Item Liquidated at the shipping hub.
Summary: Participants are discussing issues with the liquidation of items at a shipping hub. lancelot455 mentions a suspension ordered for their Harley that was liquidated without explanation, reflecting on the challenges of purchasing large ticket items. marnotom! suggests that shipping regulations related to dangerous goods might be the cause, advising to check the preparation guidelines. yeiko.to shares a similar experience with an item being destroyed, speculating on potential contamination but noting that they received payment and their customer was refunded.
I was trying to track my order on ebay. I was informed that my items were LIQUIDATED the shipping hub. What does that even mean? How does one contact the shipping hub? Ebay customer service was NO HELP.
lancelot455
·3 months agoI just saw the same thing on suspension that i ordered for my Harley...it arrived at the eis hub on the 26th and tracking shows that it was liquidated on the 27th with no explanation. That suspension ships to Canada all the time. i purchased an open box item that was a $300 savings...looks like i am going to save nothing. Probably won't purchase a larger ticket item again.
marnotom!
·3 months ago · EditedI dunno. I can see why eIS would be squeamish about handling a cocktail of oil and pressurized nitrogen.
eIS has some pretty specific guidelines for the preparation of dangerous goods. The suspension may have dead-ended at the hub because your seller didn’t follow those guidelines. Check out the "program rules" if you want:
https://pages.ebay.com/internationalshippingprogram/seller/terms/
yeiko.to
·3 months agoYea, they liquidated my customer's plushie yesterday, I'm assuming maybe another seller's package exploded and had potentially hazardous materials spill onto the rest of the package/parcel rack.
Only thing I could think of for eBay "destroying" my plush with any reason. Bit bummed my item never got to be loved and cuddled but I got paid and the customer got a refund so that's that.
marnotom!
·3 months agoIf the plushie has been liquidated, it hasn't been destroyed. It will be sold off to someone else, probably on eBay, and it will eventually get the TLC for which it was designed.
In the meantime, for the sake of your future sales, have a search for threads that mention "CPSC" in the title. You'll find a likely explanation of why the plushie was impounded at the eIS hub.
reallynicestamps
·5 months agoYes, they refund you, but throwing money at you after they stole your items is still THEFT.
No.
You are made whole and the title to the property is transferred to the entity which paid you.
And that entity can do as they wish with what is now their property.
Liquidation, just to be very clear, is not destruction. The items in question would be resold, usually in bulk, to a business which specializes in such odd lot merchandise.
There are YouTubers who do unpackings of such purchases on a small scale, and liquidators with warehouses for their much larger purchases
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqHYeCFsFIQ
ve7wdm
·5 months agoThis is how ebay simply steals your stuff now. I've been using them since 1997 and have been importing things into Canada without issue until only this last month when ebay decided to steal almost half my purchases through their eIS program, stating they "failed inspection", or some other BS. Yes, they refund you, but throwing money at you after they stole your items is still THEFT. And I don't care about fine print BS in their silly terms. Yes they STOLE these items; vintage electronics that are mundane yet collectible in nature, and that have never been an issue prior, suddenly go missing. No help, no appeal process, no chance to send item back to seller. 50% of my purchases just these last two weeks have.. ..disappeared. I now use a forwarding address in California for all US purchases to be shipped to Canada. eBay is no longer trustworthy. Do NOT assume they won't steal your purchases when you finally find that item you wanted so much. The eIS program is not to be trusted.
john_koenig99
·5 months agoStop spreading misinformation and claiming theft, when you have no proof of it.
Legally, this is called libel. And yes, it's punishable by law.
marnotom!
·8 months agoIt's also interesting to see the smokescreen some people will put up when they're caught contradicting themselves. 😁
grann-4629
·8 months agoI don't like smoke! And there's no contradiction.
In the clip you posted above, we were discussing the cost of mailing a DVD, not a single paper page cut from an old magazine.
This might be another smokescreen in your mind, but I would never advise anyone to try sending a DVD w/case in a plain envelope to beat the graft - any one of those methods you mentioned, that might be used by Customs, would detect it.
Plus it's against the law and I know that. I would just never equate a thing with obvious value like a DVD to an ad cut from an old magazine.
I get your point tho, and I enjoy our discussions! Stay safe.
😎
flipistics
·8 months agoThere's a decent chance the ad cut from an old magazine is worth more than the DVD is. Just saying.
Regardless, goods to the USA through lettermail was never really enforced until a year or two ago. They are now. There's long threads on here from sports card sellers who were getting all their shipments turned around or destroyed. I imagine once they catch you, you probably end up in a database and your future shipments are automatically flagged by AI.
marnotom!
·9 months agoIf that's pretty much all you told the eBay customer service rep, I'm not surprised that they weren't any help. I'm guessing that you purchased an item from the States that was forwarded through eBay International Shipping (eIS). Not all US sellers use eIS, so if you didn't tell the rep that the seller was using eIS, they might have been pretty confused.
While eIS has a list of items and categories that have export prohibitions or restrictions, the "bot" checking the listings doesn't catch all of them before the listings go up, particularly if the seller forgets to note some important information in the Item Specifics section of the listing. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess by your purchase history that you purchased an acoustic guitar made from wood (or suspected to be made from wood) that's not exportable to some countries. Your item, or at least the data on the item, was reviewed by somebody at the forwarding hub and they made a judgement call that it would be problematic to get it through customs.
When it's determined at the hub that the item can't be forwarded to its final destination, the item usually isn't returned to the seller. Instead, it's set aside to either be destroyed or liquidated--that is, sold below market value to another party that will resell it on eBay as a "ships to United States only" item--at the hub's discretion. The seller keeps the monies they received for the sale, the buyer should get a refund automatically, as @john_koenig99 suggests. If you don't, go through eBay's Money Back Guarantee process to get it before time runs out (30 days from last estimated delivery date).
Sorry this happened to you. Whatever the item was, you probably had your heart set on it and it sucks to see it dead-end like this. Hope you can find something similar through other channels.
john_koenig99
·9 months agoIt happened to me a while ago (before the Big Oompaloompa 2nd term). I bought a ebike battery and it got stopped at customs, after being okayed by the US hub. It got returned there and pufff! Disappeared. I got my money back without even filing a INR claim.
grann-4629
·9 months agoWhat is the 'respectful" length of time a buyer should wait before filing an INR?
If, for example, you ordered a piece of life saving equipment or something needed for a birthday present, arrival estimates vs. actual date received would be important. But, if you order stuff like I do (DVD's and such), arrival date within a week or two of the estimate is no big deal.
marnotom!
·9 months agoThis is a bit off-topic, but seeing as you posted it here, I'd say that it also depends on how the item was shipped, where it's coming from, and if the tracking information (if any) suggests that the item is merely delayed.
If you're referring to items that are forwarded through eIS, keep in mind that the seller's responsibility for the item ended once the item reached the hub in Illinois and any refunds would come from eBay, not the seller. I've read a few posts that suggest that there are times when, rather than issue a refund post haste, eBay will extend the delivery timeframe on eIS-forwarded items that are delayed, as there's no means to repay eIS if the item arrives after a refund is made, unlike a sale where the seller has shipped without the involvment of eIS.
Apologies for leaping in here if you were wanting a response from @john_koenig99. Perhaps, unlike myself, he'll actually answer your question. 😜
grann-4629
·9 months agoThanks. I was actually responding to post #2 that stated:
you should be able to initiate an item not received claim after the appropriate expected delivery date...
just wondering what the word 'after' might mean
ETA: If I was a seller I would never punish a buyer by using eIS nor would I ever buy anything from a seller that uses it. It's a huge ripoff for lazy people!
marnotom!
·9 months agoThat was my initial thought, but without a quote to refer to I couldn't be positive.
My unsolicited advice regarding eIS-forwarded items still stands, then.
Tread carefully here. Remember that eIS has been launched up here in Canada, too, although I'd say that most Canadian sellers who are adopting it are doing so for different reasons than our American cousins are. In addition, with the possible exception of shipments to the US, they're tending to offer it as an option in addition to one or two other shipping methods whereas US sellers aren't doing this. I should add that even with the cost of shipping to the Mississauga hub, eIS tends to run in the middle of the pack for pricing, particularly to the EU.
grann-4629
·9 months agoAgain, thanks for the info ... it's interestesting to see this from a seller's POV.
I see it from a buyer's POV. There are many items I would love to add to my collections and interest, the majority from US sellers. Item prices are generally competitive, selection is much greater, but most of the sellers use eIS which puts the buy out of financial reach regardless of rarity. I was looking at a magazine ad for the first car I ever owned back in the early 60's. The price of the ad was around four bucks and the shipping was twenty-six bucks, American.
Not gonna happen.
mrdutch1001
·9 months agoTotally agree..eIS has ruined the eBay buying experience for Canadian buyers and will do so for USA buyers>combined with the Tariffs of course...
flipistics
·9 months agoShipping prices from the USA to Canada are really high regardless of whether the seller uses eIS or not. My guess is you'd probably be looking at $18 USD even if they shipped it directly (at least via USPS), and that's not including a potential handling fee for collecting duty/taxes.
marnotom!
·9 months agoBreak that shipping charge down by changing your shipping location to United States, ZIP code 61039. That's the location of the eIS shipping hub in Illinois. Unless the seller isn't providing accurate information to eIS on the nature of the item and its shipping dimensions and weight, I'm betting that the seller's charge to ship the item to the hub is about half of that.
I just found a listing for an old magazine ad with an eIS shipping charge of US$16.81 to Canada. US$5.95 of that would be the seller's charge to use USPS Ground Advantage to get it to the hub, so eIS's share would be US$10.86.
Over the past year or so, it's been discussed on these boards a fair bit from both buyers' and sellers' perspectives how it isn't "postal legal" to send merchandise internationally by letter-post and that enforcement of this Universal Postal Union regulation appears to have increased.
reallynicestamps
·9 months agoYou have two different points.
but most of the sellers use eIS which puts the buy out of financial reach regardless of rarity.
EIS from the USA includes not only the cost of tracked international shipping, but also Canadian import fees, shipping fees, sales taxes, and a service fee that stays with eIS.
Canada charges import fees when the value of the shipment is over $20 (there are some CUSMA exceptions which have a duty free allowance of $150).
Some provinces charge sales tax on shipping and service fees.
EIS includes these fees, and the Buyer pays them even before the Seller sees their address.
If it did not, the import fees would be payable on delivery.
The price of the ad was around four bucks and the shipping was twenty-six bucks, American.
USPS international shipping is quite high and couriers charge even more.
https://www.usps.com/international/mail-shipping-services.htm
Some couriers (FedEX for example) charge $10-$25 as a "customs brokerage fee" on exported shipments.
mrdutch1001
·9 months agoI suppose that it may mean that your item could not be imported into Canada for whatever reason....and if that being the case you should be able to initiate an item not received claim after the appropriate expected delivery date...