eBay

soal6351 · ‎05-18-2017

With this new version (where you have to input your Canada Post Account Number), no more "Light Packet International" is offered. Will it be the same for "Light Packet USA"?. For International, rate goes from $10.10 to $10.27 but for USA, it's $6.84 to $8.61!!! What's the catch?

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

Good morning everyone. Thanks so much for pointing out the issues with PayPal label printing. We are aware of the issue (see our announcement for more details), and we are working hard to get a resolution.

In short, PayPal recently made a change to the label printing flow, requiring sellers to register for a new Canada Post account or link an existing one, to their PayPal account. When this linkage is made, it seems as though eBay sellers see the rates & services for Canada Post's "Solutions for Small Business" offering, rather than eBay rates & services.

As we announced in January of this year, this was an expected behaviour change for labels that were printed when sellers go directly to PayPal, but no change was to be made to the behaviour when sellers click on "Print shipping label" in My eBay.

We are currently working with PayPal to reverse the change on the eBay flow and will keep you updated on progress.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

hlmacdon - I think you are spot on. Thanks for helping to clarify (on this thread and others!). Much appreciated.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

soal6351,

Please check out my post below. Light Packet and rate differences, are two impacts of the changes to PayPal. We are currently trying to get PayPal to reverse the changes on their platform, and I will update on progress ASAP.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

custom_shop_designed,

Please check out my post below. Light Packet and rate differences, are two impacts of the changes to PayPal. We are currently trying to get PayPal to reverse the changes on their platform, and I will update on progress ASAP.

hlmacdon · ‎05-23-2017

@qottie wrote:
hlmacdon - I think you are spot on. Thanks for helping to clarify (on this thread and others!). Much appreciated.

No problem. Glad to see you and the team were able to get things in motion to fix this after the return from the holiday weekend as well as posting here to keep sellers informed of the issue.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

Hi reallynicestamps,

Please check out my post below. Light Packet "disappearing" and rate differences, are two impacts of the changes to PayPal. Both appear to be due to PayPal linking Canada Post accounts, and hence showing sellers the rates & services for Canada Post's "Solutions for Small Business" plans, rather than eBay-negotiate rates.

We are currently trying to get PayPal to reverse the changes on their platform, and I will update on progress ASAP.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

play-nation,

Please check out my post below. Light Packet and rate differences, are two impacts of the changes to PayPal. We are currently trying to get PayPal to reverse the changes on their platform, and I will update on progress ASAP.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

@jt-libra wrote:

I'm so upset, I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight.

I just opened a store for my media account and acquired 200 new items and now I'm looking at $8.50 to mail a DVD. Or, on this account, a small, lightweight eyeliner. Had we been given some warning, I might have devoted my time and energy to opening my own website instead of opening an eBay store. Of all the changes we've had shoved down our throats, this is the hardest to swallow.

I'm so ticked off, there are no words!!!!!

jt-libra,

I am so sorry that you are so frustrated. The changes to rates and services offered on PayPal came as a surprise to us at eBay as well. Per the announcement we made in January, we knew that rate and service changes would eventually happen if sellers went directly to PayPal to print labels, but the flow from My eBay's "Print shipping label" option should not have changed.

Please check out my post below. We are currently trying to get PayPal to reverse the changes on their platform, and I will update on progress ASAP.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

@sylviebee wrote:

@jt-libra wrote:

Can anyone confirm that Light Packet U.S.A. is still available at the postal outlet counters? It's gone from PayPal and also from the Canada Post website. Someone mentioned earlier that it was available on the CP calculator, but I just checked and it isn't.

This is crazy. I ship 90% of my items by light packet U.S. and a $2.00 increase to ship by Small Packet Air without any warning and with no time to adjust listings is outrageous!!

It is available on PP shipping but sometimes you have to start from scratch. It's just a temporary glitch.

It's a nuisance but a temporary one I'm sure.

It would be nice if the folks at eBay.ca would step in and put a little pressure on so these things get cleared up a little faster.

Putting pressure on PP shipping to fix shipping issues would be a much easier task than offering new shipping services.

eBay.ca : Don't fix what's not broken, but please work a little at getting issues resolved.

sylviebee,

I completely get your point and we are doing our best to apply pressure to get a solution ASAP.

We did get a few comments about this issue mid last week, and at that point we contacted PayPal to try to resolve the issue. However, the extent of the issue didn't become clear until over the long weekend, at which point any type of communication is difficult since resources in both companies were less reachable, despite communications being sent.

We have escalated heavily today, and hope to have a resolution ASAP. I will keep you all posted on this thread, and on our Announcement Board.

rose-dee · ‎05-23-2017

@qottie wrote:

Light Packet "disappearing" and rate differences, are two impacts of the changes to PayPal. Both appear to be due to PayPal linking Canada Post accounts, and hence showing sellers the rates & services for Canada Post's "Solutions for Small Business" plans, rather than eBay-negotiate rates.

Please understand that it isn't just Light Packet. Small Packet has vanished as well (which is a SFSB product), at least for me yesterday, when trying to print a label.

At that time, there were only three choices available on the Paypal Canada Post options drop-down list: Xpresspost, Expedited, and Tracked Packet.

I will stop making replies to your posts now, and let you get on with (urgently) dealing with Paypal and the mess they've made.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

@rose-dee wrote:

Please understand that it isn't just Light Packet. Small Packet has vanished as well (which is a SFSB product), at least for me yesterday, when trying to print a label.

At that time, there were only three choices available on the Paypal Canada Post options drop-down list: Xpresspost, Expedited, and Tracked Packet.

rose-dee,

We think the issue stems from PayPal accounts being associated with the Canada Post "Solutions for Small Business" rate plan.

I just tested this out on my end, and I see the 3 options you listed above, when the buyer address is to a Canadian destination. When I change the country of the buyer to US or Int'l, Small Packet options do appear. Depending on the buyer country, I see the list of services available in the SFSB plan on the Canada Post site. Is that true for you as well?

rose-dee · ‎05-23-2017

@qottie wrote:
We think the issue stems from PayPal accounts being associated with the Canada Post "Solutions for Small Business" rate plan.
I just tested this out on my end, and I see the 3 options you listed above, when the buyer address is to a Canadian destination. When I change the country of the buyer to US or Int'l, Small Packet options do appear. Depending on the buyer country, I see the list of services available in the SFSB plan on the Canada Post site. Is that true for you as well?

All I can tell you is that I was trying to do a Light Packet label to a buyer in the U.S.A., and ended up being forced to choose between no label at all, or the Tracked Packet that did appear to be available. The Tracked Packet label, however, would not print (I had reached Paypal from the eBay "print shipping label" link on the eBay transaction).

I then decided to try printing a label from within Paypal. Again, only the 3 tracked services were available on the drop-down list. I chose Tracked Packet and finally managed to pay and get to the label display screen and print my label. Of course, the cost was about twice what I'd really wanted to pay. Since I already "subsidize" my buyers' shipping costs, I lost a total of about $5.70 US in shipping on this particular sale, above the price actually paid by the buyer. Had it been a smaller sale, I would have had no choice but to use Light Packet (by going to the P.O. myself).

I don't know whether this is of any significance, but due to the fact that I first went in from eBay, then from Paypal, I was able to compare the two prices shown for TP. I noticed that the base price for Tracked Packet via Paypal-direct was about $1.00 Cdn higher than the e-Bay generated price. The eBay base price was about $16.71 Cdn, the Paypal base price was shown as $17.68 Cdn -- and unfortunately that's the one I had to pay, since that was the only way I could get the label to print.

So it wasn't only the discounts themselves, which also differed (the original TP label I attempted from eBay had a ca. 10% discount, the Paypal-direct TP label was 6.25%).

All the other times I was unable to access Light Packet (or print a label) during the past week have involved U.S. sales, except for one to an Australian address. I'm not sure how I could "test" your question regarding other buyer countries without an actual Canadian sale, since I wouldn't be able to duplicate the eBay-to-Paypal label situation in any other way.

jt-libra · ‎05-23-2017

@qottie wrote:
Good morning everyone. Thanks so much for pointing out the issues with PayPal label printing. We are aware of the issue (see our announcement for more details), and we are working hard to get a resolution.

In short, PayPal recently made a change to the label printing flow, requiring sellers to register for a new Canada Post account or link an existing one, to their PayPal account. When this linkage is made, it seems as though eBay sellers see the rates & services for Canada Post's "Solutions for Small Business" offering, rather than eBay rates & services.

As we announced in January of this year, this was an expected behaviour change for labels that were printed when sellers go directly to PayPal, but no change was to be made to the behaviour when sellers click on "Print shipping label" in My eBay.

We are currently working with PayPal to reverse the change on the eBay flow and will keep you updated on progress.

Thank you very much for the update. We just needed to know that eBay was aware of the problem and was taking steps to rectify it.

Our mounting frustration was very evident, no doubt, but this having been the first long weekend of the summer, we (I'm presuming all of us) just wanted to print our labels and get on our way to enjoy the weekend.

Thanks again.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

My pleasure jt-libra. Hopefully we will have this sorted out soon.

qottie · ‎05-23-2017

rose-dee,

Let me take your points one by one. See notes below:

@rose-dee wrote:

All I can tell you is that I was trying to do a Light Packet label to a buyer in the U.S.A., and ended up being forced to choose between no label at all, or the Tracked Packet that did appear to be available. The Tracked Packet label, however, would not print (I had reached Paypal from the eBay "print shipping label" link on the eBay transaction).

I'm assuming that you had entered all of the correct details on the label? I just tested a label myself and I noticed a few (required) details missing / not pre-populated. Missing any of these would prevent the transaction from going through:

dimensions & weight
buyer phone number (and address)
seller phone number (and address)

Also, would you have selected Light Packet on eBay as your method of shipping? It is possible that the label is not printing correctly because it is being pre-populated with an option that doesn't exist on the CP SFSB plan.

@rose-dee wrote:

I don't know whether this is of any significance, but due to the fact that I first went in from eBay, then from Paypal, I was able to compare the two prices shown for TP. I noticed that the base price for Tracked Packet via Paypal-direct was about $1.00 Cdn higher than the e-Bay generated price. The eBay base price was about $16.71 Cdn, the Paypal base price was shown as $17.68 Cdn -- and unfortunately that's the one I had to pay, since that was the only way I could get the label to print.

So it wasn't only the discounts themselves, which also differed (the original TP label I attempted from eBay had a ca. 10% discount, the Paypal-direct TP label was 6.25%).

This info is helpful - thanks! In this case, it looks like eBay rates are being applied when you go from eBay, but not from PayPal direct, which is the correct behaviour. Obviously we still have to fix the service availability issue, and the printing issue.

@rose-dee wrote:

All the other times I was unable to access Light Packet (or print a label) during the past week have involved U.S. sales, except for one to an Australian address. I'm not sure how I could "test" your question regarding other buyer countries without an actual Canadian sale, since I wouldn't be able to duplicate the eBay-to-Paypal label situation in any other way.

You can test to see which options are available by clicking on the "Edit" link in the label flow, next to Ship to: address. See attached screenshot.

rose-dee · ‎05-24-2017

@qottie wrote:

I'm assuming that you had entered all of the correct details on the label? I just tested a label myself and I noticed a few (required) details missing / not pre-populated. Missing any of these would prevent the transaction from going through:
dimensions & weight
buyer phone number (and address)
seller phone number (and address)
Also, would you have selected Light Packet on eBay as your method of shipping? It is possible that the label is not printing correctly because it is being pre-populated with an option that doesn't exist on the CP SFSB plan.

Yes, I had all the required information filled in, including what you've listed above, and the customs details as well. The shipping service on the listing in question (a .com listing) was "Economy service from outside the U.S.", which is what many of us who list on .com use in order to get the longer delivery estimates. As you probably know, specific Canada Post services are not available for .com listings.

The same is true of all the other transactions during the past week for which I tried to print a label -- they were all listed on .com, with "Economy service from outside the U.S." as the shipping service.

You can test to see which options are available by clicking on the "Edit" link in the label flow, next to Ship to: address. See attached screenshot.

Thanks. I'll try this later today when I have a bit more time.

galle3281 · ‎05-24-2017

This is also happening to me since I linked my Canada Post account to Paypal and it's SO frustrating. I sell on my own website, not Ebay and buy my shipping labels through Paypal. Now I'm going to have to increase my prices to reflect the small packet price, even though all my orders can go as light packet. I hope Paypal fixes this!!

Also, why in the world does Canada Post doesn't allow us to purchase light packet from their website? Honestly I think they are slowly phasing out the light packet option and that's why all of this is happening. The only place online that still offers light packet is Etsy.

pjcdn2005 · ‎05-24-2017

I'm now able to access light packet if I click print shipping label while I'm on eBay. Hopefully that is a permanent fix, not just temporary. From what I understand though light packet wont be available anymore if you print an off eBay label on PP. You can still purchase light packet at postal outlets although that's a pain.

galle3281 · ‎05-24-2017

Yeah I can't do that as I don't sell on eBay. I'll trying creating a new Paypal account that I won't link to my Canada Post account and see if that works. There is literally no way I'll go to the Post office and do this all by hand, way too time consuming.

I think it's only a matter of time until they phase out light packet anyway, I talked to a customer service representative at canada Post and they actually told me there isn't enough demand for it so they will likely phase it out in the next few years. Ridiculous in my opinion as that's a great option for small items sellers.

qottie · ‎05-24-2017

pjcdn2005,

You are exactly right on both fronts.

1) The fix from the eBay flow went live earlier this pm - I am just about to post a solution here.
2) You will not be able to print Light Packet labels, or get eBay rates, if you go directly to PayPal. If you go to PayPal via My eBay, you will still get the usual rates and services.