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Ebay international shipping has lost its mind: RIP Ebay
Summary: leaky-bucket-labs raises concerns about exorbitant shipping costs on eBay for small items, contrasting it with lower costs and rapid delivery from other suppliers like Digikey. This sparks a broad discussion among participants about shipping practices and problems with eBay's pricing structure. everything-wonderful and lotzofuniquegoodies discuss how sellers sometimes use auto settings for shipping costs, leading to inaccuracies, while others mention problems with the eBay International Shipping (eIS) program. marnotom! explains that eIS charges might be inflated due to insufficient data provided by sellers, and the complexity of these charges is scrutinized by many. Several participants express their frustration over how this affects Canadian buyers disproportionately, noting that orders from China sometimes arrive faster and cheaper. micky_take and others describe the challenges of paying high shipping rates when alternatives seem more efficient, while kh-phdan eventually closes the thread due to its age.
$289 USD to ship 2 small transistors?
Whats even happening here? Thats insanity
kh-phdan
·1 year agoHello Everyone,
Due to the age of the thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue discussing this topic.
Thanks for your understanding!
reallynicestamps
·1 year agoZOMBIE THREAD FROM 2023
The trouble with zombie threads is that the problems,advice, and rules may have changed since they were opened.
Better to start your own new thread with the current problem.
tac2805
·1 year agoAll laptop listings from the U.S to Canada have at least doubled the shipping in the last 6 months. One seller I buy from can send 5 laptops across Canada through Purolator for the same price as one laptop from a U.S seller that's within 100 miles of Illinois. Something wrong when it's cheaper to import from European countries quite often tax free vs the U.S. Or China tax free and free shipping. Changing the address from the rural I'm in to a nearby city makes 0 difference so the can't say it's because of my location.
reallynicestamps
·2 years agoZOMBIE THREAD FROM AUGUST 2023
The problem with zombie threads is that the advice may be out of date or incorrect.
One thing not mentioned here is that the cost of shipping is not related to the value of the item shipped, yet the duty and sales taxes (which are often/usually included in the eIS "shipping and handling" charges) are directly related to the value.
Note that the "two small transistors" are priced at $130 US (~$160.00 Cdn).
The S&H may include the duty and sales taxes on that $160 import.
micky_take
·2 years agomarnotom!
·2 years agoIf your country's not an OPEC member and your workers are lucky to get C$25 a day in wages, there's a lot of stuff you can do more cheaply than Canada or the US.
Anonymous User
·1 year agoWhat does that have to do with the speed of the shipment?? Do they pay their workers to bring it over on a fast moving rowboat?
Maybe that's why the Yanks have such a mad-on for Chinese people - they are able to do things better, cheaper, and faster.
Anonymous User
·1 year agoSame here. I got an item from New Zealand in a week, right to my door. The only (and last) item I ordered from the USA was shipped on July 3rd and it's still stuck in that eBay hub thing.
What a farce!
byto253
·3 years agoMy concern is the total cost for the shipping. The details on how that is derived is not something I care about - nor do I expect by buyers to care about it either. About the only things I get from the US now are from sellers who handle their own shipping directly with USPS, or more expensive or heavy items that I have shipped to a receiver across the border for me to pick up.
If it was important to the seller, they would address the crazy shipping fees for small items. But, IMHO the amount of potential Canadian sales is just not relevant for most US sellers and they just go with whatever the system generates. It is not worth their time to individually check and verify for the small possibility of a Canadian sale. Anything they get outside of the US is bonus gravy. I can't blame them either, and a lot would not even be selling outside of the US without the eBay program.
What I mainly buy are power adapters, memory cards or accessories for small electronics like cameras and video game related items, which are small and light so shipping is a key factor.
rh6921
·2 years agoThis thread sums up the current state of what happens when you combine broken automated systems with sellers who don't set their listings correctly. Sellers then blame eBay for making it too complicated while eBay blames sellers for not setting things right. At the end of the day we're the ones getting screwed paying more for less and I'm pretty tired of it. The cost of living and operating in Canada is already out of hand and buying stuff on eBay is turning into another one of those "Nope can't afford it anymore" things.
Basically, with eIS, every purchase under $50 that you make is money down the drain. With GSP, you could buy $150 of stuff and in a lot of cases still get buy with a $50 shipping fee, but this is downright impossible to achieve with eIS unless you're making only single item higher-valued purchases that are light in weight. If you're buying anything worth under $50, and if you keep track of the numbers like I do, the overall shipping costs from cumulative purchases made via eIS are just downright atrocious and unsustainable.
When you're spending more on cumulative shipping costs than the goods are even worth is when I draw a hard line. These days I typically still try to operate within a 75/25 rule in that for $75 worth of goods, I shouldn't be paying more than $25 of shipping. With eIS, each cumulative purchase puts you into the red in terms of your overall goods:shipping expense ratio and my overall expenses on shipping are to the point where I likely won't buy anymore volume until this supposed combined shipping is implemented.
millana-dee
·3 years agoThat's totally normal. One hankerchief cost 20 dollars, so why would that be any different. The Global shipping program is blatantly overcharging Canadians for shipping. And we just have to continue to suck it up. It's so wrong.
marnotom!
·3 years agoIt's not the Global Shipping Program anymore. It's eBay International Shipping, which is similar to the GSP but has some important differences for sellers, and to some extent buyers, too.
What some people don't seem to understand about eIS and GSP is that the shipping charges are the seller's charge for shipping the item to the forwarding hub (suburban Chicago for eIS; Erlanger, Kentucky for GSP) plus eIS's own shipping charge. I've found a few instances recently where the eIS shipping charge to Canada is less than the seller's charge for shipping to the eIS hub. I've also found eIS shipping charges of less than US$11 for smaller items that the seller ships to the eIS hub for no additional charge.
To get an idea of how much of the eIS shipping charge is levied by the seller, change your shipping location on the listing page from Canada to United States ZIP code 60139, the location of the eIS hub in Glendale Heights, Illinois. (I think this is only possible from the desktop version of eBay, however.)
brettjet38
·3 years agoTime to SHOP CANADIAN while the shipping is cheaper, and the wonderfully newly minted EIS takes hold and rattles the shoppers with the new Shipping and Third Party Delivery fees...
leaky-bucket-labs
OP2 years agoYA GOOD LUCK. WHENS THE LAST TIME CANADA MADE ELECTRONIC PARTS OR CAR PARTS?
YOUR COMMENT IS JUST USELESS SPAM
mcrlmn
·3 years agoLots of similar, ridiculous scenerios.
Why get your knickers in a twist?
Shake your head and move on
Many don't read or have the IQ of a bag of onions... Let the fools have at it.
marnotom!
·3 years agoOkay, so for what it's worth, I found the listing that @leaky-bucket-labs was looking at, and I suspect that some of the problem seems to be caused by the seller listing the transistors in the "Ham Radio Amplifier" subcategory, rather than "Other Ham Radio Equipment" and not providing any specs on the item's shipping size.
Their domestic shipping price adds US$8.00 to the total shipping price.
leaky-bucket-labs
OP3 years agoIt has nothing to do with the subcategory. Although 80% of the junk listed there is not a ham radio amplifier and ebay doesnt care about listing it in the wrong subcategory which is a whole other disgrace and form of "sliding" competitors off the front page.
Ebays system sets those shipping prices not the seller. Heres some comparison
lotzofuniquegoodies
·3 years agoThanks, @leaky-bucket-labs a perfect visual perspective!!! I rationalize it as the new eBay normal even if eBay does not want to admit to it.
-Lotz
marnotom!
·3 years agoSorry if I was unclear. Yes, eBay does set the shipping for items sent through the eBay International Shipping service, but that amount is added to what the seller charges for shipping to the Illinois hub.
The eIS shipping charge is based on information provided by the seller, though, and my conclusion from looking at your photo essay is that the seller of the M7437 is doing something those other sellers aren't, which likely is entering the dimensions and weight of the package when they're creating their listing.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·3 years ago@marnotom!
@leaky-bucket-labs
If a Canadian seller inserts inaccurate shipping in majority cases it's mostly a typo or a hijacked account. (Truthfully how many times do you see that?) If a US seller does it it becomes a glitch. How many reports of this observation does it take for eBay to realize this may be a problem? Especially for Canadian buyers. From my observations it's been going on for several years.
-Lotz
flipistics
·3 years agoFor small and light items, many US sellers are lazy and never enter package dimensions because most of their sales are to the USA anyway. They just select the 4oz or 8oz rate or whatever. Since we don't have small parcel rates here, we have to enter everything. Given the size and weight of some ham radio things, I'm guessing eIS is taking a worst case scenario for the category. I wouldn't call it a glitch though.
What they should be doing is disabling interational sales if dimensions and weight aren't entered. Showing shipping costs that high is a really, really bad look.
reallynicestamps
·3 years agoThose four tubes are all from the same seller. Whether this is dropshipping or a seller with multiple IDs, they all have the same very specific background.
The other two are pretty high shipping but we should have this for comparison:
https://postcalc.usps.com/?country=10440
USPS is still putting the highest cost service at the top and the lowest (FirstClass International Packet -- which is tracked) at the bottom. Sneaky.
I expect that the next time I send out my discount postage list to my private customers, I will have a strong response.
marnotom!
·3 years agoThe eIS shipping charge (converted to Canadian dollars) for that M7437 has actually dropped a little since that screenshot was made, although I'd chalk that up to exchange rates rather than anything eIS might (not) be doing. And at US$10 and change, that's less expensive than what USPS would want at the counter.
marnotom!
·3 years agoI seem to recall that when the Global Shipping Program was first unleashed nearly ten years ago, it also came up with some really extreme charges that varied depending on whether you viewed the item on .com or .ca.
The thing we have to remember with these programs is that the computer subroutine, coding, bot, whatever-you-want-to-call-it has no idea what the item actually is. All it has is information provided by the seller on the item's category and shipping weight/dimensions. If the seller feeds the "bot" insufficient information or garbage, it's going to have to make some guesses and usually the result is more garbage.
My understanding from a British antiques seller who used to hang out on the Canadian boards during the early days of the GSP is that if the "bot" didn't have the required information to calculate a shipping price, it would apply a category average. What's probably happening with eIS is that it's applying a worst case scenario.
In addition, because this listing says that there's no import charges upon delivery, the "bot" has probably estimated them and added them to the shipping price, so US$25 or so of that shipping charge is probably HST and estimated customs processing fees.
You might want to post this on one of the .com site's discussion boards to give sellers a heads-up on the importance of providing as much information on the nature of the item as possible, but lay off the "RIP eBay" rhetoric. Cries of eBay's demise tend to be regarded with as much derision as demands for class action lawsuits.
everything-wonderful
·3 years agoDont the people who sell on Ebay set prices? Wouldnt that be somebody essentially trying to scam by putting ridiculously high shipping fees?
lotzofuniquegoodies
·3 years ago@everything-wonderful
@leaky-bucket-labs
Many sellers (not all) use auto settings. (Maybe they use the same shipping for everything they sell or a limit of 3 options.) Basically set it and forget it. Without an occasional test they are doing their buyers a major disservice showing inaccurate charges. If postage is bot generated in majority of situations rates shown will be entirely out to lunch.
-Lotz
marnotom!
·3 years agoSo are you suggesting, @lotzofuniquegoodies, that part of the problem here may be that the seller's out-to-lunch rate for shipping to Illinois are being added to eIS's out-to-lunch rate for shipping to Canada?
lotzofuniquegoodies
·3 years ago@marnotom!
What I am suggesting is a majority of USA sellers have been for awhile and more as of late have out to lunch shipping costs to Canada. At 1 time it was suggested that some sellers did this for out of stock place holders. That does not jive if their shipping to the USA is free or negligible or multiple units. No buyer in their right mind is going to purchase a 20.oo item with 100.oo plus shipping. Another suggestion was for visibility to their items. Click on any item and you see the rest of them. Then there are sellers that will show a small assortment of listings located in either Canada or USA when in fact they are in China. Found this out by ordering from 1. 2 of 3 items were noted Canada. All 3 arrived from China. To my mind it seems to be very bait and switch.
-Lotz
If the issue is a built in fault with eBay's program it is something that needs to be addressed. Buyers need to know realistic shipping costs and an actual method an item will be shipped before they buy. Not after. Like the mention that sellers are not required to include weights and measurements of an item when creating a listing.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·3 years ago@marnotom!
Random recently discovered set of listings. Intended only as FYI/test purposes.
https://www.ebay.ca/sch/i.html?_ssn=pc_channel&store_name=itchannel&_oac=1&_sop=16
Important to update ship to Canada and sort with highest shipping cost.
Update shipping to USA and items suddenly have free shipping. Also curious to see where they are registered when you compare to the listing details.
-Lotz
Anonymous User
·1 year agoWhy did the OP click on this to buy?? The graft is shown right in the listing!
It's like a kid who offs his patents, and then cries for help 'cause he is now an orphan ...
I avoid anything with a stupid 'shipping' fee, which is unfortunately just about everything from the US.
leaky-bucket-labs
OP3 years agoI can buy parts off digikey and its $8 for fedex to my door in under 48 hours, no extra fees or duties.
This is a disgrace
treadstone68
·3 years agoI think it more a case of Darwinian selection. IF someone is stupid enough to pay this price, it is on them. Sadly, self responsibility is not a thing these days it seems.