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Hello everyone,
Hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving festivities. As usual, we'll be here for 1PM Eastern sharp, so feel free to post those questions early!
Please note, that should participation continue to be minimal over the coming weeks, we may scale the frequency back to a bi-weekly occurrence.
Thanks,
@pocomocomputing wrote:
Where are the estimated delivery times coming from for some international locations? Some seem very optimistic in my opinion.
On eBay.ca, I setup domestic shipping as Flat Rate with the generic "Standard Shipping" option and it shows 2-11 business days with my one day handling time. For International shipping, I setup Flat Rate with Standard International Shipping with two options, one for the USA only using Custom Location with Standard Int'l Shipping and a second option as Worldwide with Standard International Shipping. I use the country exclusions to limit which countries I ship to when using Worldwide.
The estimated shipping times show when I select various countries are
United States - 6-11 business days
Australia - 7-11 business days
Austria - 5-11 business days
Belgium - 5-11 business days
Czech Republic - 6-11 business days
FInland - 5-9 business days
France - 5-11 business days
Germany - 5-11 business days
Ireland - 5-11 business days
Israel - 6-15 business days
Italy - 5-11 business days
Japan - 5-10 business days
Netherlands - 4-8 business days
Norway - 5-13 days
Poland - 5-11 Business days
Spain - 5-10 business days
Sweden - 5-11 business days
Switzerland - 5-9 business days
United Kingdom - 4-10 business days
When I started using the generic shipping option "Standard Int' Shipping" when it was introduced, the delivery times showed a "Varies for items shipped from an International Location" message. Slowly actual times are shown for more and more countries over the years. These changes should have been posted in the Seller Updates so a seller knows what a listings shipping options display.
Is there a master list of the shipping estimated times shown in listings on eBay.ca?
If I list on eBay.com using the same setup, I get different estimated shipping times for some countries. I assume this is based on a USA seller location. Now for some countries like Denmark, eBay.com shows 3 to 8 days.
I was not aware of the estimated times that were being shown in my listings to international buyers. I think that eBay should have informed sellers of the estimated times being shown and should have a master list of the estimated times used on each site for the countries that do show times for the generic shipping options.
PS I do not know what estimated times are being shown for other generic shipping options "Economy" or "Expedited" nor for specific Canada Post shipping options like Small Packet, Expedited Parcel. I did not check into this yet.
Hi Pocomocomputing.
Thanks for asking this question.
Up until you pointed it out, I didn't realize this was happening at all. Ironically, we have been trying to get cross-border delivery estimates on items listed on eBay.ca for several years now, and we have been waiting for our turn in prioritization to get the work done. We had briefly turned this on a few years ago - very briefly - and after Canadian sellers pointed out that they had no up-front guidance on the ramifications of the services they select on delivery estimates, we turned it back off again, until we could do something more seller-friendly, such as provide some kind of guidance within the listing flows themselves, or if not, at least in a help page somewhere.
I'm still waiting for that work to get prioritized, so I'm really not sure what has happened. I think showing a buyer an estimate is generally better than showing them the old "delivery times vary" message, but it concerns me that sellers don't have a way of finding out what the implications of their selections are - especially the generic ones - and that the change was never announced in Canada.
After spending countless hours trying to get this done, I'm really confused as to how this change happened without anyone on the Canadian team being informed about it. Hopefully it is not a bug. 😉
Once again - thank for asking this question. Hugely helpful. Here's what we will do:
1. Investigate!
2. Assuming this is not a bug, we will put up an announcement and link to a help page that lays out the implications of the different selections.
Finally, I'd like to add that where branded services are concerned, in the past (i.e. for listing originating in the US, since this was not turned on at all for Canada) we have used our own data from package tracking to adjust carrier-published service estimates to come up with the estimates.
Rodney, the shipping times are not exactly wrong. It is the destination that is not being identified. I find that the 6-11 days to the USA can be even further delineated to "How long it is stuck in Customs before being re-routed to a sorting plant".
German Customs are notoriously slow. 11 days to Germany does not even get it out of Customs. Russia? My experience is 15 working days minimum.
Mexico that I had the invisible INR is beyond three weeks. I had a customer in Kazakhstan just now, again, three weeks. My customer in Chile is coming up on three weeks.
The odd time I have an Expedited parcel, I can watch it leave Canada in a day to a day and a half. Then it can stop dead for a week. The Americans on Seller Central dot com remark on the same thing. International gets to the destination country just fine and then sits dead in Customs to beyond the delivery estimate.
I do not see this as a Cdn thing as the American sellers are saying the exact same things we are.
German Customs are notoriously slow. 11 days to Germany does not even get it out of Customs. Russia? My experience is 15 working days minimum.
Mexico that I had the invisible INR is beyond three weeks. I had a customer in Kazakhstan just now, again, three weeks. My customer in Chile is coming up on three weeks.
The odd time I have an Expedited parcel, I can watch it leave Canada in a day to a day and a half. Then it can stop dead for a week. The Americans on Seller Central dot com remark on the same thing. International gets to the destination country just fine and then sits dead in Customs to beyond the delivery estimate.
I do not see this as a Cdn thing as the American sellers are saying the exact same things we are.
@realjazz-123 wrote:
What do you do about tracking and insurance on international shipping?
Hi realjazz-123,
Great questions for other sellers: http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/bd-p/213
Thanks,
