Why is eBay adding shipping exclusuions to my listings?

[recped]

I'm starting to get foreign buyers asked why they are excluded from my listings. I offer items Worldwide without ANY exclusions but I'm now seeing the following countries excluded on all my listings:

Excludes: India, Brazil, Israel, Philippines, Ukraine, Indonesia, Jamaica, Qatar, Singapore, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Chile, Cameroon, Colombia, Morocco, South Africa, Malaysia, Egypt, Latvia, Kuwait, Macedonia, Costa Rica

This was added in the last couple of days because as recent as last week I had orders from at least one of those countries.

Perhaps these are added because Canada Post is not accepting mail to these locations but not everyone ships via Canada Post. I don't and I don't need or want my listings blocked. I certainly don't want to have these exclusions added without any notice.

Can somebody explain what is going on? Why this action was taken and why it's being forced on me?

I understand there are risks with international shipping right now, I'm quite willing to accept those risks. This seems like ridiculous babysitting and I'm not a child!

[pjcdn2005]

China and Italy are still blocked on your listings so if they are able to bid, they may  have a shipping address in a non blocked country.  I can't even see your listings if I set my location to those 2 countries.

The listings that I looked at of yours are set to ship worldwide with a number of exclusions but they do have shipping costs for quite a few countries.  If you just want to ship to Canada and the US you should bulk edit your listings and instead of worldwide..just specify those 2 locations.

[recped]

@ricarmic 

What do you mean by "grandfathered items"?

[ricarmic]

Grandfathered items are ones that are missing current listing requirements.

The most recent example is item specifics. Newly listed GTC items cannot be listed without having the required item specifics added. GTC items that were listed before item specifics were required are grandfathered, they will continue to renew without the required item specifics until they sell or until they are edited or revised and at that time the item specifics (and any other grandfathered stuff) have to be updated before it can be revised/saved.

I have 3,080 items that don't have the required item specifics. I also am in a somewhat rare situation in that the type of stuff I sell (usually groups of stamps) don't have generally any required item specifics that make sense for what I sell anyway (generally they are meant for an individual stamp), so adding them doesn't really do anything in terms of making my lots more saleable.

I don't remember what other stuff has been grandfathered, but the item specifics are the biggest problem.

I strongly suspect that changing the sell to locations counts as a revision/edit which would either fail or cause me to have to fix them.

[silverpinups]

If you need to exclude or include shipping locations just go to Account Settings, then click on Site Preferences. Click on Shipping Preferences and go down to Exclude Shipping Locations and edit from there....

I don't believe this should effect your grandfathered listings without updated item specifics....  

[izzame]

Thank you for your help. Actually had to cancel another one from China this morning. Looked at the invoice also, China address and same person that I had cancelled a few days ago. Checked and they are also on my blocked buyer list. I had emailed them on the first one to please not buy my items as I don't ship to China.

I'm in the process of moving and will be taking my time unpacking etc. and will decide then if I'm off ebay permanently or not. Maybe my "visibility" at this time is only for my blocked countries and buyers, wouldn't surprise me.

[bbtreasures2011]

I had to add this picture in my listing after I had some overseas bids and cancelled them. Since I was not able to revise or add to my listing "description" after cancelling the bids.

[scugogstamps]

I have suspended my listing. I sell stamps, I know geeky, but people from the countries that the stamps are from want to bid. Canada Post ships to these locations, hopefully, this exclusion list will get rectified soon. I do find eBay jumps the gun on these issues. 

Waiting for an update from eBay and kinda **bleep**

[izzame]

Right on, BUT a shame as usual it's the seller that has to do the "work arounds" to cover ebay's failures. This is always not just now. My pro/con list of staying here is very heavily weighed on the con side. Not going on a rant as that isn't even worth it anymore and with all the packing for the move I have to do, best stay in a peaceful, happy frame of mind.

[pjcdn2005]

Which item did you have to cancel?

[pjcdn2005]

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@bbtreasures2011 wrote:

I had to add this picture in my listing after I had some overseas bids and cancelled them. Since I was not able to revise or add to my listing "description" after cancelling the bids.

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  Even though you state you ship ship to the US and Canada, you need to block buyers in other countries. If you don't, they can bid or click on buy it now although they won't be able to pay unless you send them an invoice with shipping to their country.  To prevent that, go to buyer preferences and check off 'block buyers with a primary shipping address in a country that I don't ship to'. Then near the bottom of that page, check off 'apply to future and active listings'.

Assuming that everything is working as it should, that should stop buyers in other countries from bidding or from even seeing your listings UNLESS they have a shipping address in a country that you do ship to.   If you want to add other countries later on, you can add the locations without having to change that particular buyer's preference.

[scugogstamps]

I added this to my listings. Hopefully, my clients do not have to do this, as they will probably find it way to time consuming.

Ebay says these countries are excluded for purchase, they are not. India, Brazil, Israel, Philippines, Ukraine, Indonesia, Jamaica, Qatar, Singapore, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Chile, Cameroon, Colombia, Morocco, South Africa, Malaysia, Egypt, Latvia, Kuwait, Macedonia, Costa Rica.

Canada Post is still sending to these countries although there may be delays.  If you change your primary address to a country not on this list, and then let me know if you are successful to what address it should be sent.

example:

 Your name

10 Downing St, Westminster, London SW1A 2AA, United Kingdom

If I see that address in the winning person's information, you will be contacted for the correct address.  I have no idea why ebay is doing this, and I cannot change. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[recped]

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@scugogstamps wrote:

I added this to my listings. Hopefully, my clients do not have to do this, as they will probably find it way to time consuming.

Ebay says these countries are excluded for purchase, they are not. India, Brazil, Israel, Philippines, Ukraine, Indonesia, Jamaica, Qatar, Singapore, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Chile, Cameroon, Colombia, Morocco, South Africa, Malaysia, Egypt, Latvia, Kuwait, Macedonia, Costa Rica.

Canada Post is still sending to these countries although there may be delays.  If you change your primary address to a country not on this list, and then let me know if you are successful to what address it should be sent.

example:

 Your name

10 Downing St, Westminster, London SW1A 2AA, United Kingdom

If I see that address in the winning person's information, you will be contacted for the correct address.  I have no idea why ebay is doing this, and I cannot change. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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The Greek buyer who ran into this a couple of days ago simply changed his eBay shipping address to Germany, amazingly the only thing he did was remove Greece and switch it for Germany without altering the rest of the address (no such thing as address verification on eBay even though there is no Athens in Germany and the post code doesn't exist there either!).

When he got to PayPal he was able to use his correct address without any problem.

[tyler@ebay]

Following up on this @recped - looks like this was updated on the 9th of April and put here (if you ctrl+F for Shipping which will take you to the right section). 

I'm working with the right team to get an Announcement made as well. 

Thanks!

[recped]

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tyler@ebay wrote:

Following up on this @recped - looks like this was updated on the 9th of April and put here (if you ctrl+F for Shipping which will take you to the right section). 

I'm working with the right team to get an Announcement made as well. 

Thanks!

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Canada Post is currently not accepting mail and parcels for a number of international destinations due to a temporary service disruption. In response to this development, we are temporarily suspending transactions from buyers in the following countries:

Doesn't anyone at the eBay "team" know or understand that Canada Post is NOT the only game in town? There are thousands of eBay sellers who never use Canada Post and thousands more than never use Canada Post for international shipping.

Even Canada Post service updates don't reflect reality in the excluded countries list so just because Canada Post can't get space on aircraft doesn't mean those countries are not accepting and delivering incoming International Mail (not too mention private carriers that do not use the local postal systems for anything!).

To be realistic the current excluded countries are not any major markets for most sellers but there are major markets where serious disruptions ARE present but they are NOT on the list.

This exluded thing is almost as bad as the ridiculous forced IPR and deprecating of the "request total" button which is causing me lots of grief these days AND resulting in additional fees.

[ypdc_dennis]

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@scugogstamps wrote:

I added this to my listings.

Ebay says these countries are excluded for purchase, they are not. India, Brazil, Israel, Philippines, Ukraine, Indonesia, Jamaica, Qatar, Singapore, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Chile, Cameroon, Colombia, Morocco, South Africa, Malaysia, Egypt, Latvia, Kuwait, Macedonia, Costa Rica.

Canada Post is still sending to these countries although there may be delays. 

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https://www.canadapost.ca/cpc/en/our-company/news-and-media/service-alerts.page

The most recent list has service suspended / service available for:

India, Brazil, Israel, Philippines, Ukraine, Indonesia, Jamaica, Qatar, Singapore, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Chile, Cameroon, Colombia, Morocco, South Africa, Malaysia, Egypt, Latvia, Kuwait, Macedonia, Costa Rica.

[2budds]

The same thing happened to me. Had a sale from buyer in Indonesia. Payment could not be completed because I did "not ship to Indonesia". Spent an hour on phone with eBay who tried to help me override it with no success. I had to cancel the whole transaction and lost a big sale. Canada Post has not restricted packages to Indonesia as at this date.

[recped]

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@2budds wrote:
The same thing happened to me. Had a sale from buyer in Indonesia. Payment could not be completed because I did "not ship to Indonesia". Spent an hour on phone with eBay who tried to help me override it with no success. I had to cancel the whole transaction and lost a big sale. Canada Post has not restricted packages to Indonesia as at this date.

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See Post 32 for a workaround that works (if you can get the buyer to cooperate).

[historysci]

I just noticed this on my listings and wasted time trying to find out and fix why countries I would have no problem shipping to even now, are excluded without my consent, knowledge...

Any response from eBay? This is unfathomable (stupid?), and why the lack of notification? I could understand if they used an actual list of countries that the post will not ship to, which is not this list! What possible criteria was used to create this seemingly random selection, why Switzerland and Israel and not Russia for example - Russia is excluded for shipments from CPC as is Senegal, Togo, Bolivia, Cyprus which are not excluded by eBay and many others that can be found simply from the CPC website? This serves no purpose. There are services called couriers that can ship to other places too without using a postal service. If somebody made a purchase and were on the list of countries Canada Post won't ship to I could send it by courier or cancel the order due to a problem with shipping address.

[outer-city]

Wow... this is crazy. I can't believe this thread is two months old and still not resolved!

A few days ago I had a customer from Singapore tell me he couldn't place the order for a product I custom made for them. I thought they were lying because I've sold to Singapore in the past with no problem AND they are not on the Canada Post exclusion list.

After spending almost an hour on the phone with customer no-service I was only told it's 'Automatic' and IT will have to look at it.

I am glad I found this thread because I can now ask them to change their address to UK... I'm hoping it will make sense to them and they will work with me using this workaround.

Hopefully eBay will fix this soon and maybe make the exclusion list include the Canada Post exclusions with the option to override for stores that ship via other couriers.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@outer-city 

tyler@ebay  any updates as to if this is still on the radar to be corrected?  Seems it still is causing a few folks some grief.

-Lotz