eBay Global Shipping Program Exposes Sellers to Bad Feedback

[pierrelebel]

By Ina Steiner
EcommerceBytes.com
May 28, 2013

In its push to promote international trade, eBay is making U.S. sellers vulnerable to negative and neutral feedback. The concept of helping international buyers purchase items from U.S. merchants by providing freight forwarding and associated services is nothing new (eBay did a deal with Shop Airlines in Japan a number of years ago), but the Global Shipping Program (GSP) takes the concept to a new level. But eBay doesn't appear to have built mechanisms to fully protect participating sellers for factors outside their control.

The program works as follows. When a buyer in the UK purchases an item from a U.S. seller who is opted into the GSP program, the seller sends the item to a domestic location and eBay's proxy, Pitney Bowes, is then responsible for international delivery to the buyer. The key to the program is that the cost of the item plus the full domestic and international shipping charges as well as taxes, duties and custom charges are all displayed to the international buyer fully - before they click the buy button.

It sounds good in theory - if the buyer doesn't like the high costs of international fulfillment, they will move on rather than purchase the item. But as almost any eBay seller can tell you, it doesn't always work that way. Buyers often purchase items and complain about costs after the fact.

for more: http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y13/m05/i28/s01 

[pierrelebel]

eBay Advice for Feedback Fallout from Global Shipping (for what it is worth)

http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y13/m05/i29/s01 

[kefkasdomain]

I want to make sure the word gets out there. I've been screwed a few times already. Found this article a few days ago, thought it explains it pretty well

http://www.videogameauctions.com/dont-opt-in-to-ebays-global-shipping-program-its-bad-for-business/

[pierrelebel]

This is a very old thread from over two years ago.  Why address it?

Much has changed since then.

[tobyshitzu]

That article isnt the current reality.  The GSP fees have fallen, "import charges" show zero for under $20 items (though Shipping is higher as they move their fee there).  GSP is very reasonable now for things that make sense to ship

eg here is a similar phone with GSO.  The seller has free domestic shipping so its only the gsp charges shown 321898143981

US$38 item with charges 

$9.09 (approx. C $11.92) International Priority Shipping to Canada  | See details

 mport charges:

US $9.24 (amount confirmed at checkout

Compare that to the shipping cost sellers have that are mailing direct, and the risk of paying tax + $10 when it gets here.  The higher the item price, the better it gets.   just saw some talking about ebay elsewhere, with someone mentioning they only buy GSP items now as they perceive there to be better deals there.

USPS just asked for rate increases with the highest amont being almost 10% for first class international

[pjcdn2005]

The article that kefkasdomain linked to was from July 2015 and as far as I know, nothing has changed with the gsp since then.

I don't know if the listing shown there is from the same time but a $20 import charge on a $10 item isn't now or then the norm so I'm not sure what is going on with that listing. There's no buy it now price so the import fees can't be based on that.   I see there is a bid on it so there could have been a buy it now price originally but once it disappeared the import fees should have disappeared as well?