@anasazirose wrote:
It is both repeatable AND non repeatable without leaving the shipping screen. What I mean by that is that it happened, pulled out my phone to make a video, it did not happen, then it happened again so I made a video. This without leaving the screen at all.
For the ship calculator to raise the price when the same package weighs less is crazy. What will ebay's position be when a seller pays the shipping ebay says is correct and USPS back bills us for underpayment? It certainly seems fair that ebay recognize the time frame this is happening in and be responsible for their errors.
Thanks @anasazirose ! That makes me think even more that it may be related to these other issues we are seeing.
You can check that other community thread I linked to for details, but the short version is that I believe eBay is making changes to their rates to bring themselves inline with changes that Pirate Ship and other providers made back in November (eBay had said they were not adjusting their rates "at that time" but may be doing it now before the big USPS rate increase January 21).
If that theory is correct, generally speaking, those changes would mean an increase in most Priority shipments and a decrease for some Ground Advantage shipments in particular weight and zone ranges.
Whatever eBay is doing with those rates, it seems to be causing the whole thing to go buggy now. I'm seeing the rates fluctuate when the "ship on date" changes, but like you said, it's not always consistently repeatable.
For example, selecting tomorrow for the ship on date early today was showing the "changed" rates, but selecting Friday was showing the "old" rates - and then when I toggled back to tomorrow a few minutes later it was back to the old rate for that date again too.
I've tried it a few more times since then and am still having the same experience - the rates are still fluctuating but it's not a consistent pattern for when they do.
As to your question about underpayment - that's where this gets a little tricky. If I'm correct, these changes are not due to an actual change in the published USPS rates.
USPS sets their published retail and commercial rates, but service providers and marketplaces have Negotiated Service Agreements (NSAs) with USPS that are basically private contracts that give them negotiated (often very) discounted pricing off those published rates based on volume and other factors.
The changes Pirate Ship and others made in November were due to changes in the terms of their agreements with USPS that lowered their negotiated discounts for some shipments and increased them for others, so those providers adjusted the rates they provide to shippers accordingly - but the actual published USPS rates did not change at that time, if that makes sense.
Many of us speculated eBay was also impacted by those changes and while eBay didn't confirm or deny that, they did say they were not going to make any adjustments *at that time*.
It's my belief they are making those adjustments now, ahead of the actual changes to USPS published rates that will be going into effect January 21.
If all of that is what's really going on here, then the price fluctuations we are currently seeing in theory would not be a difference in what is actually supposed to be paid to USPS, it's just a difference in the discounted rate eBay is charging the seller - in which case I don't know that there would technically be any underpayment or overpayment to USPS.
There is still the question of whether eBay will be refunding the difference for sellers who pay higher rates than they should be and/or charging the difference for those who pay less than they should - but until/unless eBay actually bothers to even communicate about which rates are the correct ones right now, there's no way to even know!
So basically, it's all a giant mess and we've been trying to get answers from eBay for 4 days now but so far they have not acknowledged the issue or responded to any questions about it.
