Buyers Unable to Purchase - Shipping cost cannot be calculated. Please enter a valid ZIP Code.

[magicare]

We're selling from Canada and all of a sudden, a large number of our customers are unable to complete purchases with errors indicating we do not ship to their location. Most of these are from the US (as are most of our customers). We have had no trouble in the past and I have verified multiple times that our shipping options are correct and no changes have been made.

Shipping is done through Canada Post.

When I try to get shipping information from the "Shipping and Payments" tab on the item, I am now getting the following error when I enter most US ZIP codes:

"Shipping cost cannot be calculated. Please enter a valid ZIP Code."

Anybody know what's going on? With the phone support down, this is causing some real problems.

Thanks.

[magicare]

We're selling from Canada and all of a sudden, a large number of our customers are unable to complete purchases with errors indicating we do not ship to their location. Most of these are from the US (as are most of our customers). We have had no trouble in the past and I have verified multiple times that our shipping options are correct and no changes have been made.

Shipping is done through Canada Post.

When I try to get shipping information from the "Shipping and Payments" tab on the item, I am now getting the following error when I enter most US ZIP codes:

"Shipping cost cannot be calculated. Please enter a valid ZIP Code."

Anybody know what's going on? With the phone support down, this is causing some real problems.

Thanks.

[femmefan1946]

Phone support is down, but eBay can now be reached by email through Help and Contact, through Twitter and through Facebook.

[magicare]

Thanks. We've sent an email. Waiting on reply. It's the length of time to get an answer that is problematic. We've had 4 customers now unable to check out and that's only the ones that have reached out.

[pjcdn2005]

@magicare 

I doubt that phone support will be able to help with a .ca calculating problem as they aren't very familiar with it.

I see about 20+ items missing a shipping cost for Canada and 400+ missing a shipping cost for the US and other countries.   But since many of your listings too have the shipping costs listed its best to check the obvious first.  For item 303533300131 please list what you have in the listing form for:

dimensions

weight

service for within Canada, for the US and for other countries (regular parcel, small packet US etc)

[magicare]

Thanks very much for the reply. For your comment "I see about 20+ items missing a shipping cost for Canada and 400+ missing a shipping cost for the US and other countries. ", did you mean from us? How did you see that all at once?

Here are screenshots as requested for item 303533300131.

[pjcdn2005]

Your dimensions are too small for those services.  They will likely be willing to mail those sizes and you will be charged the minimum rate but the calculator here will only work when the all 3 dimensions are at or above the minimum.

Small & tracked packet US and international- 14cm x 9cm x 1mm

Expedited U & international - 21cm x 14 cm x.5cm

Xpresspost US & international - 21cm x 14 cm x 1mm

Domestic services to be added in next post

[pjcdn2005]

They've changed the way they list the break down for domestic services and it confuses me but I believe that regular parcel, expedited and xpresspost have a min. of 14cm x 9cm x 1mm

If I'm wrong I'm sure someone will let you know.

If you want to see which of your listings are not showing a shipping cost, click on your name here, then on listings;  sort by lowest price plus shipping. The pages at the end will say shipping not specified if the cost for that location isn't working.  To change the location, go into one of the listings, click on the shipping tab and change your location. Then, see other listings and go to the back pages again.

[magicare]

This is fascinating. Did this just change? It was working up until last week.

If changing this fixes it, that will be amazing.

[magicare]

Changing the dimensions seems to allow me to now see the shipping rates, but they're ridiculous.

When I check the price on ebay, it only shows the following rates:

C $21.36

Canada

Standard Shipping (Canada Post Regular Parcel)

Estimated within 14-17 business days

C $21.36

Canada

Expedited Shipping (Canada Post Expedited Parcel)

Estimated within 14-17 business days

C $22.49

Canada

Express services (Canada Post Xpresspost)

Estimated within 13-16 business days

but on CanadaPost itself, when I put the same entries in the calculator, I get a rate of $9.23. Even with adding our $5 picking fee, that's still a massive different.

So two questions:

1. Why has this problem just started?

2. How do we correct it so that buyers can actually get the correct shipping rates? Many of the parts we ship are very small.

This worked up until at least a couple of weeks ago.

Any suggestions?

[magicare]

And a quick follow-up, if we need to change all these, is there a way to do a mass edit of dimensions? We have about 1000 listings and this will be very difficult to change manually.

[maximus7001]

Huge changes like this usually happen on the 1st of a month. So may 1 is likely when this happened. You might be stuck with one at a time we do not know.

Are you sure it is not the issue with the buyer having not used the extra 4 digits of their zip code? Example 90210-1234

We have ran into this before with our USA address trying to buy things from sellers we bought from before but suddenly now required the extra 4 digits when it did not before. We had to call the USPS post office there to get our extra 4 digits.... There was no purpose for them so nobody knew them in a town of 200.

[magicare]

Why does item 303118939015 work? It's dimensions are smaller than you specified, but it seems to work properly.

[pjcdn2005]

I’m sorry, I posted the wrong domestic minimum - within Canada they are 10cm x 7cm -x 1mm

The  US and other ones that I listed are correct

This isn’t a recent change, as long as I have been selling sellers have had the same problem because the calculator doesn’t warn you that the dimensions won’t work when they are too small.  The dimensions haven’t changed.

As far as why it is just happening just now, I really have no idea.  Is it possible that you are entering inches but the calculator is set to use metric?   

[pjcdn2005]

---

@magicare wrote:

Why does item 303118939015 work? It's dimensions are smaller than you specified, but it seems to work properly.

---

It works for within Canada which has smaller min. dimensions (now that I corrected them above)  but there is no shipping price for the US or overseas.

You mentioned in an earlier post that the shipping costs you are getting are higher.   Using a postal code in your city for 303118939015 the calculator shows $17. The CP calculator works out to about $12 for the counter price so with your handling fee the $17 would be accurate.  But with the min. discount, expedited parcel was around $9.  The difference isn’t usually that much so I think that it is now because CP has lowered business parcel rates for the next 3 months which is reflected in the expedited rate.  But the calculator here isn’t accounting for that so that would explain the difference in this case.  I didn’t check on other items.

I don’t know of a way to make the cost 100% accurate although you can do an across the board domestic discount in shipping preferences. 

[prdeals]

Same problem. Tried to check out on a purchase shipping from US to Canada.  Seller tried as well.  Will not calculate Canada shipping but all other countries are fine.

Don't know why they have cut off Canada unless it is something to do with the border being closed.  I get this as a buyer in Canada purchasing from US

Shipping:

May not ship to Canada -  

Item location:

Panama City, Florida, United States

[ypdc_dennis]

---

@prdeals wrote:

Same problem. Tried to check out on a purchase shipping from US to Canada.  Seller tried as well.  Will not calculate Canada shipping but all other countries are fine.

 I get this as a buyer in Canada purchasing from US

Shipping: May not ship to Canada

---

Not the same problem.

USA to Canada will be different from a Canada to USA shipping calculation problem.

Ask your Seller what shipping service they have selected for Canada.

-..-

[westcoastart2]

This ebay error has been ongoing for years.     Every now and then it disappears for a while.

Several years ago, after being told by Ebay for months they would fix it (they didn't as you can see), I found my own solution.

If you have something that may sell to the US, then DO NOT use the ebay rate calculator.

Instead use the fixed price shipping rate.

It was a huge amount of work to go through my listings to covert.    Many of them have not yet been converted over.    However all my new listings that I think might have US interest, are listed with fixed shipping.

Its a major pain, but at least I know that ebay won't block US buyers from buying, or prevent them from paying, or whatever they will do next when they "improve" their software.

[pjcdn2005]

In the majority of cases including this one, the problem is likely that the dimensions are too small.  I remember when you were having problems but this isn’t the same situation and it’s unlikely that it’s a problem with the calculator.  

[bsaarthur441]

I have run into this issue with a listing for a Canada Post extra small box 14cmx14cmx14cm. All US prospective purchasers Zip Codes gave an error "Shipping cost cannot be calculated. Please enter a valid ZIP Code". Based on my reading of various blogs I discovered that if I changed one dimension to 21cm it worked!
My understanding is eBay.com uses minimum box sizes which are larger than Canada Post minimums, so you have to go to the US minimum sizing.
I'm only selling one item but I could see this being an issue for multiply items.