Just wondering if anyone else suffered a big hiccup in their eBay business (and how they overcame a big obstacle in selling).
My big hiccup came to a head last night with an announcement from my shipper that they were closing a bunch of branches in Ontario. I called to give feedback that us Ontario customers would probably like if they did here what's done in Nova Scotia with "drop spots" available all over the place. In Ontario they opened branches everywhere to expand, and in the past year there's been a decreased demand, so everywhere that's not profitable is closed (which are the two closest to where I live, one of which is 2 miles from where I work).
Two months ago the full time person at the branch I use the most often either quit or got canned (I was in Africa, so I have no idea what happened, just that someone from Burlington was coming in to open the branch at reduced number of days per week). Burlington is third closest to me, and open late, so I was driving my packages there on Mondays to make up for the Monday closure of my local branch.
The customers protested so much that last Thursday they announced they would open Monday-Wednesday-Friday. Seemed like victory and I was feeling very proud of myself for speaking up and being one of the voices that made this change... so they were open yesterday, and last night after their first day of new hours/days, they announced on the 29th the Branch would close permanently.
So now I'm back to square one of having to figure out how to get packages to Burlington. There's too much stuff for it to be cost effective to courier boxes there (that's what I did before, but I had much fewer listings and sales, so we only did one box a week). Now I need 2-3 boxes of stuff, and some packages are just too big to courier there.
So the next option is driving there (3 hours round trip during rush hour), and doing that twice a week. I have auctions ending on Sunday night, so I want to be sure people who pay late Sunday or Monday don't wait too long for their package, so I figured I'd drive there after work Monday and Thursday. (Won't matter if I'm working from home, work and home are equally far from Burlington).
I looked into eBay.ca to see of shipping rates there and some of the rates for single things like coins are so good, if I can't drop stuff off nearby, there's no point in even dropping stuff off there at all, I can just switch to Canada Post. Today they've announced rate changes on Sept 3, 2024, so I want to see how that affects eBay rates before I do drastic things like updating my shipping location and rates on 12000 listings.
Shipping coins and coin sets will be comparable between eBay's Canada Post rates, and USPS with the Chit Chats (my shipper) fees. Things like postcards though are 3.19 to ship from Canada well protected, and I've been shipping them for 88 cents with USPS using eBay labels, plus the 3.19 does not come with any tracking, and eBay's labels do. So the question is the advantages of using this metered mail worth driving for 5-6 hours every week to drop off packages, or am I better to take the occasional loss? I don't tend to have many problems with people who buy postcards and stamps (what will be most negatively affected by switching back to Canada Post).
So this is my big crisis in getting things shipped, and I'm trying to figure out how to manage it until I can figure out what to do as a permanent resolution. I don't think driving in the dead of winter for 3 hours in a snow storm (which happens often here) is a good solution, so I've given myself until September (when I find out what Canada Post is doing) to sort things out, meanwhile it's spring/summer and weather is nice, so the drive isn't so bad... but 3 hours in the evening in the car is 3 hours I'm not processing and listing stuff, which is necessary to make sales.
Anyone else feel like sharing some of the drama they've had selling here?
C.
