eBay International Shipping Platform
Summary: The discussion focuses on the eBay International Shipping Platform. ten35 initiates the conversation, and marnotom! responds after several hours. The dialogue continues, involving lotzofuniquegoodies, marnotom! again, and finally reallynicestamps, though the specific content of their exchanges is not detailed in the summary. The conversation appears to be an ongoing discussion about experiences or inquiries related to using the platform.
I've been an eBay member since 2002 and i've finally reached my limit with regards to eBay's International Shipping Platform. International buyers make the majority of eBay members and to put it simply overseas shipping to Canada compared to an order from the U.S.A. is much cheaper and much faster than eBay's ISP. I've had only silence when contacting eBay. Now almost everything i used to purchase via eBay can be found on Amazon where international shipping is, in many cases, a fraction of the eBay cost and delivery in most cases takes place within a few days as opposed to weeks of shipping time and eBay shipping costs which can sometimes exceed the asking price of the item.
marnotom!
·4 months agoeBay International Shipping (eIS) is a pretty good idea, but I agree the execution could use some improvements. Once I realized that eIS (actually, its predecessor, the Global Shipping Program) was basically a glorified forwarding service, a lot of its weird characteristics made more sense. I haven't bought a lot from sellers who use eIS, but I understand why they use it and I don't get bent out of shape about it.
You don't really say what you're comparing eIS to in terms of cost or delivery time, but they're likely apples and oranges. Assuming you're referring to Amazon, you're paying one (likely subsidized) shipping charge, often from Amazon's own warehouse where customs information on the item in stock is at the fingertips of the workers preparing the item for export. Or the seller may have agreed to have some of their inventory warehoused in Canada. eBay doesn't warehouse items. It has to wait for the seller to ship the item (you're also paying for that shipping charge, by the way) and then create the customs documentation from scratch once it's received at the eIS hub based on what the seller has provided in the listing, and sometimes that information isn't enough and they have to hunt around for it or dead-end the item.
I don't know if you've noticed, but the costs of direct shipping with USPS and commercial carriers have really gone up in the past few years. My wife recently received a thin paperback sent by the cheapest possible USPS counter rate and the charge on the mailing label was US$19.40. eIS's own charge for a similar shipment seems to be in the US$11-15 range, and a seller using a mail consolidator would have seen a lower charge than that. Amazon seems to be losing money on its shipping service, but the jury is out on whether or not that's intentional.
I'm not expecting you to fall in love with eIS after reading my ramblings on this, but I find that knowledge is power and I'm a lot more sanguin about eIS now that I understand a little better why it works the way that it does.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·4 months agoIf eBay wanted to they could negotiate better rates for US sellers for shipping internationally with USPS/Fedex/UPS. They have chosen not to. With all the US sellers out there shipping under 1 account number there would be the potential major strength discount in that group. Similar to how it works with CP and tracked or the 1 of a kind expedited lite we have access to. Then there are the sellers who sell so much (in USA) that qualify for their own discounts. Are any of those sellers passing on discounts to buyers. Maybe some. One other factor that isn't being taken into consideration is eIS is handing off to courier in most cases. Couriers will always be more expensive than the mail. Just how it is. (As for USPS any applied fuel surcharge is built into the rates. It's there, just very disguised.)
As for the Chit Chats of the world, they are handing back to USPS with some kind of discounted rates. How their prices are lower as some are reporting when compared to eIS.
marnotom!
·4 months agoIf eBay wanted to they could negotiate better rates for US sellers for shipping internationally with USPS/Fedex/UPS. They have chosen not to. With all the US sellers out there shipping under 1 account number there would be the potential major strength discount in that group.
I don't think this would get the desired buy-in, though, as it doesn't really address the discomfort many American eBay sellers have with shipping and selling internationally.
reallynicestamps
·4 months agoUS sellers are amazingly xenophobic and parochial. Look at the Bad Bunny controversy at the SuperBowl.
Reading the dotCOM boards about shipping overseas, there is an absolute terror in some posters of shipping outside the mainland. Which is why GSP/eIS was set up as a Seller Protection. And many of those Seller Protections apply to freight forwarded goods too.
But most of it comes down to Free Shipping. Many sellers put a part of all of their shipping costs in the asking price. (This includes AZ)
Then there is the fact that most buyers are only occasionally buying, instead of being at the PO three to five days a week. They simply don't know what the actual shipping rates are.
And both the PO and couriers make it difficult to find their shipping rates.