eBay

sin-n-dex · ‎04-12-2025

So de minimis on China/Hong Kong made goods goes away May 2. If history is any lesson, there's going to be bedlam at the border.

I'm wondering what the shippers like Stallion and Chit Chats are going to do, while we are allowed to continue to ship non-China goods across the border, I'm expecting chaos while they're sorting all the packages to determine what can go, and what is subject to 145% tariffs (which no longer apply to electronics from what I read in the US forum).

With 145% tariffs, no one will be using services like Stallion and Chit Chats to send their items across duties paid, it would cost the seller money to sell the item with those types of tariffs. But it won't likely stop some people from trying to sneak their China items across under the guise of them being from a different COO.

There was talk a few weeks ago about needing manufacture name and address info for the shipments. That's going to cause chaos for those of us who ship vintage goods. Declaring it as "vintage" instead of providing a manufacturer was correct according to CBP, but whether or not that's accepted under the new rules is anyone's guess.

I think I'm going to have to go offline a few days before May 2 (yet again, for the fourth time) to wait and see what happens. There's no sense in continuing to sell if they just decide to treat all shipments as if they're Chinese (like I was told they were doing when the de minimis on China items first went away, February was it?) Stallion told me all my packages were going formal entry and tariffs were going to be charged back to my account even though I didn't ship anything made in China, they were treating all the packages as if they were made in China, then they repealed the rules and put de minimis back, and at that point my packages made it across the border (without tariffs).

It's just complete chaos, and this "wait 30 days" for things to happen and having to stop selling every 30 days to make sure we can comply with the new rules is exhausting.

For those of us who've decided to just ship Canada Post, I still think there's going to be bedlam at the border, significant delays in Canada Post packages, customers getting mad and filing INRs. I don't think shipping the items from Canada and letting the tariff be the buyer's problem is necessarily going to help escape the chaos that's pending. Plus the fact I think numerous packages will not be claimed due to tariffs. If the tracking is anything like the EU packages that are refused due to tariffs then a lot of customers will be entitled to refunds. Although I knew my EU package was refused, the integrated tracking didn't show what the carrier tracking showed me, and eBay forced me to refund the customer $50 because he didn't want to pay VAT on his import. I'm expecting with US tariffs to see a lot more of that noise.

C.

musicyouneed · ‎05-02-2025

I have had a very good month (April), lots of US buyers. All on my stuff has been either made in US or Canada so I will see how much of a delay there might be. I checked the CD's that have already been delivered last week and no delay. This week however, all of them are being presented to Import Customs even before May 2. That is new.

thegrandtoywizard · ‎05-03-2025

I appreciate all the updates from Canadian sellers shipping China made goods to the US. Please keep us updated on whether or not your customers get charged duties.

I just had a US sale for $20 worth of used kids learning video games made in China. Not sure if I should send the buyer a message warning of duties and giving them the option to cancel, or just ship it out on Monday via Canada Post.

Most of the retro toys and toy parts I sell are made in China so I'm not sure what to do going forward.

mrdutch1001 · ‎05-03-2025

Well it matters not whether new or used, those made in China goods are subject to tariffs, so the risk is there for all sellers of such merchandise.

sin-n-dex · ‎05-03-2025

@mrdutch1001 wrote:
Well it matters not whether new or used, those made in China goods are subject to tariffs, so the risk is there for all sellers of such merchandise.

I actually woke up this morning worry about my stamp lots and the pages they are on (after reading the post DYK made about sleeves being made in China causing the whole Pokeman pack to be rejected).

I went and checked some pages, seems that for a while I was buying Lighthouse Vario pages and they're stamped "Made in Germany", so far so good. When the supplier of vario pages lost their stock in a hurricane and went out of business, I switched to Anchor pages which if I recall have Asian characters. I started to get pretty worried... went and found the listing where I bought them (the seller is still active selling them). Seems they are made in JAPAN, but there's no stamp on the pages to indicate where they were made.

Basically a stamp lot is something I'm making up by taking apart other people's stamp collections and building general interest collections from certain countries. I have a bind I use to fill pages and when I have enough pages to pull for a collection.

They're saying you need to have stickers to say where things are made, the stamps are all identified by where they're from by default, but the pages may or may not be marked. I'm not selling pages, I'm selling stamps, the pages just make sure they look nice and arrive well to put in your album when you get them.

See all the trouble this China thing is causing? And I'm not even selling anything from China (well, not anymore, I took those down, and if the de minimis isn't returned in place in a week or so I'm going to return them to the brick and mortar store and let them deal with it. They can get local customers and not have to deal with tariffs.

C.

musicyouneed · ‎05-03-2025

Not sure if I should send the buyer a message warning of duties and giving them the option to cancel.

IMO, I would send them an email as I think that there are going to be issues with the parcel. I wouldn't be sending anything made in China or Hong Kong to the US at all.

ricarmic · ‎05-03-2025

I had a $15 sale of China stamps that I mailed out yesterday. I chose not to send any message specific to the tariffs on that parcel as an experiment to see what happens. If it had been a higher value item I probably would have sent the forewarning email.

flipistics · ‎05-03-2025

@ricarmic wrote:
I had a $15 sale of China stamps that I mailed out yesterday. I chose not to send any message specific to the tariffs on that parcel as an experiment to see what happens. If it had been a higher value item I probably would have sent the forewarning email.

Could you let us know how long it takes to get through customs? I'm curious how bogged down they are (if at all)?

reallynicestamps · ‎05-03-2025

It might be useful to use Bulk Edit to put a warning to US buyers.

Many still don't realize THEY will be paying the tariff not the Chinese manufacturer or the exporting seller.

EBay gave us this boilerplate a few years ago and I have left it in my Descriptions ever since.
<br>Import duties, taxes and charges are not included in the item price or shipping charges. These charges are the buyer's responsibility. Please check with your country's customs office to determine what these additional costs will be prior to bidding/buying<br>

It may be worthwhile adding US RESIDENTS to the warning, as well as the word "tariffs".

itolduandso · ‎05-03-2025

I realized by reading this - packaging...

I use lots of cardboard boxes 3rd party, from retail store etc, to save on cost. Most of smaller boxes have Made in China on them. I better start blacking out that or will get unnecessary attention.

Well, foam I use is also Made in China.

You never know.

flipistics · ‎05-03-2025

@itolduandso wrote:
I realized by reading this - packaging...
I use lots of cardboard boxes 3rd party, from retail store etc, to save on cost. Most of smaller boxes have Made in China on them. I better start blacking out that or will get unnecessary attention.
Well, foam I use is also Made in China.
You never know.

All bubble mailers are probably made in China too.

itolduandso · ‎05-03-2025

Ebay makes is PITA to edit listings. You can edit title and description, using CSV, okay, but forget if you want to edit that custom field for Country of Origin.

I had buyer yesterday insisting my listing said the item says "Country of Origin is Canada". Well, I always had it like that, because I didn't care, it wasn't important. Now this needs to change and all my listings need to update. I have the CSV ready with the C: Country of origin etc field, but Ebay doesn't accept partial edits of custom fields using CSV. The only way to update is to update all custom fields and that needs to be done by category.

This didn't need to be so complicated and time consuming. It's country of origin. That field is there. Every item has the field there, regardless of category. I emailed Ebay about that and from Turbodata I got response " Thank you for your suggestion we will consider for the future".

Heck I need it now!! Not in the future. I need to update 400 listings and this is nuts.

msau4301 · ‎05-03-2025

All bubble mailers are probably made in China too.

Yep, I just checked for fun, all my bubble wrap too!

Fortunately the package is no longer on the packaging when it's sent!

flipistics · ‎05-03-2025

@itolduandso wrote:
Ebay makes is PITA to edit listings. You can edit title and description, using CSV, okay, but forget if you want to edit that custom field for Country of Origin.
I had buyer yesterday insisting my listing said the item says "Country of Origin is Canada". Well, I always had it like that, because I didn't care, it wasn't important. Now this needs to change and all my listings need to update. I have the CSV ready with the C: Country of origin etc field, but Ebay doesn't accept partial edits of custom fields using CSV. The only way to update is to update all custom fields and that needs to be done by category.
This didn't need to be so complicated and time consuming. It's country of origin. That field is there. Every item has the field there, regardless of category. I emailed Ebay about that and from Turbodata I got response " Thank you for your suggestion we will consider for the future".
Heck I need it now!! Not in the future. I need to update 400 listings and this is nuts.

Use the bulk editing feature. Select them all and edit the item specifics. One of the fields there is country of origin.

sapphyres-designer-jewellery · ‎05-03-2025

@itolduandso wrote:
Ebay makes is PITA to edit listings. You can edit title and description, using CSV, okay, but forget if you want to edit that custom field for Country of Origin.
I had buyer yesterday insisting my listing said the item says "Country of Origin is Canada". Well, I always had it like that, because I didn't care, it wasn't important. Now this needs to change and all my listings need to update. I have the CSV ready with the C: Country of origin etc field, but Ebay doesn't accept partial edits of custom fields using CSV. The only way to update is to update all custom fields and that needs to be done by category.
This didn't need to be so complicated and time consuming. It's country of origin. That field is there. Every item has the field there, regardless of category. I emailed Ebay about that and from Turbodata I got response " Thank you for your suggestion we will consider for the future".
Heck I need it now!! Not in the future. I need to update 400 listings and this is nuts.

Maybe try Sixbit. There are lots of fields you can batch edit, or edit several listings at once.

Not sure if this will help, but I have 11,000 listings and had to update 4500 of them to say they are being now shipped from Canada. Spent 8 hours doing updates (most of which was time the computer spent updating, it took me 2 minutes to batch change hundreds at once).

C.

musicyouneed · ‎05-04-2025

Update, this was sent to the US last week of April and it looks like it was delayed 2 days, April 30 presented to customs and released May 2. This was a CD either made in US or Canada. I have quite a few sent over the past few days, I will keep you posted. This would be coming from Vancouver and they are CD's made in US or Canada and sent through ebay: Canada Post.