Shipping Rate Tables: Does Ebay consider any address as being rural at all?

[ct-v]

I sold an item to someone located in rural Northern Ontario. I'm shipping with Chit Chats and Stallion Express right now so I had set up a shipping rate table by province. However I did not think of the eventuality of shipping to remote areas when I set up my table. The shipping cost that I had set up for Ontario is $8 but shipping this order to rural Ontario will cost me around $20. I will take the loss this time but I just fixed my table with a $20 shipping cost to every Province's rural areas now. I just tested the postal code of the buyer on my items and the shipping cost is still showing $8 even though it's clearly a rural area.

This makes me wonder if the urban/rural specification has any use at all. Does Ebay consider any address as being rural at all?

I guess I will just have to cancel all my future orders to rural areas for now and try to explain the situation to the buyers...

[reallynicestamps]

Are you using Calculated Shipping?

If you use Flat Rate,  you will get Flat Rate.

Calculated draws from the carrier's rate card (which does have a premium for rural and isolated communities) and gives the customer the rate to their doorstep (or community mailbox, I suppose).

[ct-v]

I'm using Flat Rate and I have set up a shipping rate table. It would actually work if Ebay would consider rural addresses as rural, and not urban. Here is my table:

 

[recped]

The eBay definition of rural or urban are likely derived from Canada Post. Since you are not using Canada Post at this time but rather an alternate service that likely has a different definition of rural/urban so you won't get perfect accuracy.

I try to use UniUni (via Stallion) when it's available, they don't serve "rural" (their definition) at all, UPS has their own definition of rural as does FedEx, those two WILL ship to most rural locations but with a surcharge.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

An issue you will encounter with fixed shipping rates during the strike will be unexpectedly high shipping prices for certain orders. 

$20 instead of $8 is getting off easy. There are some areas where it could be as high as $100 for something that you normally send lettermail.

My advice would be to put a short disclaimer in your listing that instructs rural buyers to contact you prior to checking out for a quote, and states that your flat rate is based on the price of shipping to most cities, but some areas may not be eligible for your flat rate. 

Then if you get a rural buyer, message them and politely explain it to them. Ask if they would prefer to cancel, have you hold the item until Canada Post begins operating again, or pay the additional shipping rate.

You will likely encounter this issue a lot during the strike. It's part of why after trying Stallion for a short period of time, I'm not bothering with Stallion for lettermail items. With what the margins are, and being busy with parcel items and other platforms, it's not worth the added customer service time for me. I would rather just do a soft removal on low price by offering UPS calculated rates. Meaning, they are still technically available to buy, but most won't sell with $10-$25 shipping. If I was more reliant on high volumes of lettermail sales, my strategy might be different. 

[regs43]

I had an order to just outside of Thunder Bay I had to cancel. The person didnt want to pay $50 to mail UPS and I was not eating $40. I am going to contact them when the strike ends for them to repurchase the item.

Chit Chats mails to Thunder Bay (for like $10-11) as per the rate calculator but not 20-30 mins further where this person lives. I asked if they knew someone in Thunder Bay and wanted to mail there as an option but that will just wait and I will contact them to rebuy later.

I will just cancel any orders I may get that chit chats wont service. If they want to pay alot extra to ship via UPS/Fedex I don't mind doing that, but I wont be eating crazy extra charge. If UPS was like $25 vs the $ charged I could have eaten it as it was a good sale but at $50 i wouldnt make money so not worth it.

[reallynicestamps]

It would actually work if...

But it doesn't.

Switch to Calculated.

Problem solved.

[flipistics]

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@regs43 wrote:

I had an order to just outside of Thunder Bay I had to cancel. The person didnt want to pay $50 to mail UPS and I was not eating $40. I am going to contact them when the strike ends for them to repurchase the item.

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I'd suggest looking at Purolator's flat rate boxes, as long as you have a Purolator retail location somewhere close. It's at least worth exploring.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

eBay does not have integration for calculated rates with Stallions or Chit Chats. It puts Lettermail sellers who can successfully market their products with $6-$7 shipping via Stallion in a tough spot because 4/5 orders will be fine, but 1/5 will not cost $20-$50+ to ship. 

Sellers using Stallion have likely determined that even with the added benefit of faster shipping times, they cannot sell their items with UPS or Fedex rates. So a calculator is not an option in this case. 

[ct-v]

With Calculated Shipping I would only have access to the Fedex and UPS rates. So I would have to charge what, $5-10 more on average to people in urban Canada, where I still get most of my sales within the country.

I would not get situations like this but I wouldn't get any sales either.

It doesn't seem like an easy solution to me...

[regs43]

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@flipistics wrote:

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@regs43 wrote:

I had an order to just outside of Thunder Bay I had to cancel. The person didnt want to pay $50 to mail UPS and I was not eating $40. I am going to contact them when the strike ends for them to repurchase the item.

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I'd suggest looking at Purolator's flat rate boxes, as long as you have a Purolator retail location somewhere close. It's at least worth exploring.

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Thanks, its not anywhere close, near the Chit Chats place. Is the box soemthing when you walk in its available for the $15.00 at the counter? and Just fill it out like wit the Canada Post ones?

[flipistics]

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@regs43 wrote:

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@flipistics wrote:

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@regs43 wrote:

I had an order to just outside of Thunder Bay I had to cancel. The person didnt want to pay $50 to mail UPS and I was not eating $40. I am going to contact them when the strike ends for them to repurchase the item.

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I'd suggest looking at Purolator's flat rate boxes, as long as you have a Purolator retail location somewhere close. It's at least worth exploring.

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Thanks, its not anywhere close, near the Chit Chats place. Is the box soemthing when you walk in its available for the $15.00 at the counter? and Just fill it out like wit the Canada Post ones?

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I haven't shipped anything with them yet, but this is the information I was given (you should definitely verify it though).

The prices do NOT include fuel surcharge or any special extras like signature. You can use your own boxes as long as it would fit inside the dimensions of the flat rate box. You can only drop the packages off at one of their retail locations, not third parties. I assume they have to print the label on site, but I don't know for sure.

Small: Up to 6 lbs, 8x8x8, $15 in province, $20 rest of Canada

Medium: Up to 15 lbs, 12x10x7, $19 in province, $25 rest of Canada

Large: Up to 19 lbs, 18x12x10, $22 in province, $28 rest of Canada

I couldn't get a definitive answer on whether or not there's a residential surcharge or peak surcharges.

[flipistics]

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@ct-v wrote:

I sold an item to someone located in rural Northern Ontario. I'm shipping with Chit Chats and Stallion Express right now so I had set up a shipping rate table by province. However I did not think of the eventuality of shipping to remote areas when I set up my table. The shipping cost that I had set up for Ontario is $8 but shipping this order to rural Ontario will cost me around $20. I will take the loss this time but I just fixed my table with a $20 shipping cost to every Province's rural areas now. I just tested the postal code of the buyer on my items and the shipping cost is still showing $8 even though it's clearly a rural area.

This makes me wonder if the urban/rural specification has any use at all. Does Ebay consider any address as being rural at all?

I guess I will just have to cancel all my future orders to rural areas for now and try to explain the situation to the buyers...

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The information is REALLY buried, but go down to the section "Determine your rates" and there are 4 links there. The links for "Urban and rural areas by postal code" and "Rate table template" give a TON of additional information on what postal codes belong to urban and rural.

https://www.ebay.ca/sellercentre/shipping/shipping-rate-tables