eBay

vic824 · ‎02-01-2018

Canadians buying from the USA are being ripped off by ebay global shipping service

1st

the cost is 40 % higher than using USPS 1st Class international

2nd

The time it take to get here, 10 days longer than USPS 1st Class international

3rd

The BIGGEST RIP OFF

Import taxes on thing under 50.00 , I refuse to pay 21.00 import tax on a 50.00 item

downsizing2018 · ‎02-01-2018

I am not sure your statistics are correct, but I am totally with you! i do not buy anything from sellers using global shipping for that very reason. Most sellers in the USA do not know the repercussions of that system, did not knowingly enroll in it, and have no idea how to get out of it. HORRIBLE!

vic824 · ‎02-01-2018

PART 2

Global shipping does not track a item once it is in Canada

Their computer stated that my item was in Canada Post for delivery When in fact UPS deliver the item

I don't trust ebay any more

that is why I stopped selling on ebay

Amazon does not have all this bull **bleep**

WAKE UP EBAY before you become E-BUTT

femmefan1946 · ‎02-01-2018

The duty free limit for imports is $20Cdn (~$16USD) not $50.

It has been since the mid'80s.

Most of the import fees you will be charged are not duty, but sales taxes.

In addition, GSP (Pitney Bowes) charges a ~$5 service fee.

Canada Post charges $9.95 and UPS charges $25 or more.

The cost is higher than shipping by USPS/Canada Post because the CBSA officials have sensibly decided that it would be foolish to assess low value items for duty and Sales Tax when the amount that is likely to be collected is lower than the cost of collecting.

The GSP is a Seller Protection program.

It has no value for buyers and is not meant to have any value for buyers.

Once a shipment is received at the GSP plant in Erlanger KY, the seller's responsibility ends.

Because it is a Seller Protection program.

The seller's tracking also ends there, but you should be sent a new tracking number by GSP/PB. The new number starts with UPA

Unison worked this out for buyers who have not yet received their GSP shipment.
TRACKING SYSTEM FOR GSP
I found this thread today while awaiting a shipment. Once I learned that Pitney Bowes was the relevant company, I was able to find my package's tracking info in about 10 seconds.

Step 1: Go to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Tracker page at https://parceltracking.pb.com/app/#/dashboard/

Step 2: Enter your eBay-supplied Global Tracking number (mine began with UPAA...)

Step 3: You will be shown limited tracking info. In my case, only up to the point the package left the USA and entered Canada.

Step 4: Click on the "Track on carrier's website" link at the top right.

Step 5: You will be provided with tracking on the page of the actual shipping company, in my case Canada Post, with a tracking number in THEIR system.

Problem solved! If only eBay would put a link to https://parceltracking.pb.com/app/#/dashboard/ in their shipping emails, this could all be avoided...

marnotom! · ‎02-02-2018

wrote:
Canadians buying from the USA are being ripped off by ebay global shipping service
1st
the cost is 40 % higher than using USPS 1st Class international
2nd
The time it take to get here, 10 days longer than USPS 1st Class international
3rd
The BIGGEST RIP OFF
Import taxes on thing under 50.00 , I refuse to pay 21.00 import tax on a 50.00 item

First:

The GSP is a forwarding service. You are paying the seller's charge to ship the item from their location to a shipping centre in Kentucky, plus whatever the GSP charges for shipping the item from Kentucky to you.

If the seller's shipping charge to Kentucky is on the pricey side, that's going to affect your item's shipping cost.

Also consider that if the seller provides no information on the item's shipping weight or dimensions, the GSP bot has to "guess" or base its shipping calculations on an average for the category in which the item was listed. Garbage in, garbage out.

Also consider that the shipping price for a two pound item sent by mail to Canada as a parcel (Priority International) is over twice that of First Class International (letter post).

Second:

I've only used the GSP twice. Both purchases were cell phones. At the same time I ordered the phones, I ordered cases for the phones. In both instances, the phones arrived before the cases. Perhaps I got lucky, as I don't think one of the cases actually shipped from the US despite what the listing claimed, but if time really is of the essence to you, make sure you pay attention to the delivery time estimates stated on the listing page.

Third:

As was mentioned in the previous post, the tax and duty-free limit on items sent by mail is C$20, not fifty bucks. And what you're paying is not just "import taxes". It's all explained in the GSP terms and conditions you agreed to when you commited to buy your item.

billybishop72 · ‎02-03-2018

No matter what the business, being the 'middle man' between two parties in a transaction makes you a lot of money. All you have to do is convince the two parties that you are necessary for the safe completion of the transaction while duplicating an existing service or better yet, use a service that the two parties could easily use on their own.

This is exactly what the GSP is doing. They preyed on the fears of Ebay sellers that they were necessary for a safe transaction, when the reality is that they are not....

yqqcoins · ‎02-03-2018

did anyone ever have a return??? I hear it is a nightmare as original papers are required.

heard the sory of a canadian dime having been shipped from Florida to Ontario-Canada.

purchase price $ 5, GS charges 14.48. took 3 weeks to get there.

talk about a scam!!!!!!!!!!!!

othe cases are that Shipments can not be combined. you pay!!! or do not buy.

another: cshipping for Canadian quarter valued at $ 21 from Chicago to Toronto . GS cost 17.45

another shipment a day later from the same seller, another quarter, GS cost 15.10.

same weight. Value is not important as it was under $ 40 and CAN legal tender.

Never will I buy from someone who uses GS unless they ship via UPS to me.

femmefan1946 · ‎02-03-2018

Value is not important as it was under $ 40

The duty-free maximum is $20Cdn (about $16USD) and has been since the mid-80s.

High time for it to be changed.

and CAN legal tender.

It is true that cash and bullion are not dutiable.

But they are taxable.

And the shipper (GSP?Pitney Bowes) is allowed to charge a service fee (which may have various names).

PB charges ~$5 USD

So your $21USD coin was charged up to 15% sales tax or $3.78 Cdn + service fee of ~$6Cdn. or $9.78 Cdn in 'import fees'

It's not clear if your $17.45 included the Seller's shipping fee or not.

I'm not disagreeing with you. The GSP is a badly explained and badly run system, but I think it important that when we talk about it, we use facts.

Never will I buy from someone who uses GS unless they ship via UPS to me.

Don't do that.

All couriers, including GSP/PB and UPS, are required to assess shipments for duty and sales taxes.

And UPS chooses to charge a service fee of $25 or more for 'customs brokerage'.

What you can suggest is using USPS First Class International Parcel which gives the Seller the Confirmation of Delivery they desperately want.

https://postcalc.usps.com/?country=10440

femmefan1946 · ‎02-03-2018

did anyone ever have a return??? I hear it is a nightmare as original papers are required.

GSP/PB is pretty good about Not As Disputes.

If it is a case of non-delivery or of damage, they refund promptly. They do not want the item back, what would they do with it?, and the seller does not lose payment.

If if is a Not As Described, the return would need paperwork in any case, both to retrieve the duty and sales tax from CBSA, because the Seller never saw that money and cannot refund it, and to return the item to the Seller as 'returned merchandise' so that she is not charged import fees for the return.

This is a fact of international commerce and has nothing to do with the courier.

Keep in mind too, that what we see on the Boards is the bad news. Thousands of GSP transactions happen daily. A few go wrong.

marnotom! · ‎02-04-2018

wrote:

No matter what the business, being the 'middle man' between two parties in a transaction makes you a lot of money. All you have to do is convince the two parties that you are necessary for the safe completion of the transaction while duplicating an existing service or better yet, use a service that the two parties could easily use on their own.

This is exactly what the GSP is doing. They preyed on the fears of Ebay sellers that they were necessary for a safe transaction, when the reality is that they are not....

I hung out on and off on the .com site's International Trading Discussion Board for a number of years until the board was retired. The fact is, eBay tried touting the benefits of international selling on the .com site for quite some time, but it faced an uphill battle. As a nation, the United States of America suffers from acute paranoia, and posts by xenophobic sellers, sellers swearing never to sell internationally again after being burned by a ten dollar sale gone south, as well as those afraid of persecution or prosecution by their own government over creatively filled customs forms (if they were able to figure out in the first place that they were pretty straightforward to fill out) were commonplace, and despite the efforts by those with a sensible approach to risk-management and knowledge of the paperwork involved, it was very hard to convert the paranoid.

eBay eventually gave up and the GSP is the result. I don't think they're necessarily "preying" on sellers' fears; I think they're just hoping that the smart ones will do their homework and figure out whether the GSP is right for them and their items, and it is in some cases, particularly heavy items or pricier ones. I think the GSP is mostly being used by sellers who wouldn't have shipped internationally in the past, or at the very least been extremely reluctant to do so under their own steam. US (and UK) sellers worth their salt wouldn't have converted to the GSP if their current international shipping plan worked out well for them. What you're seeing is either the GSP largely being automatically applied by eBay to listings where there's no provision for international shipping but no blocks for international buyers applied, either, or else you're seeing the GSP being used by sellers who don't know or don't care how much of a pain in the patoot it is for international buyers who don't make much of a difference to these sellers' bottom line anyway.

Shorter version of the above: If you see a GSP listing and the GSP appears to be being used inappropriately, it's probably from a seller who doesn't know what they're doing. And why on earth would you buy from a seller who doesn't know what they're doing?

marnotom! · ‎02-04-2018

wrote:

another: cshipping for Canadian quarter valued at $ 21 from Chicago to Toronto . GS cost 17.45

another shipment a day later from the same seller, another quarter, GS cost 15.10.
same weight. Value is not important as it was under $ 40 and CAN legal tender.
Never will I buy from someone who uses GS unless they ship via UPS to me.

I have a strong suspicion that those sellers were using flat-rate letter post shipping within the US for those coins and as a result there was no shipping weight in the listings. This means that the GSP had nothing to work with when calculating a shipping rate, so it had to base the shipping rate on a guess or an average for the category in which the coins were listed.

Just out of curiosity, how is shipping by UPS a more attractive prospect than shipping through the GSP? Or do you mean USPS?

momcqueen · ‎02-04-2018

wrote:
....Shorter version of the above: If you see a GSP listing and the GSP appears to be being used inappropriately, it's probably from a seller who doesn't know what they're doing. And why on earth would you buy from a seller who doesn't know what they're doing?

This hits the nail on the head. Many of the complaints I see or hear about the Global Shipping Program, however, seem to stem from buyers who were similarly talked by surprise.