The Global Shipping Program (GSP) is hardly new. It's been around for three or four years now.
If you read the board, you'll soon realize that you're far from the only one who hates the program. The GSP seems about as popular as catching the flu around here. The bad news is that many US and UK sellers use it, sometimes without even knowing that they do. The good news is twofold: first, many sellers still ship directly to Canada; and second, if you don't want to buy GSP items, you can avoid looking at them. Ebay won't give us a GSP filter because it's their pet program and they think that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread but you can sort of filter them out yourself. For that, you need to set your "View" setting to "List View". That setting is found in the upper right-hand corner of your search screen.
With "List View" all of the GSP items in your search results will be identified by a grey font blurb which reads: "Customs services and international tracking provided." That will be your cue to keep going without wasting your time clicking the link.
If you find a GSP item that you simply can't live without and which is unlikely to be offered again (keep in mind that very few things are truly "one of a kind"), you can message the seller (before you bid or buy!) and ask him/her if he/she would be willing to ship to you directly, without the GSP. If the answer is yes, the seller will have to remove the GSP from the listing before you buy, or before a bid is placed. After that, it will be too late.
