that, it is somewhat blasphemous to send a package to a stamp collector with a label on it, the collectors tend to really get annoyed when labels are used....

jt-libra · ‎06-22-2017

@revaud wrote:
No, I own nothing. The problem is that PayPal accidently changed the measurements of the package after I paid the correct amount, and Canada Post received the statement with the wrong measurements. PayPal had added a zero to each number , so instead of the package showing as 33 x 33 x 5 CM, it shows as 330 x 330 x 50 CM. I discovered it by going back to my statement in my PayPal account and it shows the measurements. They are working on it now.

Yes, you did mention that in your earlier post but I forgot. Your case is much different than mine; hopefully, it will get resolved soon.

jt-libra · ‎06-22-2017

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
How do you know that you actually owe them anything? Did you realize that the measurements you inputted were incorrect or.....??
As long as you entered the numbers correctly the paypal/canada post calculator should have figured out the correct volumetric postage so I don't think that could have been the problem. I'm just curious because if they are going to charge us extra we should know exactly what the mistake was.

I measured the box the same as I would a bubble envelope so, as far as I knew, the measurements were correct. The reason I didn't question the $3.00 postage due is because, on two previous occasions, when I purchased labels through the Canada Post website when PayPal was down, the initial charge showed up on my credit card and then, a couple of days later, an additional $2 or $3 appeared. I did call about it and, both times, after giving the dimensions of the parcel, I was given an explanation about the volumetric equivalent of actual weight.

I don't pretend to understand it, but because it only happened on a couple of occasions, I wasn't too concerned. I agree, however, that this is something that should be taken into account when we enter our dimensions on the PayPal label. How many of us would know when to apply volumetric measure and, in fact, where on the label would we even enter this differential. We trust that PayPal would do this for us.

It's odd, though, that both times I underpaid, it was through Canada Post. I'm sure I have shipped many parcels with similar dimensions through PayPal with no follow-up from Canada Post. Perhaps this was a very large issue and that's why Canada Post added that notification on the label creation page that they would be charging us for any unpaid postage.

jt-libra · ‎06-22-2017

@healthandbeauty wrote:
So what I understand is that at the time of purchasing the labels, the dimensions and weights we enter may not be fully accurate. Once Canada Post gets the shipments and they catch the error, they notify PayPal about the mismatch and ask PayPal to collect the remaining amount. What the call center confirmed was there was this decimal error in the emails but the shipping platform is quoting the right amount and one can clear all the dues on the PayPal shipping platform. Everything is like the normal flow once the dues are cleared.

That's correct. Please see my response to "pj".

However, with respect to "the shipping platform is quoting the right amount", I think that PayPal believes they are. If Canada Post can't calculate the correct postage on their website given that I was charged an additional amount on two occasions after the label was purchased, how do they expect PayPal to calculate correctly.

It will be interesting to see if this issue crops up on Shippo or Snap Ship.

pjcdn2005 · ‎06-23-2017

Sellers don't need to know when to apply volumetric measurements as it is applied automatically when you do a label so that's why this whole thing sounds odd to me. I suppose it's possible that when CP measured the parcel they thought the parcel was actually a cm or so bigger than stated on the label and that made the parcel big enough to be charged for volume rather than weight. I'm just guessing here.. I can't think of another explanation right now.

revaud · ‎06-23-2017

Go to the PayPal page that shows the particular transaction of buying the postage for that shipment and check what the measurements say. I think you will find that an extra zero was added to them. That is the notification that PayPal would have sent to Canada Post after you paid for the postage.As I said before, in my case, 33x 33 x 5 CM's was changed after the fact to 330 x 330 x 50 CM's which means Canada Post wants $160.00 from me.It is a PayPal error.I originally put in the proper size of 33 x 33 x 5 and paid based on that size.