This is why your sales are down..

[comicscauldron]

I just made a purchase for a $130 item at Ebay via shipping program .

I had to pay a %26 tax just because i purchased a $100 + item then they charged me 32% for import duties. Import duties in Mexico are no more than 16% and you rarely pay them. 

Almost all American sellers have the Ebay shipping program on. Think about all the buyers you are loosing because Ebay are literaly stealing money from the buyers every time the purchase something for you. 

This is a purchase i made weeks ago from a seller who has the Ebay Shipping program turned off

I paid $455 + $33.95 shipping. I din't paid any duties when the package arrived...

TURN OFF the Ebay shipping program put usps priority and get more sales

[aeparts1]

comiccauIdron,  hope you clicked on "tell us what you think" , shown under "More Actions", & told them what you think.

[dbfolks166mt]

No one is blaming the sellers. I am blaming Ebay because they are stealing the buyers those taxes are not real in Mexico its ebay stealing. Its funny how you keep defending ebay and how you normalize than someone who purchases a $130 item now has to pay $240. I buy lots of imported stuff at amazon and it doesn't happen. I buy lots of stuff from American sites and it does't happen. It only happens at Ebay shipping program. 

     Unfortunately I am not well versed on all the different tax and custom fees for all the countries in the world which is one reason I utilize EIS. If in fact EIS has/is incorrectly applying taxes and custom fees this is something you need to contact them about as it may be adversely impacting other buyers. I am not exactly sure how you do that but maybe another seller can provide the contact information. The eBay customer support is pretty much useless you need to speak to somebody affiliated with the EIS program. 

[lonebuck-books]

One of the very few good things eBay has done is give seller protections with the eBay international shipping program.  I would much rather lose some sales because of this than get scammed by international buyers which unfortunately is a very frequent thing.  I look at it as an insurance program that international buyers have to pay the premium for.

Sorry but you probably won't get a lot of sympathy from sellers here as any long time seller has been scammed more than a few times by international buyers.  

[sapphire_studio]

I bulk selected everything to ship by either USPS first class international package or EIS. 

This is what I see when I look at a listing of mine:

 

[vintage-camerastuff]

So what does the seller do when that 455 dollar item is lost , stolen or buyer says it never arrived.  The seller loses the money and the product.   I will use EIS all day long.  Better to be safe than sorry!

[chapeau-noir]

I didn't see the OP's problem as duties being charged, but the wrong amount of duties.  So this would be the concerning factor for me - accuracy of the amount of duty levied. IIRC there was a problem with the other global shipping program here where for a period of time duties to Canada were incorrectly levied - one reason I avoided eBay's global shipping and just continued doing it myself was lack of trust in eBay's ability to handle this kind of thing. If EIS is not dependable in calculating something like this (I'm not saying it isn't but I've been wary of it), I'll just go back to shipping worldwide on my own.

So I for one appreciate the heads up.

[comicscauldron]

Yep you are right. I don't mind paying duties as long as they are correct and by Mexican law they are far from being correct and its not just Mexico, many countries have this issue. My market is mainly collectibles ; videogames , comic books , sport cards etc. If i was a US or UK seller i should be very worried and i would turn off the program because many sales are international at least for the market. USPS priority is a great service i been buying for years and never had a problem. 

[tobaccocardyahoo]

For many years I did not enable any international shipping method.

All of my International sales were to buyers who used freight forwarders.

I had no problems with those sales even though many sellers have horrible stories about sales involving freight forwarders.

Now I use EIS with Ebay's own freight forwarder. Must be a good program because following the logic of some posters on this thread, the number of shipments to freight forwarders is off.

I do not want to learn each country's customs regs. I do not want to worry about whether the last mile delivery is tracked, and lose claims because it is not. I do not want to be asked to file false customs declarations by buyers. I do not want to hear buyers whine about how high shipping is.

EIS is extra money in my pocket. 

If you want to do extra work, take extra risk and maybe make a few more sales, or maybe not, do your own International shipping. Ebay lets you.

[adkhighker]

Anyone eBayers who think the OP is wrong about sellers losing sales when selling internationally through the EIS program are simply kidding themselves.   If two sellers, one using the EIS program and one not using that program, and both are selling the same or similar item at the same price, who do you think the buyers are going to buy it from?

[pjcdn2005]

@sapphire_studio 

What you are showing in your screenshot is what someone in the US sees so that isn’t relevant to international shipping.   You need to go into one of your listings as a buyer would, click on the shipping payment tab, change your location and click on see rate. Then you will see what someone in that country will see. 

When I posted last night I checked some of your listings and EIS was definitely the only shipping option to Canada in the shipping payment tab and when I looked at your listings in search view. Today I see both first class international and EIS (in the shipping/payment tab) so it has changed.  

However, that may not be to your advantage. Last night quite a few of your listings in search mode (using view all listings) showed as shipping to Canada with EIS for $10.71.    Today those same listings show as being shipped first class for $17 each.  Unless I click on your listing and then the shipping tab, I don’t see the $10.71 option for EIS.  In that area the $17 option is first.   I thought that one of the eBay’s reps did say that the least expensive option would show in search view but that is not what is happening.  Usually when there are multiple shipping options search view defaults to the first option entered, I have no idea how it works when EIS is an option.

Last night I had also put 3 of your items in my cart and they showed  EIS shipping  only for a total combine shipping cost of $25.71.  Today when I looked at my cart it had changed and defaulted to first class for a total shipping cost of $51 ($17 per item) first class international.  I can however toggle between EIS and first class but a buyer may not notice that and it only can be done in checkout, not in the cart. 

Sorry to hijack the thread but I was struck by one of your comments and wanted to check how EIS works with other options.   I think sellers may have to do some experiment to see how and if using EIS and another option will benefit them.  

[chapeau-noir]

---

@tobaccocardyahoo wrote:

For many years I did not enable any international shipping method.

All of my International sales were to buyers who used freight forwarders.

I had no problems with those sales even though many sellers have horrible stories about sales involving freight forwarders.

Now I use EIS with Ebay's own freight forwarder. Must be a good program because following the logic of some posters on this thread, the number of shipments to freight forwarders is off.

I do not want to learn each country's customs regs. I do not want to worry about whether the last mile delivery is tracked, and lose claims because it is not. I do not want to be asked to file false customs declarations by buyers. I do not want to hear buyers whine about how high shipping is.

EIS is extra money in my pocket. 

If you want to do extra work, take extra risk and maybe make a few more sales, or maybe not, do your own International shipping. Ebay lets you.

---

Over twenty years of shipping internationally on my own (on 4 sites) has yielded very few of those scary supposed outcomes.  It's OK to not want to do something, you don't even have to give 'reasons'. 

[pjcdn2005]

Which would you choose if you were in Canada buying from a US seller?  The seller who use EIS for a total $10.71 shipping or the one who charges $17 shipping and uses first class international?  

Of course there are also examples of items with higher shipping when the seller uses EIS.  But my point is that one can’t make an absolute statement that the EIS definitely hurts sales because it does depend on other factors. 

[comicscauldron]

For those who are saying that international buyers are scamers and you use the EIP to protect yourself you should know that the #1 scamers are by far USA buyers

[stainlessenginecovers]

BEFORE EIS, I had NO international Sales (since 2015 when I kept getting ripped off and stopped ALL international sales) and now (since EIS covers ALL refunds)

I have had about 30 sales the past few months from International Buyers that I would NOT have had.

So the score is:

EIS-1

No EIS-0

I would consider myself a winner on this one. 

[sapphire_studio]

Thank you for putting so much time into this. I really appreciate it. It's definitely very weird to me that EIS is cheaper. I wonder if it's still cheaper for them if you count all the extra fees they have to pay. I also have free shipping so maybe EIS does somehow end up being cheaper for them because I pay for the leg to the Distribution Center.

I probably either need to come up with a combined shipping rule for first class international or take it off and just use only EIS.  (however I will say it's extremely rare people buy different items from me in the same purchase it's much more common for them to buy more than one of the same item and utilize my volume discount).

Today I had my very first case opened with Eis where Ebay said they're handling it for me for a package that seems lost. So that has me now slightly more bullish on EIS.

With my international shipping looking more expensive adding the service that has less protections, it sort of defeats the purpose and I am now thinking I will go back to EIS only, and I definitely appreciate your help.