@grendal_6wrote:
- a website devoted to trade and ecommerce is fine -- as long as it is fair and honest trade. What we have here is not fair trade but predatory trade, as practised by Walmart and Amazon. You seem to be a fan of the latter for ebay as well.
Unlike the two merchants that you mention, eBay doesn't actually sell merchandise. It simply facilitates trade. I don't see how you can apply the term "trade" to eBay the same way as you're using it for those other examples.
@grendal_6wrote:
- Thanks for the instructional on Pitney Bowes producing postage meters -- never would have guessed. But there is a subtle difference between a private corporation producing equipment for a public corporation, and then trying to destroy and pick the bones of that public corporation, to the detriment of the public good, with our support.
While I agree that there are corporations up to nefarious deeds when it comes to the public sector, particularly in areas such as education and health care, I fail to see how Pitney Bowes is contributing to the dismantling of public services with the Global Shipping Program. After all, many items forwarded through the program are sent to the Global Shipping Center by USPS. Many items travel the Canadian leg of their journey by Canada Post.
@grendal_6wrote:
- "pocketing the import charges": That's the only logical conclusion you can come to when there is no transparency in the transaction. No separation of fees, only listed as import charges, which are all over the map -- no consistency. Companies reluctant to give that information should always be viewed with suspicion. Canada Border Agency should be investigating.
You can have all the transparency in a transaction you want, but there's no guarantee that the money's going where you expect it to go. How do you know that the GST or HST that your neighbourhood Tim Horton's is charging on your double-double is actually going to the feds and not into the franchisee's pocket?
The fact is, if you import something, be it by mail, courier, or freight, you should expect to pay taxes, duty (if applicable), and various charges associated with seeing it through customs and having the taxes and duty either collected or paid on your behalf. If Pitney Bowes isn't doing that, that's not your problem, and the feds will catch up to them sooner or later the way they caught up to Amway years ago. Someone not doing their job is no excuse for you not to do your job.
Besides, my understanding is that the way the GSP handles the remittance of taxes and duty is no different than the way logistics companies handle it for large commercial shipments and not much different than how carriers such as UPS and FedEx handle it for individual shipments.
@grendal_6wrote:
- negative option changes: ebay is famous for this and is doing it right now with updates to privacy policy. Opting out of commercial messages is a negative option if you were never given a choice to opt in. Plus by opting out, you could be charged message and data rates (you have to pay to opt out!)
What are American (and British) sellers being "opted into", though? They pay nothing for the program's use. They have no responsibility to see that the item makes it safely to its ultimate destination. If they're already following best practices, they don't have to do anything special with their listings.
While the program may be there to serve sellers who don't wish to ship outside their borders, it's actually the buyers that are contractually bound to the service and pay for its use.
And (for the umpteenth time) let's not forget what the Global Shipping Program is: a forwarding service. Sellers ship the item to a centralized-ish location in the US. The item is transported as part of a larger freight shipment to a Canadian hub, where it is separated from the freight shipment and forwarded to its destination, usually by mail. If the logistics company subcontracted to handle the GSP item does elect to use UPS, it would be only on the Canadian leg of the journey and not subject to import charges since, as far as UPS is concerned, the item originates from a Canadian location.
I'm not a huge fan of the GSP either, but I've found that used properly it has its place. The problem is that because sellers haven't kept up with the .com user agreement, it's often being used by sellers who are unaware or don't care that it's been applied to their listings. Where it does work well, it's usually by sellers who have optimized their listings to take full advantage of it.
Also keep in mind that the GSP ships to about 100 countries in addition to Canada. Some buyers, particularly in countries such as Germany and Italy that see postal imports detained and/or delayed for various reasons, actually prefer the GSP over direct mailed shipments. For us Canadians where our customs infrastructure has, well, adapted to the influx of personal imports from the US, it generally doesn't work so well. But I haven't seen any evidence so far that Pitney Bowes is up to anything illegal.
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