Ridiculously high shipping to Canada.

[bonedaddyo666]

Can someone tell me what’s up with shipping right now? I’ve used eBay for years and this is the worst I’ve seen right now. For example a shirt for $13.70 usd with $27.60 usd shipping? Why use eBay?

[marnotom!]

Why use eBay?  Assuming that shirt's in the US and it's not available in Canada and you reeee-hulllly want it, that's why you'd use eBay.

So what's up with shipping right now?  Again, assuming that you're talking about purchases from the United States, a few things are going on.  The first and second are that international postage rates in the US have gone up considerably since you joined eBay in 2005, and Universal Postal Union guidelines now dictate that merchandise can no longer be sent as letter-post.  Anything that requires a customs form must be sent by parcel post or by the US equivalent of small packet.  The cheapest you can send something to Canada by mail if you're using the post office is now in the neighbourhood of US$14.00.  Sellers can get that price down by using mail consolidators and similar services, but the trade-off for that is slower delivery time and (sometimes) spotty tracking.

What's the shipping method for that shirt you're looking at?  If it's not UPS or FedEx International Economy, I'm betting that it's "eBay International Shipping" (eIS), which is a fairly new international mail forwarding scheme that's replacing the similar but not similar Global Shipping Program.  In a nutshell, sellers ship the items to a central hub (right now it seems to be somewhere in Illinois) and they're forwarded to the destination country from there.  eBay assumes pretty much all risk for the shipment once it reaches Illinois, which relieves a lot of sellers who believe--righty or wrongly--that shipping outside of the US carries a minefield of issues.

The program is going through some teething pains right now as sellers try to figure it out, and as with most new eBay initatives, glitches and complications abound.  When it comes to the shipping rate calculated by the eIS "AI bot," it's very dependent on accurate information from the seller on the item's shipping dimensions and weight.  If the seller messes this up, or worse, doesn't provide any information for the "bot" to use, the shipping calculation is often way off the mark.  Having said that, the shipping price is actually the sum of the seller's charge for shipping the item to Illinois plus eIS's charge for shipping it from Illinois to its final destination.  I'm generally finding that eIS's charges are quite reasonable if the seller has set up the listing properly, but the additonal shipping charge to Illinois on top of that can be a deal breaker.

Hope this long-winded reply makes some sense.

[theoldestfart]

As an eBay user of 20+ years  I rarely use eBay these days. If I do it is to buy parts to fix something for someone and pass the cost of the item and it shipping on to the other person.  If I do buy something for myself I buy from within Canada. Less headaches and surprises wrt shipping and duties/taxes.

[reallynicestamps]

https://postcalc.usps.com/?country=10440

Use 90210 as the originating zipcode, because it's easy to remember, and play around with dimensions and weight.