eBay

sin-n-dex · ‎04-30-2025

So I got a notification today that untracked shipments do not fall under "Global Entry Direct" which is what Stallion has to adhere to, in order to get our shipments across. Apparently the postage labels printed on Stallion (and likely any other service that's like Stallion) are considered domestic postage and not allowed to be printed outside the US. US Customs is the ones enforcing this and they rejected a bunch of shipments at the border yesterday.

So the immediate problem is that I dropped off 6 untracked letters on Monday (that were supposed to go over yesterday), plus two more letters yesterday (that I assume are not going over today on account of this change, Customs has told them not to bring any untracked letters on their trucks and they've disabled it on the portal).

The longer term problem is that I have numerous items which are not reasonable to ship tracked (because postage will be too high), like stamp lots that I'm selling for $2, or postcards, I have some banknotes that I generally ship untracked if it's just a few dollars.

I'm currently updating my listings to show these types of items ship from Canada (that's the first step), my listings are hidden right now anyway because of the tariff situation, so I don't think there's any hurry to do this update.

One problem is that when the Canada Post Strike happens on May 22, all these "ship from Canada" items will need to be removed from my store so I can keep selling, or the store will have to be on time away because I can't ship them. Someone here got bad feedback because a customer didn't know about the strike, bought something and then cancelled when they heard of the strike and got mad at the seller (like as sellers we REALLY want there to be a strike [/sarcasm]... we have way bigger problems to worry about than some irate customer who's upset there's a strike).

So it's going to be a nuisance regardless to deal with this whole problem, which is something I didn't need this week on top of worrying about the tariffs on Friday (and now I'm worried about getting these 8 items back so I can ship them again, another problem I haven't yet solved). At least the store is in time away at the moment which stopped any further sales of untracked items since my shutdown yesterday.

C.

sapphyres-designer-jewellery · ‎05-01-2025

@ae_purveyors wrote:
Sorry, I meant I get my discount stamps at 30% off Face Value…not 30% of Face Value.

What a deal that would be!!!

Thanks for confirming that, I was thinking where do YOU buy your stamps?

I get mine at 25-30% off FV as well (and I'm HST registered so I get the tax back). Partly why I used Stallions lettermail rate was to get things delivered fast. On my dot com store the untracked items are now showing in Canada... fingers crossed that I can still continue to make sales with a Canada location on the dot com site.

C.

sapphyres-designer-jewellery · ‎05-01-2025

@ae_purveyors wrote:
Yes, very true and very correct. Just like those sellers who were getting their video games and DVDs returned from the US by CP because they weren’t paper. At that point, it’s no longer feasible to do untracked shipping if it’s no longer available through Stallion/CP. Buyers will have to start paying more, either for the product, or for shipping.

My untracked items are single banknotes (valued at about $5), and a few stamps on a card (if they buy several I send it as a package which has tracking).

You can't tell a letter has a banknote or a couple of stamps in it, but for mailing postcards I liked Stallion's untracked so I wouldn't have to worry about CP refusing it, due to cardboard filling, (and it's known at my local post office that I'm selling stuff online).

C.