Shipping rate table doesn't apply to Rural Ontario
Summary: lud-4367 is experiencing an issue with eBay's shipping settings, where the flat rate shipping applies uniformly across Urban and Rural Ontario, despite using a rate table meant to charge more for Rural locations. uwantuneedgiftsandgoods suggests switching to calculated shipping due to fluctuating costs and offers a strategy to offset costs by averaging additional charges across local orders. They share their own experience, noting the challenges with flat rates due to changing surcharges and taxes.
I've set a flat rate for shipping on my listings, and I've also applied a rate table to charge more for shipping to other provinces. The rate table works fine for buyers in other provinces, but not for buyers in Rural Ontario. Ebay only charges the flat rate I've set, treating it the same as Urban Ontario. This makes the shipping cost significantly more expensive for me when a buyer is located in Rural Ontario especially in Northern Ontario. Is this an ebay glitch, or am I missing a setting somewhere?
flipistics
·2 weeks agoeBay considers rural to be REALLY rural, like middle of nowhere or air stage rural. They really need to break them out into urban, rural, and remote or something, but it is what it is. It's one of the few downsides to using rate tables. Like @uwantuneedgiftsandgoods mentioned, you can pad the rates slightly to make up for what I assume is a small percentage of orders that are affected.
For me personally, I'll sometimes use ICS for those shipments as their rates for Ontario and Quebec (assuming you live in Ontario) are really good. The tracking doesn't update correctly in eBay though.
uwantuneedgiftsandgoods
·2 weeks agoI believe you can only create the flat rate table for each province. So what might work is either going straight calculated. Or maybe add a percentage to your local domestic. Lets say you jave 10 total packages and lets say 7 go local and three typically go to Nothern Ontario. So you could add a cost to the local 7 packages to counter act the over cost to northern ontario . Lets say each Northern Ontario package costs an extra 5 dollars to ship take 15 dollars and divide that by 7 so basically 2.15 extra per package would offset the norther Ontario Orders. I always use calculated because its bascially impossible to lose money. I use to use flat rate but because of ever changing fuel surchages and new "green taxes" the price can fluctuate into a loosing money overnight. Two years ago before the strikes we were good and had standard rates but now things are different and i had to make the switch. Anyway i wish you well with your sales and i hope tgis can help a bit