Seller in U.K. unable to provide shipping costs to Canada
Summary: williamf6194 initiated a discussion about difficulties in obtaining shipping costs from a seller in the U.K. for deliveries to Canada. marnotom! and ypdc_dennis joined the conversation, but the content of their responses is not available. williamf6194 added another post, but it lacks details. The issue seems unresolved as there is no further context on the responses or any solutions offered.
Hi. Checked for this in the archive, and nothing popped up. I want to purchase some spare parts for my granddaughter's Britians model farm buildings, and found a couple of sites on ebay.co.uk. that had them listed. On one site it noted that the seller (A) will ship to Canada, and that I needed to contact the seller for the postage cost. (note: a couple of other sites selling similar parts gave the postage cost to my location). I contacted the seller via my ebay.ca account, and he stated that as he was using Ebay International Shipping, he could not provide a postage cost to my address as ebay was responsible for that. He noted that the postage cost would only show when I pressed the 'buy now' icon. Is this normal for ebay (perhaps just U.K.?) to only provide the postage cost once a committment to purchase is made? It makes the idea of getting the best deal not so simple. Other listers of similar spare parts may be a better deal as I then know the postage. I wanted to use seller (A) as he had the exact parts that we needed. It seems a bit off that ebay.ca notes that I have to contact the seller for postage cost, but ebay.co.uk. won't provide the price (even to the seller) until I commit to purchase. Strange?
williamf6194
OP5 months agoThank you both for the advice. This site always very helpful and knowledgeable as usual. A+
Marnotom! as you suggested, I am going to pass, as the purchase is not worth the aggravation. Cheers WF
ypdc_dennis
·5 months agoIf it's a fixed price listing (not an auction), then add (do not buy) to your shopping cart and see what details show when you look at your shopping cart.
However GSP items from the UK should show shipping without jumping through that extra step.
If the listing is properly set up it should have: International Priority Shipping to Canada via eBay's Global Shipping Program
marnotom!
·5 months agoFirst, check that message on the listing page again. I believe it states that the "seller may ship to Canada," not will. That message generally pops up when the seller hasn't blocked shipping to non-domestic addresses but they haven't provided shipping rates to a particular country, in this case, Canada.
Occasionally, this is intentional on the seller's part, but in most instances the seller has no intention of shipping directly to international addresses and is unaware that they've left their listings open to this possibility.
Unless things have radically changed in the short period of time since I last checked the UK site, shipping rates for sales where the Global Shipping Program (the UK version of eBay International Shipping) is used are displayed on the listing page in addition to any import charges the buyer is required to pay at checkout.
So there's a couple of possible scenarios at play here. The first possibility is that the seller may erroneously believe that they're using the Global Shipping Program (the UK version of eBay International Shipping) and they've left the gate open to non-UK buyers to accommodate the program. A second, less likely, possibility is that this particular item does ship through the GSP with the exception of Canada and you're seeing the "may ship to Canada" message as a result.
I would suggest going back to the listing page to see if it's possible to change the shipping location from Canada to another country. If it is, see if "International Priority Shipping through the Global Shipping Program" shows up as the shipping method.
If you don't see any other countries listed as "ships to" locations, change your shipping location to the UK and check the seller's other listings to see if the seller ships outside of the UK. The listing you're concerned with may be an exception or it may be just another one of the seller's that doesn't support international shipping. Armed with that knowledge, you may have something to use if you still want to try dealing with that seller. Having said that, they sound pretty confused about how the GSP works and that doesn't instill me with a lot of confidence. Your call, and good luck.