@tapeguy wrote:
The first time I purchased this item, it was shipped through the global shipping program. 10 days from time of shipping by the seller until I picked it up at the post office in Ontario, Canada. I just purchased this item again in June, but this time it was shipped through Ebay international shipping- 29 days from the date shipped. Tell me how this is the better shipping service.
It's better for the sellers. They get all sorts of perks through this new program that they didn't get through the Global Shipping Program and perks they don't even get with domestic sales.
You don't go into any detail about the journey your item took, but I bet the tracking information suggests a big delay once the item got to Illinois. The USPS Chicago distribution centre is notorious for backups and delays. Since that part of the item's shipping is under the seller's control, I don't think you can make eBay International Shipping wear this, although I will grant that choosing the Chicago area for one of its forwarding hubs likely wasn't the greatest move on the part of EasyShip, the logistics company overseeing eIS.
@tapeguy wrote:
I have also noticed that on many items, the shipping cost is absolutely absorbent, sometimes in the hundreds of dollars. Either some sellers are jacking up the shipping costs to make money, or Ebay's calculator is malfunctioning.
Paper towels are "absorbent." Shipping costs are something different. "Absurd," perhaps?
What's probably happening with these eIS-forwarded items that are showing crazy shipping costs in the listings is that the seller hasn't set up the listing with enough information for the shipping calculator to calculate a proper international shipping rate. A lot of sellers who ship "flat rate" within the US don't bother providing information on their items' shipping dimensions and weight, so the calculator has to make a guess based on the category the item is listed in (as it has no idea what the item actually is), and it uses a worst case scenario to make that guess.
@tapeguy wrote:
This program needs a lot of improvements. It is also unfair to the sellers, I'd have to assume many of them get more complaints about the slow shipping than ever before. Maybe I'm wrong.
The eIS is still fairly new; I'd say it's going through an awkward adolescence at this point. For what it's worth, the GSP got a lot of flack back in the day, particularly in the first year or so it was offered. Many buyers didn't understand why they had to pay "import charges" on their shipments, the online viewable tracking that many people seem to love watching was erratic to non-existent, and it was more expensive than direct USPS shipping in most cases. The Global Shipping Center also seemed to struggle when the volume of items surged during the holiday season and in the early days of the pandemic.
I bought a pair of jeans handled by eIS last month, and it reached me on Vancouver Island within the three week delivery period stated on the listing page despite the seller taking full advantage of their three-day handling period and highway closures in my neck of the woods. Somehow, my item whizzed through Chicago, and while there's some quirks as well as a nine day gap in the tracking scans, the tracking does note that the seller sent the item off and that I received it, and that's the main thing. I suspect there's some experimenting going on to find out the best ways to get merchandise out to Canada, and as buyers we just have to wait it out until that gets sorted.
What sort of improvements would you like to see with the program? You say it needs "a lot."
