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I didn't ship anything made in China, they were treating all the packages as if they were made in China, then they repealed the rules and put de minimis back, and at that point my packages made it across the border (without tariffs).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.

fergua3 · ‎05-04-2025

i'm not sending any US buyers warnings about tariffs. Let it come as a nasty shock to them. They need to experience the full impact of making America great again for themselves. Besides, many Americans have become very aware, and concerned about tariffs....if not, more and more will be real soon. Wait until Christmas when the toy shelves are empty in the US.

The only way this tariff situation will get better is if lots of Americans grumble, and the only way that will happen is if they have sour experiences because of Trump's tariff garbage.

thereandback864 · ‎05-05-2025

The sour situations will come.

I work in the Powersports industry, and I sold a $400 motorcycle helmet to a buyer.

They received a $660 import duty bill from UPS, freaked out, and I had to explain that even though the package was shipped from Canada, the item was made in China.

They don’t want to pay the bill, so they refused the package. What will happen next I wonder ? Will UPS try and bill the duties to me if they return the package? Or will they withdraw the entry? The buyer might file a charge back. We shall see.

UPS does say that they will try and collect duties from the consignee for 41 days, and if they are unable to collect the charges will be billed to the sender. On the last page: https://assets.ups.com/adobe/assets/urn:aaid:aem:ca603540-c0ea-4ad5-b294-48061332d0c7/original/as/tr...

eBay does say that the moneyback guarantee doesn’t apply when buyers refuse packages, but even so this will be complicated for buyers and sellers, customs is a very complicated domain, and it is difficult to speak to competent CSRs at any of the organizations involved.

mrdutch1001 · ‎05-05-2025

Sellers who have and continue to list/sell/ship made in China goods/merchandise to the USA are responsible for those actions and any consequences that are brought upon them by the buyers. Yes, we all know that buyers should be and need to be aware of the tariffs, but sellers also need to accept any & all risks for allowing their made in China items to be purchased by USA buyers...

thereandback864 · ‎05-05-2025

Quite right; as per UPS :

if Customs refuses goods then the duties are valid and cannot be refunded.

If customer refuses shipment then Post entry cannot dispute or refund charges on refused entries. The shipper is responsible for all charges on refused entries per our service guide.

Customs will not allow duty drawbacks at moment either.

Hopefully, eBay has some sort of solution in the works.

Otherwise, one option is to raise prices so that shipments can be sent delivery duty paid. Or give up selling China origin goods to the US.

marnotom! · ‎05-05-2025

@thereandback864 wrote:

UPS does say that they will try and collect duties from the consignee for 41 days, and if they are unable to collect the charges will be billed to the sender. On the last page: https://assets.ups.com/adobe/assets/urn:aaid:aem:ca603540-c0ea-4ad5-b294-48061332d0c7/original/as/tr...

eBay does say that the moneyback guarantee doesn’t apply when buyers refuse packages, but even so this will be complicated for buyers and sellers, customs is a very complicated domain, and it is difficult to speak to competent CSRs at any of the organizations involved.

The section above the one you linked to points out that as the broker, UPS already paid duty and taxes on behalf of the importer on items shipped in early February, and as that's pretty standard operating procedure in general for carriers such as UPS, I can't see it being any different for this sale.

If the buyer doesn't pay what UPS is wanting, the charges will likely revert to you. These charges are from UPS, not CBP, as CBP has already been paid by UPS. Unless there's some mechanism for CBP to return what UPS paid, UPS is going to want that money from you. Even if CBP were to return the taxes/tariffs due because the buyer refused the item, UPS might only drop its demand for those and you might still have to pay the brokerage charges.

As far as eBay's involvement goes, it's not going to intervene in any sort of exchange or dispute you may have with UPS. It will presumably ensure that the buyer can't file a successful MBG case against you as the buyer refused the shipment, but that only covers what the buyer paid you at Checkout. What happens if the buyer goes straight to filing a chargeback is anybody's guess, and you're probably finding it difficult to find anybody knowledgable anywhere to speak to about this issue because this is completely new territory for all parties concerned. You're a guinea pig in this situation, I'm afraid.