UPS Rate Calculator Broken Again

[philsumm]

A while back, ebay had the UPS calculator so messed up I removed the option from my listings. Their script kiddies finally read the UPS documentation and fixed it so I added UPS back into my listings. Now, it's broken again.

My preferences are still set to not offer discounted shipping. The weight is set correctly in the listing and has been for over a year. I havent changed a thing.

The buyer was charged $11.54 for a 2 lb package and that's supposed to include a $1 handling charge. When I enter his address in my Worldship software, my discounted rate is $13.27. With the FVF on shipping, I'm out $2.88 on a $7 sale.

I'm ready to admit defeat and end the items with UPS. It simply isn't worth the hassle.

[puddle_jumper]

Do you have an account with UPS? You could get a bit of saving with UPS shipping.  Otherwise don't bother offering UPS or Fedex on eBay, those are often broken in eBay's favor.  USPS is usually cheaper on small and light package anyway.

[philsumm]

Yes, I do have an account with the asociated discount. Ebay has decided to give my customers an additional discount and leave me holding the bag.

[philsumm]

It appears ebay has screwed up their calculator by offering the discounted rate to a Business address for all listings.

I tried revising one listing and clicked "Calculate Shipping" and checked the rates for "In Store"  and "eBay rates". With "eBay rates" selected it shows me $12.65 crossed out and $15.07 as the new discounted rate. Ummm that's backwards but if that's what I have do choose in order to get them to charge the proper ammount, so be it.

Unfortunately no matter what I change, ebay is still charging customers $12.65 for a package that costs me nearly $14 to ship. Keep in mind, this is followed by charging me an additional $1.27 in FVF on the shipping.

Idgits...

[engunir]

I had the exact same problem with the Ebay-UPS calculator. 

When I contacted Ebay about it, they said that "the calculator is supplied by UPS, and they have no control over it or visibility as to how it works". 

I even tried doing the calculation (for the exact same set of shipping parameters), using the calculator on the UPS web-site; and couldn't get the numbers to match.  When I contacted UPS' Customer Service, they could not explain where it got the number that it did (using the Ebay calculator), given the exact same criteria for the shipped items; and they "couldn't do anything about the obvious mis-calculation, or my loss" (other than to (supposedly?) report it to someone; but of course, I never got any follow-up on the situation from UPS).   And before someone asks, "Yes" we did factor in whether or not I had an account with UPS, and even what type of an accout it was (since that matters a lot); and that still didn't make the numbers work out to match what the Ebay-UPS calculator had done to my shipment.

On a "one-of" case, I did manage to get Ebay to provide a partial refund of the loss I had incurred by shipping the item (using the Ebay-UPS calculator); but I didn't see that I could count on them to do that again.

So I, too, have had to drop UPS from the list of shipping options (and it is still disabled as an automatic method); but since then, I have added an "unless negotiated in advance of sale" clause back into the description on a few items (which I have used a couple times to hand-calculate a shipping estimate, which I apply when I hand-generate an invoice after the sale). 

P.S.  I've gone back and re-checked the Ebay-UPS calculator a couple times; and it still seems broken; so I'll stick with my current solution.