c!~~_7.JPG "kalvin@ebay.com"){kind=avatar}
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.
This buyer is now NARU. I suspect he may not have read the listing completely.
There are two charges:
1) to the seller for the item
2) to Pitney Bowes for import charge and the shipping charge from the distribution centre (shown in listing).
There is also the possibility of misunderstanding the conversion if the amounts shown in the listing were in US$ while the charges from PayPal were in Cdn$
We will never know.
@pierrelebel wrote:This buyer is now NARU. I suspect he may not have read the listing completely.
There are two charges:
1) to the seller for the item
2) to Pitney Bowes for import charge and the shipping charge from the distribution centre (shown in listing).
I also suspect a misunderstanding of the shipping charges as the way they're described on the listing page is a bit different from the way they're described on the PayPal statements.
The listing page only provides a total for the shipping charge. It's only after the buyer makes their payment that they see how much of the shipping charge goes to the seller (on the statement for the item payment) and how much goes to Pitney Bowes (on the Pitney Bowes statement). The only way to find out how prior to payment much the seller is receiving in shipping charges is to change the shipping location to USA ZIP code 41025 on the listing page itself.
This is complicated by the fact that the "new" PayPal payment details page doesn't detail the Pitney Bowes charge breakdown quite as clearly as the "classic" page does. The "shipping" charge appears to be a detail of the overall "import charges" when it's in fact a separate line item.
"The "import charges" are entirely ficticious and constitute a complete ripoff as they cover nothing that MIGHT be charged. "
You are wrong. Period. Please take the time to learn what the program is all about. Thousands of posts written over the last three years should help.
GSP is not "buyer friendly" for Canadians and should be avoided in most instances. However assertions made in your post are plainly wrong.
I do not like GSP and do not use it. You do not like GSP then you should not use it, There is no point in accusing anyone of wrongdoing.
@00nevermind00 wrote:
How would you like this explanation to look? I can see it being almost as lengthy as the terms and conditions page, really. I suspect the mucky-mucks at eBay or Pitney Bowes figure it's just reinventing the wheel to have yet another set of pages explaining how the program works.
How about detailing all the various charges on the listing page for one thing? Buyers like to know what they are paying for. Why all the secrecy? I suspect that eBay/PB don't want buyers to see the service charge. But they are charging it so they should own up to it.
Hey, that's not a bad idea. Why don't we extend that to sellers who don't use the GSP as well. I'd like to know how much of the seller's shipping and handling charge is going to the transport cost of the item, the mailing box, bubble wrap, coffee and gas. And why stop there? Why doesn't Loblaws have on the shelf tag for a two litre bottle of cola how much of the item price is actually for its ingredients, how much is going to the plastic bottle, how much is going to transporting it, how much is going to pay the various personnel involved in handling it, and so forth?
Most people don't care about what goes into what they're charged for something unless they feel they've been ripped off, and even you have to admit that at around five bucks, the GSP's program charges are a bargain compared to the brokerage and clearance fees carriers such as UPS and FedEx charge for a parcel sent by ground from the US to Canada.
@00nevermind00 wrote:
And how about a streamlined GSP claims process integrated into the regular process? Almost two and a half years into the program and buyers still don't know what to do when something goes wrong. This is simply unacceptable and does not reflect well at all on eBay.
What do you mean by "streamlined"? It's no different than the process of filing a claim for a non-GSP item when the seller won't cooperate. I think you're conflating the poor communication of the process with the process itself, which appears to be pretty straightforward. The only thing that needs to be tweaked with the actual process from what I can see is that when the claim is made, it needs to be noted that the purchase was made through the GSP as it seems that eBay or PayPal employees won't always catch that detail.
@00nevermind00 wrote:
The terms and conditions page isn't really all that full of legal mumbo-jumbo, anyway. However, it is lengthy and it does require a fair bit of interpretation or reading between the lines.
Seriously? Print it out then pick 10 people off the street and ask them to read it. See how many make it to the end.
What about buyers whose first language isn't English? How easy is it for them to read that thing? And simply reading it isn't enough, you have to memorize the main elements otherwise why read it at all? Anyone who thinks that buyers are going to sit through that thing is dreaming in technicolor.
Didn't I say that the terms and conditions page was lengthy? But full of legalese it ain't.
As for the ESL angle, the same could be said about the eBay Canada or Canadian PayPal agreements, no? Those are also only in Canada's two official languages. PayPal, in fact, has several separate pages of documentation, agreements and policy outlines.
@00nevermind00 wrote:
The term "priority" is pretty meaningless in the context of the GSP, but only because the shipping method doesn't take "priority" over anything else that the program has to offer. USPS Priority International doesn't take priority over any other international parcel service the US postal service has to offer, either. It just got stuck with that name because it there is a corresponding domestic service that's handled similarly.
OK, fine. But my point is that buyers and sellers are being deceived into thinking that they are getting a service called Priority International (which is perceived to be faster; whether or not it really is faster is irrelevant) when they're not. There are enough posts here and on the .com boards to prove that the confusion does exist. And, again, it does not make eBay look good.
It is carefully (yes, even sneakily) worded, but unlike the "Priority" services of USPS or FedEx, it's not labelled as a trademark or service mark. As for the perception of "priority" being faster, a quick look at a dictionary should remind people that "priority" is not a synonym for "fast".
@00nevermind00 wrote:
You seem to really enjoy saying white when everyone says black, and vice versa. I promise not to reply to your reply, so you can have the last word 🙂
The problem is that a lot of people aren't saying "black". They're tossing in everything they can find but the kitchen sink in arguments that they likely wouldn't make of other services. I'm trying to cut through that and bring a bit of clarity to things. You don't have to like what Pitney Bowes is doing to try to see things from their perspective.
And I still maintain that there's nothing on the eBay site that states unequivocally that buyers will get online viewable tracking on a GSP shipment. 
