eBay

kalvin@ebay.com · ‎09-26-2013

Feel free to share your thoughts about the Global Shipping Program here.

A few questions to get the ball rolling:

What has worked well for you with the Global Shipping Program?
Any ideas to help improve the experience for Canadian buyers?
What has deterred you from buying items offered using the Global Shipping Program?
How have you managed to search for items outside the program?

Please try & keep the comments constructive 🙂

If you have any questions about the program, please post them here.

~Kalvin
eBay.ca Community Manager

kalvin@ebay.com

anguscoinshop · ‎11-01-2013

somethings you cant buy in Canada. There was another item i was looking for, i found it on a private site, no GSP, just for the fun of it i looked on ebay. Only two sellers had it both with GSP and import charge.

I purchased from the private site no GSP no import charge.

ebay has become last resort.

as i mentioned before, GSP has to go.

marnotom! · ‎11-01-2013

@angus_coin_shop wrote:

Some things you can't buy in Canada. There was another item I was looking for, I found it on a private site, no GSP, just for the fun of it i looked on ebay. Only two sellers had it both with GSP and import charge.

I purchased from the private site no GSP no import charge.

ebay has become last resort.

as i mentioned before, GSP has to go.

You don't compare the total price you paid on the private site to the total price you would likely have been looking at on eBay, but the fact of the matter is that eBay is not a "theif" for collecting taxes at the time of purchase instead of leaving it to the feds to decide whether they should be collected upon delivery.

What shipping method is this private site using for your item, anyway? If it's not the postal service, import charges may be buried in the item price, shipping cost, or collectable on delivery.

leanniefaith · ‎11-01-2013

Can anyone tell me, who is deciding what is duty free at Pitney Bowes? Crafts, true antiques, fabric, etc. etc. are duty free at the Canadian border. IS PB sorting out the actual duty free items, or are they just charging everyone?

Also since Ebay charges the seller a % on their final selling price, and they charge on the shipping price, how much of the duty are they getting from Pitney Bowes? They aren't dealing with all this negativity for free.

afantiques · ‎11-01-2013

Can anyone tell me, who is deciding what is duty free at Pitney Bowes? Crafts, true antiques, fabric, etc. etc. are duty free at the Canadian border. IS PB sorting out the actual duty free items, or are they just charging everyone

Items might be dty free but they are not GST/ST free unless they are valued under $20. Items with a selling price below Can$20 will not have import charges. When this scheme started items under $20 were being charged, now they probably roll the GSP fees into the shipping price.

Also since Ebay charges the seller a % on their final selling price, and they charge on the shipping price, how much of the duty are they getting from Pitney Bowes? They aren't dealing with all this negativity for free.

They are getting none of the import taxes paid, there is a brokerage fee in the shipping cost from KY to you, but ebay does not charge FVF on the international part of the shipping.

I'm not saying the scheme is not 90% a bad idea, just that no-one seems to understand how it is worked, and what it entails.

reallynicestamps · ‎11-01-2013

I purchased from the private site no GSP no import charge.

Just for fun, let us know if you are charged sales tax and the CP service fee when your item arrives . Probably won't (my most recent purchase wasn't ) but.....

reallynicestamps · ‎11-01-2013

Keep in mind that the seller's shipping FVF is based on the first domestic shipping charge.

So if your seller charges $10 for US shipping, he will pay 90 cents (9%) on your international GSP shipping.

If he offers Free Shipping domestically, he will pay nothing on your international GSP shipping.

marnotom! · ‎11-01-2013

@reallynicestamps wrote:

Just for fun, let us know if you are charged sales tax and the CP service fee when your item arrives . Probably won't (my most recent purchase wasn't ) but.....

Well, there's a few unknowns here, at least for me. I don't know where the "private site" is based: Canada or elsewhere. And I don't know what shipping method is being used. It may well be something other than the post office.

Having said that, it really perplexes me how people give up on eBay because of the GSP, yet they find alternatives that still charge the taxes and fees that they find so objectionable about the GSP in the first place: they're just buried in other charges or even less transparent than the GSP charges.

patken123 · ‎11-02-2013

"Having said that, it really perplexes me how people give up on eBay because of the GSP, yet they find alternatives that still charge the taxes and fees that they find so objectionable about the GSP in the first place: "

Please don't be "preplexed",people are using the little shopping power they have to object to GSP by not letting ebay to profit from sneekly ramming it down buyer's throat.

marnotom! · ‎11-02-2013

@patken123 wrote:

Please don't be "preplexed",people are using the little shopping power they have to object to GSP by not letting ebay to profit from sneekly ramming it down buyer's throat.

How is the GSP being "sneekly" rammed down buyers' throats? I see links to information on the program on every listing where it's used.

afantiques · ‎11-02-2013

If it was sneakily rammed anywhere it is the sellers who are the victims. They can justifiably say they are victims. All the buyers need to do is not buy.

Commonly, sellers don't even know they are involved or just how expensive their stuff looks.

kxeron · ‎11-02-2013

Just to follow up to add to my previous post, since this is effectively in the "GSP" thread now (while it wasn't exactly binding to the GSP in my original thread before merger), I have some further observations:

On a 1280x800 screen with 100% font zoom on listing detail pages, any GSP-related fees are indeed pushed off of the screen by the "No additional import charges at delivery!" banner on eBay.com where shipping fees would ordinarily start, which is very deceptive, a buyer may look at this all, feel they are getting a good deal and that there won't be any surprise COD charges and commit to buy. By the time they see the final charge(s), they are already contractually obligated by the eBay Terms to pay. While there may be blame to lay on the buyer for not looking hard enough at the whole listing or understanding the GSP, there is also blame to lay on eBay for not making all pricing conspicuous. "Regular web page font size" is not conspicuous with a banner like "No additional import charges at delivery!".

FURTHER: I feel that there needs to be a field in the "Advanced" search where one can limit what one is willing to pay in shipping charges to filter out items that have undesirable attached costs (just like the "Show items priced from" fields). While this may result in a fair amount of "0 items found" search results, I think it would be an invaluable tool. Why force people to navigate the site into listings they wouldn't purchase in the first place?

eBay and all of its associates (Pitney Bowes included) are indeed treading dangerous waters with these practices as sooner or later, a consumer protection agency is going to see this going on and question these practices. eBay has a monopoly on online sale of items between individuals and thus has a responsibility to wield that monopoly correctly in the interests of consumers regardless of its or its associates' business practices.

If eBay and Pitney Bowes wants GSP, fine - just adjust the site pricing system to adequately indicate that final price and provide people the ability to remove items from searches that shipping may be too expensive for them on, that's all I ask.

afantiques · ‎11-02-2013

By the time they see the final charge(s), they are already contractually obligated by the eBay Terms to pay.

The buyer sees a further screen with the whole cost detailed. At that point they can back out. This should be fairly obvious to a buyer as the next button says 'Commit to Buy', implying no commitment has been made so far.

anguscoinshop · ‎11-02-2013

kalvin is no longer with ebay, he cant be he hasn't answered any of my questions.

wadelaca · ‎11-02-2013

Hi,

I am a fairly new buyer from Canada. I've just realized that we (Canadians) are pretty much paying twice for shipping, once to the sellerto get the item to Pitney Bowes, then Pitney Bowes adds on their shipping fees. This means that in most cases we are paying more for shipping than if items are sent through the US Post Office. In many situations your paying much more in shipping than the item is worth.

For example, I paid $20.00 for an item plus $11.24 in shipping, then Pitney Bowes hit me for another$21.24, so my $20.00 item cost me $52.49.

A similar parcel (size and weight) mailed from Colorado cost $15.15 to ship through the US Post Office, with no extra charges at my end.

So now I will either avoid sellers that use Global, or ask them to ship via the U.S.P.O.

It took me three transactions to figure this out,(using the Express checkout) and I can certainly understand why people are so angry about Global Shipping.

I think ebay should post this info on the individual listings, that you are paying the seller AND Pitney Bowes with a grand total on the listing. As for the shipping calculator, half the time it doesn't work.

Thanks,

Laurie

afantiques · ‎11-02-2013

For example, I paid $20.00 for an item plus $11.24 in shipping, then Pitney Bowes hit me for another$21.24, so my $20.00 item cost me $52.49.

Why pay that much? Why not just forget it?

vettefever333 · ‎11-02-2013

I have been following this thread and responded twice. I see many "point of order" after "point of order" now. I have made my thoughts known that I refuse to buy from a seller using GSP so no use going into that again. I have been registered on EBay for 13 years and had a rich experience purchasing rare items I could not find locally especially in the early years but with the expansion of the internet in the intrum, I can now find much of what I need by just searching outside EBay. Laws, collections, who is to blame aside, it costs me far more to buy from a seller using GSP than shipping through the USPS, bottom line. Now here is a simple suggestion. Make it an easy, upfront and well documented option for the seller to opt out of the GSP and ship direct if requested. Shipping options, "send through GSP" or "send via United States Postal Service. There are various shipping options already built in if the sellers needs, ship via USPS (several levels of service), via UP, via Purolator, add another one, "ship via GSP". If the seller is nervous about shipping direct and will only ship via GSP, bless them and I will move on. I bet if the seller has an easy option to opt out and they are aware that Canadians are moving on because of the GSP program, they would ship direct. In the early years, Americans were very fearful of even shipping outside the USA to Canada, over time, it became like second nature to ship outside the USA, they found out 10% or more of their customer base was just a short hop north and remember that figure, 10% or more. If EBay wishes to hang on to GSP, don't exclude Canada, simply make it an easy to understand shipping option...

patken123 · ‎11-02-2013

By reducing the numbers of US sellers not with GSP,a buyer is left with almost no choice but to bite the bullet and accept the GSP that's how is rammed down our throats.ebay has betrayed it's buyers .plain and simple so now buyers slowly but surely are willing to pay the same but shop somewhere else .

US sellers as victims? PELLLLEASE,I don't see one seller complaining about GSP,instead all we see is pages after pages of angry buyers,some sellers may have been unknowingly enrolled in GSP but most thought of it as an easy way to make more sales without doing much leg work.

Canadian buyers have no insentive to buy from ebay any more since things are starting to cost the same so all thing being equal they will eventually shop elsewhere and will deprive ebay as long as GSP is still there sticking it's ugly head in every sale.

marnotom! · ‎11-02-2013

@patken123 wrote:
By reducing the numbers of US sellers not with GSP,a buyer is left with almost no choice but to bite the bullet and accept the GSP that's how is rammed down our throats.ebay has betrayed it's buyers .plain and simple so now buyers slowly but surely are willing to pay the same but shop somewhere else .

I'm not convinced that the GSP has seen a significant net reduction in the number of U.S. sellers who ship directly to their non-U.S. buyers. I think it may have seen an increase in the number of sellers offering (sometimes unknowingly) international shipping, but I would hope that sellers who have been successful in shipping directly to their non-U.S. buyers in the past have either stuck with it or returned to using it after twigging to the fact that something was amiss.

Back at the end of June, I posted to this thread my findings from my results for searching for a popular Android smartphone on several different eBay sites. While the number of present listings has increased slightly in terms of a percentage on .com, they've increased more dramatically on the other sites. It's impossible to read much into this, of course. Some of this change may be attributed to tweaks with the search function, of course, and there may be an increase in domestic sellers from these sites contributing to the overall numbers, but I think another possible reading is that there's a higher proportion of U.S. sellers willing to give international shipping a go through the GSP whereas they wouldn't have been so willing before.

Results from eBay.ca today: 1730 listings (roughly a 163% increase over June's 1065 listings)

Results from eBay.co.uk today: 1406 listings (a 218% increase over June's 646 listings)

Results from eBay.com.au today: 771 listings (a 241% increase over June's 320 listings)

Results from eBay.com today: 2625 listings (roughly a 7% increase over June's 2451 listings)

As for your point about eBay buyers feeling "betrayed" by the site and shopping elsewhere, are you referring to buyers willing to pay higher prices for their items and shipping as long as they don't knowingly pay taxes and fees, or buyers willing to pay pretty much the same fees charged by the GSP but on a different site?

@patken123 wrote:

US sellers as victims? PELLLLEASE,I don't see one seller complaining about GSP,instead all we see is pages after pages of angry buyers,some sellers may have been unknowingly enrolled in GSP but most thought of it as an easy way to make more sales without doing much leg work.

U.S. sellers don't generally post on the Canadian eBay site's discussion boards, so you're not likely to see the complaints from those surprised to find themselves enrolled in the program or those facing complaints from upset buyers or those who knowingly enrolled in the program but didn't understand how they're "locked into" offering it as a shipping option.

The fact is, if you're a U.S. eBay user the GSP is for all intents and purposes invisible until you find yourself with a buyer who's purchased from one of your listings offering it or you check your listing pages or settings regularly. Even then, you have no idea how much it's costing your buyer unless you ask them or check the listing page as a non-U.S. buyer yourself.

@patken123 wrote:

Canadian buyers have no insentive to buy from ebay any more since things are starting to cost the same so all thing being equal they will eventually shop elsewhere and will deprive ebay as long as GSP is still there sticking it's ugly head in every sale.

What is the incentive for buying on eBay? eBay hasn't marketed itself as an online rummage sale or garage sale for years now. I buy things on eBay that I have difficulty sourcing locally and I pay what I feel is a fair price for the item. If I don't have to pay tax on it, great, but I consider that a bonus, not something to which I'm entitled.

marnotom! · ‎11-02-2013

Whoops, sorry. The percentage increase in eBay.ca listings for the phone is 63%, not 163%. Still, a far larger proportional increase than .com listings for the same phone.

2222cindyw · ‎11-02-2013

NOT FOR LONG no one is going to be shopping soon on ebay.( from canada.) unless they want to get RIPPED-OFF from pitney bowes brokers, more and more are using this since they are expanding to singapore china mexico isreal new zealand and the phillippenes funny things can get there cheaper, than there neighbours here, who have been supporting them for years now. PITNEY BOWES BROKERS HAVE TO GO.