New International shipping rates US to Canada

[tumutumu]

I've been a regular eBay buyer (never a seller) for over 20 years. We lived in the US  for over 15 years, and when we moved to Canada several years ago, I was happy to pay what seemed like reasonable charges to have items from US sellers delivered. As of last fall's  implementation of the new eBay "International Shipping" policy, even small, light  clothing items frequently ship with charges as high as $60 and more. I simply refuse to pay that much to have a $25 item shipped as I suspect much of the profit from these transactions is going into eBay's pocket. I have tried negotiating with individual sellers to arrange lower shipping rates, but I find they often refuse or ignore me. I get that--it's a lot of trouble to change shipping arrangements for just a few items. Does anyone know of a route for appealing this change to eBay? Am I alone in finding this change unreasonable? My only recourse here is to stop supporting eBay sellers, and I really don't want to do that...

[killahwhale]

You can buy a single hockey card for a dollar and it can cost over $20 in shipping. Last time I checked, it only costs $1.55 US for them to send a letter to Canada. Needless to say, I don't buy from US vendors even though lots of them have cards I want.

[marnotom!]

@killahwhale - A hockey card is not a "letter," it's "merchandise." Merchandise can no longer be sent internationally as a letter. (It needs a customs form, for starters.) Canadian sellers are running into this issue as well when shipping to the States and overseas.

[killahwhale]

I realise that a hockey card is not a letter. However, it should not cost 13x what it costs to send a letter. That's just gouging. What I said earlier is not quite accurate. Some US vendors actually do send cards via mail, and the shipping is generally less than $10.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

The challenge as per @killahwhale is to FIND the sellers using reasonable shipping where possible. Not the easiest task but something that has been pushing(Canadian) buyers away.

[paradrox]

Am I glad to have found this post!

I agree 100% with you.  In the past weeks, I've been shocked to see shipping charges jump to 50-60$CAN for almost everything, from every seller I browse.  And mostly for small or medium items, not very heavy.

I was about to buy another item I've purchased on January 26 for 6.99$US + 14.10$US shipping, but the cost is now 6.99$US + 39.74$US shipping.  That's insane!

Last week I received an offer for an item I was watching.  The price was indeed a deal, but shipping was 67$CAN for a simple pair of pants!  I contacted the seller and he answered me: "Hi, I unfortunately don’t have control over the shipping rates internationally. My price is $8.99, the extra charge is from international. It won’t let me lower it either."

I can't spend my days contacting US sellers to explain that eBay changed their shipping charges, possibly without them noticing, and that they should adjust them or risk losing sales from Canadian buyers.  For now, I don't see eBay International Shipping as being good for Canadian buyers.

But how can we alert eBay that their new system is hurting them?  I don't think that chatting with a customer service agent will change a lot.  I've been buying on eBay for 17 years, but if nothing changes, I'll just leave and go buy elsewhere.  And that's sad...

[thechabinator]

same here..I have been buying a lot from usa seller using global shipping program.....but since ebay merged sellers to the new Ebay international shipping program, prices are way too high...I saw that some sellers still use global shipping program...that means it still exist and that the seller can probably select it..but the problem is that many are probably not aware that they were merged automaticly and that the new program is bad for sales....

[marnotom!]

@paradrox  and @thechabinator

eBay International Shipping (eIS) is, like the (now phased out in the US) Global Shipping Program, a glorified forwarding service.  The shipping charge you see is the sum of the seller's shipping charge to the forwarding hub in Illinois plus eIS's shipping charge from the hub to you.  That second charge is set by eIS and the seller has no idea what it is unless they check their own listing and change the shipping location from the US to Canada or one of the other 200 countries served by the service.

When I last checked, eIS's shipping charges tended to be less than the USPS counter rates for comparable services.  The problem is that the seller's own charge for shipping the item to the Illinois hub can boost the total shipping price considerably.  Another thing that can make the total shipping price unreasonably high is what @pjcdn2005 mentioned earlier, which is that the seller hasn't provided the eIS shipping calculator information on the item's packaged size and weight because they're using flat-rate shipping within the US.  This throws the calculator for a loop and usually what happens is that the shipping charge ends up being based on a category maximum.

The possibly good news is that eBay is rolling out an option for sellers to offer other shipping methods besides eIS on their listings.  The interesting thing is that where I've seen this offered, it's been to countries other than Canada and eIS is actually cheaper and has a shorter estimated delivery time than the USPS alternative.

[paradrox]

@marnotom!Thanks for the update! I'm still astonished with every package I receive at the amount of labels on it. The packages seem to pass thru 2, 3 or even 4 brokers before arriving at my doorstep. It's just time and money wasted, not to mention the environment.

Since my initial post, there seem to be some sort of improvement.  I still find that shipping charges are too high.  I know all about inflation and price of gas, but come on!  How can dealing with 2 or 3 brokers be economical?  With a new system, I would at least hope for faster service...

By curiosity, what happened to Erlanger?  Did they completely close that small storage locker?  And is Glendale Heights bigger and better?

[marnotom!]

@paradrox, my wife purchases a fair bit from outside of the country and most of them aren't shipped directly through the postal system or any other carrier.  Once she purchased an item from Southeast Asia that went to Alaska and Seattle (or was it San Francisco?) first before it reached Vancouver and then over to us on Vancouver Island.  It would have been more wasteful for FedEx to charter a flight just for her package and it wouldn't have been able to fly to Vancouver Island anyway as FedEx doesn't have an air cargo hub there.

Yes, your items would be going by an inefficient means if they were travelling solo, but they're not.  Compare flying to Calgary from Vancouver by the airline of your choice.  Is it any worse for the environment to fly to Winnipeg from Vancouver, then backtrack to Calgary?  Those planes are going to fly to those destinations whether or not you're on them.  Same deal with the parcels.  All shipping is terrible for the environment, but I don't see how services such as eIS are any worse for the environment than shipping directly.

As for what happened to the Erlanger facility, it's a bit of a mystery but my semi-educated guess is that it's still being used by the subcontractor Pitney Bowes used, but for other vendors/services.  I'm pretty sure I've seen on the labels of a few things my wife has purchased a note indicating that Pitney Bowes handled the logistics end of things for those shipments, but this was a while ago.