CANADA POST OUTAGE AUG. 21 - 23 2015 (Anticipate ebay Calculated Shipping shutdown?)

[momcqueen]

Expect difficulty with calculated postage over the upcoming weekend. Calculated shipping if you use Canada Post will be unavailable during this unprecedented Canada Post system-wide shutdown. Can't print shipping labels? 

For details from Canada Post as to what is affected:

https://www.canadapost.ca/web/en/blogs/business/details.page?article=2015/08/12/website_and_web_serv...

For more on the issue as it arose see:

http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/CANADA-POST-OUTAGE-AUG-21-23-2015-WILL-THIS-AFFECT-PAYPAL...

[pjcdn2005]

I realize that Canada Post told you that calculated shipping wouldn't work but I tend to be skeptical until I see something for myself.

I wonder how closely the ebay set up works with the Canada Post site. For example...if you enter the wrong dimensions for expedited in your syi form a shipping cost will not come up.  If I go to the CP site and enter those same numbers, a price will come up even though the service doesn't allow for those dimensions. My point that there are differences so how closely are they aligned?

According to the site third party shipping services wouldn't be affected that much. Did CP confirm that ebay/paypal is not considered a third party shipping service?

[momcqueen]

Canada Post confirmed to me that paypal 'might be considered third-party and should therefore be unaffected' but that 'any third-party plug-in that relies on Canada Post for data, for example would not be operational' during this outage time. Thus, depending on how paypal and ebay have their software to calculate shipping established, it might or might not be directly affected. I will speculate that flat-rate wouldn't be affected since it is user-entered data that is mined when the calculation is required. 

Regardless, I have sent a message to R@ebaycom from Board Hour to alert him to what they told me. If there is widespread fall-out that affects ebay.ca as an entity, I would anticipate there will be notification of that. I can't imagine this would have been overlooked.

It will certainly be interesting to see what is affected. For now, forewarned is forearmed.  

[cumos55]

It is here and now.....

[momcqueen]

Are you experiencing any trouble from it? All the calculated shipping on my listings seem to be fine. 

[momcqueen]

And when I mess around with paypal shipping, it seems fine too...... that's a relief. 

[73rhc]

I guess we can learn an important lesson from all of this....

Don't panic with the "what ifs ". Don't panic at all. It's fine to have contingency plans. But deal with the small stuff, like this, and move on!!!

[rose-dee]

Has anybody actually processed a Paypal label through to printing, specifically for Expedited USA?  I'd like to know before I tell my buyer that I'll have the item on its way by Monday a.m.  

Thanks!

[momcqueen]

I went into paypal shipping and because I had no new outstanding orders, checked 'print another label' which was for a domestic purchase that had already shipped this week. It populated all the right data on steps one and two but I stopped short of actually hitting 'proceed and pay' so I don't know for certain what would have happened when I clicked that. That is the final step. It is as much as I know.

The help boards haven't lit up so I am assuming it will work.

BUT if you take your item to the postal counter today or tomorrow, they will accept it but they won't be able to scan it. If it were to go missing somehow, you'd have no proof you handed it over to Canada Post, right? The sortation plants will be running as usual. It will move along and be processed but I'm assuming that tracking won't show any movement or registration of acceptance until Monday morning. 

I am in the process of taking my store off Vacation Mode. 

It looks like ebay and paypal both have their shipping platforms set up to run independent of Canada Post? I might be eating those words if I can't actually PRINT postage purchased. 

[rose-dee]

Thanks, 'mj' , I guess I'll give it the old school try tomorrow and see what happens.  

I'll report back, although you have a point that complaints would have been all over the boards if no one could actually print out a label, since some people may not have seen the CP warnings. 

[momcqueen]

I found my way to the paypal Canada community board and ran searches (filtered by date) on every phrase I could muster that might be entered when a frustrated user determined they couldn't print a postage label and came up with nothing. (A lot of people are disappointed about shipnow disappearing and there is an official response from paypal about that, by the way.) I am assuming, once again, that all is well with paypal shipping. Based on my conversation with the Canada Post rep yesterday, this would mean that both ebay and paypal have established systems that do not require a Canada Post-dependent plug-in to function.

https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?filter=labels%2Clocation&q=label&l...

It seems unlikely that any major disruption would be still under the radar by this point.

I haven't tried to list anything new with calculated shipping, however, so I can't speak for all aspects of all business here. I noticed with the shutdown coming, certain services (like Find a Rate) on the Canada Post website disappeared several hours before they were scheduled to cease.

[cumos55]

10:20 Central Daylight Time

Canada Post still off line!

[momcqueen]

I received an email a few hours ago that said the shutdown was supposed to end at 7 pm Eastern Time but that, 'unfortunately, we are experiencing a delay and Canada Post deeply regrets having to extend the outage.' 

The new estimate is a return to service 'no later than 11 pm Eastern Time' but I think I'll save myself the anticipation and wait until morning to print my labels. 

[triber]

I have had no problems printing labels for the last 2 days via Paypal, just can't get onto the CP website.

[cumos55]

The Canada Post website was back functional  by midnight Winnipeg time

[momcqueen]

That's when I started to get the 'shipped now' notices that are auto-generated by the corporation.

Some of my combined, calculated shipping on multi-item orders placed through ebay.ca (NOT ebay.com) did not calculate properly (too high) over the weekend but until I investigate further, I can't necessarily pin the blame for that on this. It might have been user error on my part with too-high weight in the listings to start. 

In that sense, it may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy.  With little or nothing to do with Canada Post.