eBay

peter-pan · ‎12-27-2021

I'm in the USA and have an item for sale on ebay. Originally I was just selling within the USA, but someone in Canad asked if I would ship there. I used the ebay calculator to give them an idea what it would cost, but that turned out to be a waste of time because the UPS options I found were actually not valid anymore, according the an ebay CS rep. Instead he told me to add the international shipping option to my listing. So i did that and the person wanting to buy could now see it. Sadly his ship cost was significantly more that the UPS option would have been, but the buyer made a reasonable offer, understanding his increased cost and I accepted it. But when I went to print the shipping label that where the confusion began. First of all, despite the fact that this was a 20x15x4 inch package weighing 14 lbs, the shipping label (had I taken it) was for a large flat rate envelope. Second, I was being asked to pay about $8 of that shipping label, and third the destination address was somewhere in Kentucky!

Nothing there made sense. I called ebay customers service and they explained that all international sales are first routed to Kentucky. A little disturbing since it means I had no way to verify or confirm to the buyer whether the final destination was his correct Canada residence. But that accepted, I still have no clue why the mailing label for my large box was something I was being asked to pay for, since the shipping was supposed to be the buyers responsibility. Maybe the money would just come out of my income from the sale but that did not seem an option. All I could use was my ebay credit card or paypal on record. More important, what was the postal clerk going to say when I show up with the 14lb 20 inch box with a label for a flat rate envelope?

Since customer service cold not really explain these items to me, I agreed with my buyer to refund his payment and relist once both he and I were sure that this ebay process makes sense. It sure seems crazy, but the buyer seems willing to try again once we have confidence in the process. Can anyone explain some of this to me? I'd really hate to lose the sale permanently, but I also would like to avoid a complete misunderstanding or worse, and item intended for Canada shipping and staying in Kentucky.

Thanks for any help!

peter-pan · ‎12-27-2021

Right. But if that's true, I guess I could just sneak my contact info to the seller and make a private sale through UPS or FedEx. The whole point of the ebay sale was to make it simple for buyer and seller. They buy, I print label, and bring item to carrier. Once we start talking about how I can mail any way I want, ebay just becomes a vehicle for advertising and is no longer useful as a shipping provider.

peter-pan · ‎12-27-2021

But now I have a buyer from Canada who has made a reasonable offer, so i can't re-edit shipping methods. I only have two choices. Deny the offer, or accept it and be left with total confusion and no help from ebay for the shipping. Them telling me I "don't have to use ebay shipping", and lose all the seller and buyer protection is a pretty sad situation. But it is what it is I guess. Maybe I can deny to offer and ask them to re-submit after I alter the shipping method, but I'll need ebay's help to do all that.

pjcdn2005 · ‎12-27-2021

I realize that is confusing but you are making it more complicated than it need to be. You don’t lose any seller protection by using another label service to print the label. Just make sure you enter the tracking number for the package in sellers hub. Also make sure that you add the gsp transaction number that eBay gives you to the label.

Or use eBay shipping and send the item Priority. When I used the eBay shipping calculator for a package that size and weight from Tampa to Erlanger, the difference in price between a priority and Parcel Select was less than a dollar. If you want to figure it out yourself, make sure that you are using eBay pricing rather than retail pricing.

peter-pan · ‎12-27-2021

So I have that same buyer whose sale I canceled last time. The auction is this one

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234353680286
The buyer made a good offer. Remember he is in Canada, and the listing stipulated the buyer pays shipping. I haven't accepted the offer just yet. Can you please give me a way to contact you since your work there, so you can guide me through the steps? If I ACCEPT the offer, the next thing for me to do will be to "PRINT A SHIPPING LABEL". If, once again, I'm given no option but to buy a flat rate envelope for $8 and change, then once again I'll have no way to continue. Unless you're telling me to just buy the flat rate envelope and stick it on this big 14 pound box and bring it to the post office? There has to be another way. If there is another option and it doesn't cost a fortune, I'll do it. But I guarantee if I just walk into the post office with this package, its going to cost me a lot more than $8. And then if I send it to Kentucky out of my own pocket, how are they going to know what to do with it if its not an ebay label?

Please tell me how to reach you? Maybe around 11AM EST or later (that would be 7AM PST right? I really don want to lose this offer/sale! I've had to list about 5 times now to get get the current offer. Thanks if you can.

peter-pan · ‎12-28-2021

stephenmorgan · ‎12-28-2021

You are looking at the listing page.

When you go to actually purchase the Shipping and the first offer is for a Flat Rate Envelope, this is where you make the change. You have to select onw of the other options.

Example my items mostly default to Small Flat Rate Box. Sometimes I will decide to use the Flat Rate Padded Envelope. It is just a matter of selecting a differeant shipping option at time of purchase. To the buyer all they know is I am sending Priority Mail.

I believe if you uncheck the GSP then you may see the other options.

stephenmorgan · ‎12-28-2021

Before you purchase shipping click on Compare all services and the next page will give you all the USPS Shipping options. The size of you item will not fit into a Flat Rate Envelope so you should receive a Error Message if you try to purchase it.

As you see in Example 2, Priority Mail is your first choice.

buyselljack2016 · ‎12-28-2021

@peter-pan wrote:
But now I have a buyer from Canada who has made a reasonable offer, so i can't re-edit shipping methods. I only have two choices. Deny the offer, or accept it and be left with total confusion and no help from ebay for the shipping. Them telling me I "don't have to use ebay shipping", and lose all the seller and buyer protection is a pretty sad situation. But it is what it is I guess. Maybe I can deny to offer and ask them to re-submit after I alter the shipping method, but I'll need ebay's help to do all that.

Correct, you can not change from using the global shipping ( "GSP" ) when you have "offers" or bids.

You do not need "eBays" help to do any of that.

velvet@ebay · ‎12-28-2021

@peter-pan wrote:

So I have that same buyer whose sale I canceled last time. The auction is this one

https://www.ebay.com/itm/234353680286
The buyer made a good offer. Remember he is in Canada, and the listing stipulated the buyer pays shipping. I haven't accepted the offer just yet. Can you please give me a way to contact you since your work there, so you can guide me through the steps? If I ACCEPT the offer, the next thing for me to do will be to "PRINT A SHIPPING LABEL". If, once again, I'm given no option but to buy a flat rate envelope for $8 and change, then once again I'll have no way to continue. Unless you're telling me to just buy the flat rate envelope and stick it on this big 14 pound box and bring it to the post office? There has to be another way. If there is another option and it doesn't cost a fortune, I'll do it. But I guarantee if I just walk into the post office with this package, its going to cost me a lot more than $8. And then if I send it to Kentucky out of my own pocket, how are they going to know what to do with it if its not an ebay label?

Please tell me how to reach you? Maybe around 11AM EST or later (that would be 7AM PST right? I really don want to lose this offer/sale! I've had to list about 5 times now to get get the current offer. Thanks if you can.

Hi @peter-pan! It's unfortunate this has been so confusing. I would be happy to give next steps though and hopefully it will help to ease this shipping situation:

1. Accept their offer.

2. Go to the screen to print the shipping label.

3. As you've noted, it's defaulted to the Flat Rate Envelope option since you selected to sell/ship with Parcel Select and we aren't offering that as an option on eBay anymore. At this point, you have two options:

A. You can purchase the label outside of eBay if you want to stick with Parcel Select, as has been noted by other people here.

B. If you want to keep the label purchase on eBay, see @stephenmorgan's post here with a screen shot showing how you can select Priority instead. You don't want to select use the Flat Rate Envelope option if that doesn't work with the item, because postage would be due at the shipping center and they would refuse delivery. There may be a small difference in what the buyer paid for Parcel Select, to what you'll pay for the Priority label, but it sounds like @pjcdn2005 looked it up for you and the difference is minimal.

4. Purchase and print the label and ship the item to the shipping center in Kentucky per the order details, and you should be good to go.

Just to reiterate, we don't require sellers to purchase shipping labels on eBay, so you're protected like normal if you buy them elsewhere. Just make sure you mark the sale as shipped and add tracking info if you ship with tracking.

Since we don't require shipping be purchased on eBay, there are more options when listing an item then are available to purchase/print on eBay. It's up to the seller to decide what they want to offer as shipping options to their buyers and then purchase that shipping accordingly when items sell; whether that be on eBay or somewhere else.

Velvet,

monster-deals · ‎12-28-2021

This thread is seriously giving me anxiety.

peter-pan · ‎12-28-2021

This was very helpful, though it didn't quite work that way. What actually happened was this...

1) Believe it or not "ebay" decided I bought the default label. I did not, and its the third time this kind of thing happened so I was careful NOT to do so. Turns out once the buyer paid, I got an email asking me to print my shipping label. Sure enough, there was a label waiting for me there with no other obvious options.

2) With the help of an ebay rep on the phone, I had to go to My Ebay->Selling-> and then the "SOLD" option. From there I could see an option to select and VOID the mail label which Ebay "bought" for me. I selected "problem with label in store" and continued with the VOID.

3) i was then able to select "Create a new Label" from that same sold page, and as you show above, select "Compare all services". There I could also see that my box dimensions and weight were still correct, but that ebay in their "wisdom" was still selecting the undersized priority flat rate envelope as a default.

4) After inspecting all my options, I decided to take a UPS Ground option (not USPS), as its specifications for box dimensions and weight were the best buy on the page. Why ebay would not have automatically chosen the lowest cost option whose specifications fit my package is another broken (IMO) part of the system. I suppose the package dimensions and weight are applied to the shipping from Kentucky to the final destination, but there is no such built in wisdom to apply this data toward helping the seller make a better choice.

So I ended up paying about $18 instead of $about $8 in order to properly insure (not sure if that was necessary), and while I'm reasonably sure the cost of the original label was passed on to the buyer (who was supposed to pay shipping), I'm probably out an extra $10. But I'll wait and see on all those details. For now I'm at least glad I better understand how the process fails and how I can coax it into working. Now I guess buyer and seller have to wait and see if delivery happens, and whether any other unexpected costs or headaches occur.

In any case, thanks to you, and everyone, for all the help. And if I ever sell anything with an international option on ebay again, I'll know what to expect, and will likely think twice about selling if the item wont fit in a USPS priority mail envelope! 😁

pjcdn2005 · ‎12-28-2021

This has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the buyer is international. The first option offered on your listing is parcel select which means that a domestic buyer chose parcel select the default on the label screen would still be the flat rate envelope since ebay labels does not print parcel select labels. You would have to do exactly what many of us suggested...choose another service or print your label elsewhere. Keep in mind that you were not printing an international label. You were simply printing a label to Kentucky and the gsp would be dealing with the international part of the transaction.

pjcdn2005 · ‎12-28-2021

velvet@ebay

As I mentioned earlier but which wasn't addressed is that this problem happens all the time and sellers do not understand why ebay is defaulting to a flat rate envelope when that was not an option on the listing. I would say that the majority of sellers that come here and complain about it think that the buyer was able to choose an shipping method that was not on the listing and that they weren't paid enough by the buyer.

Please ask the shipping label people to address this issue and to either not default to a label that wasn't on the listing or to at the very least add on a note that parcel select is not available on ebay to let the seller know what their options are.

monster-deals · ‎12-28-2021

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
velvet@ebay
As I mentioned earlier but which wasn't addressed is that this problem happens all the time and sellers do not understand why ebay is defaulting to a flat rate envelope when that was not an option on the listing. I would say that the majority of sellers that come here and complain about it think that the buyer was able to choose an shipping method that was not on the listing and that they weren't paid enough by the buyer.

Please ask the shipping label people to address this issue and to either not default to a label that wasn't on the listing or to at the very least add on a note that parcel select is not available on ebay to let the seller know what their options are.

I am a 24 year veteran and I still have that happen to me and I have to void the label, absolute pain.

pjcdn2005 · ‎12-28-2021

velvet@ebay

Oddly enough someone else posted about this problem shortly after I wrote my last post. Sellers do not know how to handle the incorrect service redirect.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Shipping/USPS-Parcel-Select-Ground-option/td-p/32575555