Is this new 'Country of Origin' thing why my international sales have fallen off a cliff???
Just a few days ago I realized I haven't had many international sales in the past month or so. -They used to make up at least 25% of my sales, with the majority being Chinese, and using freight forwarders, but some other countries and EIS as well.
Then today I created a new listing and was just about to post it, when I spied THIS, maybe 3/4 of the way down the creation page:
-Note how under the box it says "This information may be needed for your listing to be visible to international buyers." -!!! How the heck do you determine the origin of 50-year-old unsigned costume jewelry, let alone hundreds of pieces of it?
So anyway I just picked United States on the menu and posted the listing. But then I checked to see if that was blank on my pre-existing listings, and the ones I checked were all U.S., even though I hadn't addressed that on most of them at time of listing. -The only times I normally do that is when the item was foreign-made and it's notable for that (like the Swedish medal I have listed).
I know this is about customs and tariffs, but here's what I don't understand:
1. Why are they acting like not addressing that Item Specific. could make your item invisible to some foreign buyers, if they're going ahead and applying a U.S. answer?
2. Is it bad for items to originate in the U.S.? Like is eBay China (for example) not showing listings with U.S.-made items?
I just want my sales back, whatever fiddling I need to do with my listings. So sick of everything right now.
gurlcat
OP6 months agoI just discovered this by accident a moment ago.
You can select some/all your listings from the listing view in Hub, click Edit -this goes to your bulk edit page, and right at the top is a new box stating exactly how many of your listings have no COO at all, and how many have been filled by eBay. If you check either box, the screen below populates with exactly the listings that pertain to that selection.
You can do what you want from there, but at least you don't have to open up each listing individually to see that item specific.
tealt
·6 months ago@gurlcat
I just followed your directions, but didn't see the new boxes on the bulk edit page.
I've opted out of EIS and offer no international shipping options at all, so apparently eBay doesn't care whether I have COO in my listings or not.
Makes sense, I guess.
christworks
·6 months ago@gurlcat Thank you for checking. I have tagged Kyle in a couple of other posts that have come up and @wastingtime101 is aware of this issue.
If eBay defaulted to China for COO I wouldn't have an issue with it. There are buyers who only buy USA items, and it seems like eBay is filling in the United States an awful lot. There is absolutely no transparance on where they are getting their data. Do they have AI analyzing the listing and searching online? Are they pulling the data from similar listings of other sellers?
The risk of an INAD is probably low on that issue. It isn't anything I want to deal with though. When we get into Q4, which is when I tend to get most EIS sales, I may briefly dive back into it for a few months.
Thank you again for checking.
christworks
·6 months ago@gurlcat The second COO box is now gone on my draft listings and new listings I create. Everything I have been working on tonight no longer has that box to fill in. Those auto adjustments appeared when that second COO box started showing up.
I de-enrolled from EIS earlier today, so I do not know if the second COO box being gone is tied to that. Do you mind attempting to create a listing to see if it is gone from your jewelry category?
gurlcat
OP6 months agoSure, I started (from scratch, not 'sell similar') a dummy listing for an imaginary necklace. I did not address Country of Origin in the Item Specifics section, and so the second prompt asking for that does appear down-screen, under shipping.
It seems pretty clear the reason you don't see that anymore is because you opted out of EIS. If you don't want your listings shown/sold to international buyers, there's no reason to urge you to state the COO for customs VAT pricing.
But why give up international sales? Just to avoid having to do one Item Specific?
EDIT: Never mind, I see in message #12 you said you don't get a ton of international sales per year anyway. So yeah, if your bigger concern is getting INAD's from buyers based on COO because eBay filled it in for you, then opting out of EIS is probably the most sensible thing. It's a shame you have to choose though. I can't imagine why or how (SOME, not all) listings get the COO just ghost-written by the AI, based on nothing from what I can tell.
gurlcat
OP6 months agoUPDATE:
Well, as if by some divine intervention, I've had TWO sales to buyers in China the past couple days (WA-HOOO!!), and both of those items had been deemed originating in the United States by eBay. So that tells me such listings DO show up on eBay dot CN, and it would probably be best for me to just fill out U.S. any time I don't know a vintage item's origin.
@my-cottage-books-and-antiques Thanks so much for shedding light on how this works. I feel a lot better now that I know how to keep getting my Chinese (and whatever other foreign) sales.
real_solid_gold
·7 months agoThe problem for me is that when eBay is auto-populating country of origin based on an ai-guess this may be fine as far as satisfying international shipping requirements...but if the same item sells domestically though AG the authenticator is likely to fail it if the country of origin is incorrect. I can not risk shipping out a bunch of items with incorrect COAs that eBay stuck in there for me. The only thing I can think to do at this point is un-enroll from eBay international shipping and hope that will allow me to clear all those bogus COA fields that were automatically filled out.
loose_goose_garage
·7 months ago"For certain eBay shipping programs, including but not limited to eBay International Shipping, SpeedPAK DE, and Global Shipping Programme, eBay may select or amend the COO. You are ultimately responsible for confirming an item's Country of Origin/Region of Manufacture in your listing, and maintaining any required certificate of origin."
So essentially, we need to go back through each of our listings to verify this info now since eBay says it is our responsibility for it to be correct, even if they input the info on their own and it is wrong. Nice.
44012
·7 months agoHello,
While I may be wrong - even though there are two fields for the origin, they are one and the same.
I was doing some testing and if you have one that is left blank in the item specific section and then you fill in the one at the shipping level it fills in the one back up in the item specifics section when you go back into the listing.
That is what I am finding anyway.
my-cottage-books-and-antiques
·7 months ago@44012 I haven't tested it, but that sounds right. ebay will likely pre fill the Shipping COO with whatever is in the IS COO, and visa versa. Again, the important thing is to recognize that the SELLER is responsible for ensuring the info is correct.
And also to recognize that, although they should both show the same country, they serve two different purposes: The IS is for the buyer (and for ebay's search engine), and the Shipping COO is for the Shipping /Customs people (and for ebay's search engine to determine international visibility).
If you leave the IS blank, it doesn't really matter much, if you leave the Shipping COO blank, you will likely lose some international visibility.
44012
·7 months agoThe thing is at least for some categories for now anyway leaving it blank allows somehow for eBay to fill it in with what it believes it should be.
I guess it will just be a day to day educational experience. 🤔😶🙂
tobaccocardyahoo
·7 months agoWhen I bulk edit my listings for any reason, Ebay tells me which of my listings being edited have no country of origin and which have been defaulted to United States.
It allows me to bulk edit them by category with the selected listings I started with.
Since I have been bulk editing many of my listings to change to shipping policies to reflect the higher USPS rates (my listings are fixed price shipping) I am also correcting COO.
krazzykats
·7 months agoIt probably should have been called FOB – Fee on Board, rather than Country of Origin. I’ve also sometimes heard it referred to as From Our Base.
á“šá˜á—¢
jeeperz-creeperz
·4 months agoThat's "Free on Board" or "Freight on Board" and defines when the liability/ownership/risk of loss shifts from the shipper to the receiver. FOB Origin means the receiver assumes liability for the shipment once the seller loads it and FOB Destination means the seller assumes liability until it is delivered.
Country of Origin is used to determine tariff rates, duties, and even restrictions, but has nothing to do with who's responsible for the shipment (FOB).
mozartbach1971
·7 months agoMy international sales have fallen significantly for the last year or longer.
12345jamesstamps
·7 months agoChanges periodically happen without telling the seller.
'country of origin' I think of where the item has been made.
I been using it now more than ever...for me I have to change it all the time since there are so many countries I have.
I notice a few new features...'face value' as a category.
And I notice one which disappeared...'Air Mail' category.
For those of us who have a lot listed it would be impossible to retract each item to add some of this new categories that suddenly happen.
I got to say I think eBay decides who sees your items.
Currently 50% of my buyers are UK...I don't know why.
And I average about 7 buyers from Japan every week.
sin-n-dex
·7 months agoBTW, according to Stallion Express and their customs broker, my New Zealand coins that were minted at the Royal Canadian Mint have a COO of Canada. And they want paperwork proof that the coin was made in Canada inside the package. I'm having quite the time trying to figure out where everything was made, if I can't find out, I go by whatever it says on the coin. So far no one has called me out on that. I have special invoices for US imports with tariffs identifying the COO (in case Customs opens one of my packages), I attach the coin details page from Numista with the Mint highlighted if it's provided, otherwise the coin comes from Bank of Country whatever.
C.
jdbelt1960
·7 months agoYou are correct that most international sales issues are due to tariffs.
tarotfindsandmore
·7 months agoeh?
tarotfindsandmore
·7 months agoIf I had to guess, the addition of Country of Origin is primarily intended for sellers outside of the U.S. It doesn't matter where a U.S. seller's item originates as tariffs are applied to incoming imports manufactured in foreign countries. Since ebay is a global marketplace, the platform needs to provide a way for tariffs to be properly assessed, but that box in the item description section really doesn't matter for U.S. sellers since technically all we do is export, or ship domestically.
Basically, ours is the only country that section doesn't actually matter to.
jdbelt1960
·7 months agoOne problem is tariff amounts change on a whim. Nobody can set a policy to deal with that.
gurlcat
OP7 months agoYou're right, but the person doing that is setting tariffs on items coming IN to the U.S., not going out. So yeah, a Chinese seller on Temu is struggling to keep up with the constant changes, but there's no reason we U.S. sellers should, when our items go to countries with normal stable leadership, LOL.
sin-n-dex
·7 months agoChina is another example of erratic tariff rates that no one can keep up on. One minute it makes no sense to list any China made items, then the rate comes down, then China makes a deal with Canada on EVs, and the rates go back up, then Canada gets hit with higher tariffs because of that deal (we've got CUSMA to get stuff in tariff free for now, but who knows what will happen when that agreement expires later this year). My buddies in the Canadian forum think Canada will join Brazil in the 50% tariff club soon.
C.
sin-n-dex
·7 months agoThat's my main complaint. Policy isn't being set and abided by so the rest of us can adapt, it's changing weekly. A country does something or doesn't do something changes the tariff rate, so I'm constantly making changes in my store to try and adapt when there's no plans to keep anything in place long term. Switzerland is a good example. It's a high tariff, so I take down all my stuff (since I'm shipping from Canada), then the Swiss do something that makes ... happy, and then the tariff rate goes down, so I put my Swiss stuff back up. Then something sells, and I go to ship it, and the tariff is sky high again because something changed and I wasn't aware of it between the last policy I read and the time it sold, now I'm on the hook for tariffs on something that wasn't properly priced because the rates are going up and down like a toilet seat.
C.
jonathanbrightlight
·7 months agoExcept we ship internationally, and even though we use eIS, or perhaps even more so because we do, the countries those items are being sent to may also require that. We won’t be the ones paying any tariffs, but it still may block us from selling to those buyers.
gurlcat
OP7 months ago@jonathanbrightlight Right, but what I don't get is why is why we must now declare where the item was originally MADE (that's what the explanation of "Origin" states).
Up to now, we could leave that blank or fill it out, with the only (apparent) potential significance being buyer preference. Like if an American buyer might have a strong preference for things made in the USA, or anyone anywhere not wanting things made in this or that country, for whatever reason. For the most part I rarely addressed this matter because I sell mostly vintage or antique jewelry, and even if I know that this or that brand was American or French or whatever, it's not a big thing with jewelry collectors. There are a few exceptions, like early 20th C. Czech jewelry is really popular, but there is no longer a country called Czechoslovakia. 😆 Nor West Germany, Siam, Persia etc. Yeah I know the modern names to pick from the list, but the fact that they changed decades ago points to how old the objects are.
Meanwhile, I thought I understood that tariffs applied to businesses according to their current exporting country, regardless of where the items were originally made. I am an American business person selling my items through eBay dot com (U.S.), so why can't eBay shoppers in other countries simply be shown prices for my items including tariffs on American goods?
Have I just been mistaken all this time? More importantly, has eBay just been ignoring the way it was really supposed to work all this time?
@valueaddedresource I hate to add any burden to your already enormous purview, but is this a subject you've been looking at recently?
jonathanbrightlight
·7 months ago@gurlcat Many tariffs are applied based on the country of manufacture, not the country of the exporter (or not exclusively, sometimes both factor into it). Generally speaking, if your transaction is not crossing country borders, it isn't going to be affected by tariffs, but if it is, both your location and the country where the item originated could be used to determine any tariffs that apply.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·7 months agoRe: Country of Origin issues
Coo has and is a requirement for an item to qualify for eis. If eBay is manually filling this is in, it could potentially cause problems down the road. (Also critical that item is listed in the correct category so anyone doing the customs portion can assign the correct HS code for the product. Incorrect and item could have in accurate tariff being applied/charged.)
The master problem was caused by Coo not being a field when a listing was officially created. For sellers with 100's, 1000's or more listing filling in the Coo after the fact is a VERY labour intensive process. An easy solution would be to add a column to sellers hub to filter. Not perfect but better than having to check each one individually. Unknown "can be" acceptable but it could cause delays with your shipment. It is also highly recommended that your inner packaged item clearly be marked with country of origin.
Results from a brief google search on the subject.
Justification for the Requirement for Indicating the Origin
The requirement for indicating origin on the goods is also known as ‘Rules of Origin’. It is a mechanism for identifying from where the goods originate or from where it is being exported or the place of its manufacture. They are the criteria needed to determine national source of a product. It is used by governments, trade, industry and consumers to determine the country in which imported goods should be treated as having been produced. Traditionally, it is used to give preferential treatment to import and export of goods from certain countries. The Rules of Origin as a matter of practice is an extension of import and export laws.
There are various reasons necessitating the determination of origin of goods. The foremost of these reasons is the import under preferential agreements to ensure that the lowest or preferential rates are made available to the goods originating from the countries under the preferential agreement. Other reason is the reduced tariff provided through trade treaties between two or countries. Usually these agreements are bi-lateral agreements between two countries and are meant to reduce or completely remove tariffs to trade.
It is also necessary to ascertain the origin of goods in order to apply basic trade policy measures such as tariffs, quantitative restrictions, anti-dumping and countervailing duties. Other reasons are import under Most Favored Nation tariff rates (MFN Tariff)[4] and for collection of trade statistics used for economic indicators for policy makers. Depending upon the purpose for which they are used, the rules differ from country to country. The requirement for indication of origin of goods arises due to the international trade because of different trade policies of different countries. Their importance is derived from the fact that duties and restrictions in several cases depend upon the source of imports.
Counterfeiting of goods for availing the reduced tariff is becoming a problem that is faced by the trade. The shift as counterfeiters move from traditional luxury goods into ordinary consumer products aggravates the issue. To prevent this, it is required that the imported goods should be adequately marked with the country of origin to determine their eligibility for reduced tariff. This requirement of indication origin of goods is also important to implement measures and instruments of commercial policy such as anti-dumping duties and safeguard measures.
Basing my post on Canadian rules. Local customs regulations can and do vary. Just like the requirements for certain destination countries for anything being imported. After the termination of Nafta and introduction of CUSMA much of the rules have become very hazy....for ALL involved.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·7 months agoAddendum from eBay dot com eIS page re: Coo
Country of Origin (Country/Region of Manufacture or "COO")
Country of Origin (Country/Region of Manufacture or "COO") is the country or territory where the finished item was manufactured, produced, or grown – not where it ships from. This is used to determine duties, taxes, and import fees and is required for international shipments. For certain eBay shipping programs, including but not limited to eBay International Shipping, SpeedPAK DE, and Global Shipping Programme, eBay may select or amend the COO. You are ultimately responsible for confirming an item's Country of Origin/Region of Manufacture in your listing, and maintaining any required certificate of origin.
tarotfindsandmore
·7 months agoThank you for posting this. Hopefully, this will clarify why that line is now included in ALL listings. As a Canadian seller your goods are being tariffed (when they previously were not), and the rate at which they're tariffed is based on where the items you're selling are coming from (being manufactured). This bit of information is mandatory for sellers outside of the U.S.
Inside the U.S., it isn't mandatory. We can fill it out however we like and, if we don't, it will ebay will fill it out for us.... because it does not matter for U.S. sellers. Nothing has changed for us, unless the country we're shipping to has imposed counter tariffs, which will...once again... be the burden of the country imposing them.
If I'm buying from you, I will want to know whether your item is Canadian (35%) or Chinese (47.5%) so you need to let me know where your items are manufactured. If I'm selling to you, you're gonna pay whatever your government tells you you need to pay in duties/tariffs on U.S. imports. If your country decides it wants to impose tariffs based on manufacturer location, and I want to do business with you, I will have to add that info. So far, however, the counter tariffs for Canadian citizens are based on U.S. imports so you don't need to know where my stuff comes from. As far as your country is concerned, U.S. imports are U.S. imports and you will pay the tariff rate for U.S. imports.
tarotfindsandmore
·7 months agoActually you don't have to fill it out. I've been seeing this box for days and listing regularly. I haven't even acknowledged it. I don't care what country they put there, as I'm still shipping from the U.S. The buyer will deal with duties (AKA tariffs) on their end without me ever seeing it. Keep in mind the "alert" for this box is a blue button, not a red one, which means you don't actually have to do a thing. I have no intention of ever paying attention to this box, though I may put "Mars" or the "the Moon" if the spirit moves me.
You are correct, it is the exporting country (exporting to us) being tariffed. The manufacturing distinction has likely been added to assist in nailing those countries who are attempting to circumvent high tariffs by shipping to their neighbors with low tariffs and having those countries ship to us. A beautiful example of this is China's use of Vietnam and Cambodia for reshipment. China has a 47.5% tariff rate while Vietnam has rates as low as 9.4% so China ships their garbage to Vietnam where it often gets repackaged to reflect a Vietnam origin before being shipped to the U.S.
adamcartwright
·7 months ago@gurlcat @tarotfindsandmore
I think the problem is that some are reporting that eBay has populated the field when we've left it blank.
I've caught that on a listing or two, myself.
P.S. @gurlcat My sales have fallen off a cliff, as well.
tarotfindsandmore
·7 months agoThat's not actually a problem though. It doesn't matter. As I stated in my previous post I may put "Mars" or "the Moon" at some point just to mess with folks because, simply put, it does not matter where U.S. sellers' goods are manufactured. If an international buyer (abroad) wishes to buy something from a U.S. seller their country will impose the duty just as they've been doing since 1945ish.
The country of origin only matters to U.S. buyers shopping overseas as those will be the items that are tariffed, based on the country of manufacture. Buyers in the U.S., buying from U.S. sellers will not be paying tariffs on anything regardless of where the item being sold was created/manufactured. Buyers abroad will pay whatever tariffs their countries have already been imposing or have started to impose in retaliation.
Bottom line, this whole issue is utterly irrelevant to U.S. sellers. Our stuff has already been getting tariffed for almost eight decades.
adamcartwright
·7 months ago@tarotfindsandmore
I'm not talking now about the tariff issue.
I'm talking about the representations made in the listing, which may be the basis for an NAD claim or an unhappy buyer. I would like eBay to leave the representations to me.
44012
·7 months agoYou don't have to fill it out but eventually it will auto-populate with what ebay thinks it should be.
It is currently happening to me.
If you enter a brand new listing on a category where this is required (as of today anyway until the rules change tomorrow) and leave it blank when you go back into the listing when completed you will see that there is a country in the origin field.
If you end and sell similar on old items on a category where this is required and continue forward leaving it blank it will auto-populate with what ebay thinks it should be.
If it is not in a category where this is required then it will continue to be left blank for now. UNTIL the ebay machine changes new categories to be updated to require an origin.
tarotfindsandmore
·7 months agoYep, that's what it's going to do and, again, so what? It's been auto populating for me as well. I don't care because it doesn't matter. I believe this insistence that it does matter reflects an ongoing, fundamental misunderstanding of how tariffs work and why this new category was added.
gurlcat
OP7 months ago@tarotfindsandmore I know we don't "have to" fill it out like a Required Item Specific. But the fine print literally says the listing may not be shown to buyers in certain countries if it is not filled out.
I guess right now I'm wondering ... since my biggest foreign buyer base is in China, would they be more likely to see (and be able to purchase) my items if they DO or DON'T have 'United States' as the Country of Origin. Obviously the item would be shipped from here, but is eBAy dot CN now blocking listings with U.S. origin? Or listings with no stated origin?
I could see it going either way!! And I NEED those sales to come back!
tarotfindsandmore
·7 months agoYou could just put China in the box if you want. You can put anything you like in that box. Try it and see. It would be a good way to test the theory.
I, personally, have another theory regarding why China was buying all of our vintage jewelry and has stopped. It may be far fetched but I do know, for certain, that Chinese buyers were scooping up bucketloads of vintage American-made costume jewelry for years in order to create molds which they could use to recreate these items. They would then take our best Hollycraft, Lisner, Trifari, and Miriam Haskell signature pieces and mass produce faux (or counterfeit) versions for resale on sites like this one or Amazon. Now that China is no longer able to use us as their national landfill, the incentive to continue the theft and counterfeiting is gone. There is no way for them to continue making money on 2-dollar knockoffs so they no longer need or want our originals.
gurlcat
OP7 months ago@tarotfindsandmore I knew that about Chinese knockoff vintage jewelry and your theory about the timing isn't totally bonkers, LOL. Could maybe explain some portion of sales drop-off. But there actually is a growing collectable vintage jewelry market in China because of the rising Middle Class, as well as trends set on social media. For all we know, some of the biggest Chinese fashion influencers may have recently declared "vintage jewelry is OUT!" 🤣
Another possibility we have to consider is social boycott against our government.
sin-n-dex
·7 months agoFunny you should mention this. In Feb Stallion started requiring Canadians to put Country of Origin in the portal when shipping to the US. There was no tariff on China at the time, so all these Tshirts being made in China were properly declared and shipped. Then in May they put tariffs on China, but no where else. All those same sellers changed their country of origin to Vietnam and kept shipping the tshirts. US Customs went and found all those packages and opened them and imposed fines. You see while it didn't matter, people were being honest, and Customs kept records of what people were shipping from where. That's why my packages never got touched one single time when it started to matter, and all the China goods sellers who changed the country of origin got caught and banned from the platform for lying about the country of origin.
C.
valueaddedresource
·7 months ago@gurlcat sorry I don't have time right now to go back and find exact dates for you but in general, those here who are saying this is tariff related are correct.
I know sometime mid-last year some sellers started seeing that they were no longer allowed to enter "unknown" for country of origin and also last year eBay started auto filling in CoO for a lot of items across their other markets - for example, this announcement from the UK.
https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Announcements/Reach-US-buyers-again-through-the-Global-Shipping-Programme/ba-p/7935466
I think eBay likely focused on other markets first because it was more of a pressing issue to solve for items shipping into the US with all the changes last year, but as others have said it isn't exclusively a US issue.
Several other countries are also overhauling a lot of their import requirements (UK and EU are making changes to their de minimis for example) so there could be new laws/regulations in play and/or some countries may have previously required that information and are now cracking down more on shipments that don't have it.
Also for EIS in particular, eBay is more on the hook for regulatory and compliance issues, so it's not surprising if they are making it "required" for your items to be shown available to ship to some countries and/or that they are using the same automation they have across other markets to fill it in automatically where possible.
I'll see if I can track it down later for you but I'm pretty sure I saw something official either in a seller update, check in, eBay Open sessions etc. where eBay said they would be doing that automatic update in the US too.
tarotfindsandmore
·7 months agoI believe that's incorrect. Countries have already been blocking certain items manufactured in certain countries, long before the inclusion of this new request. I posted about a certain cosmetics item being blocked to Italy some time ago.
The countries that are doing the blocking have the burden of establishing the manufacturing origin for the same reason we're requiring it for incoming international shipments. Again, as sellers located in the U.S., it absolutely does not matter where our goods are shipping to. Only U.S. buyers, buying internationally, are going to need to concern themselves with this.
Tell me which country of manufacture matters to U.S. sellers who ship via eIS? The retaliatory tariffs they may be trying impose will not matter unless we're shipping U.S. made goods, which is going to be assumed if we're not disclosing the location anyway. Do you honestly believe China, for example, will be imposing tariffs on their own goods when we sell them back to Chinese buyers?
sin-n-dex
·7 months agoIn the Canadian forum we were told we needed COO to have our listings visible to US buyers (it's tariffs related). I had to go update all my listings. If I wasn't sure, I put Canada. Since tariffs are prepaid before the item can get postage at the post office, it doesn't really matter where it was made, it only matters when I put postage on it and have to pay tariffs. From the buyer's standpoint, it doesn't matter of the token is US, Canada or British. I have lots of ambiguous items that come from one of those three places.
C.
christworks
·7 months agoThe bigger concern I have is a risk, albeit a small one, where a savvy buyer can return something for INAD based on the "country of origin." My rule is if the item does not state it, I leave the field blank. If my items don't get shown to international buyers, I'm fine with that. International buyers make up a dozen or two of my sales a year. They are a nice bonus, but they by no means pay the bills. I do not want eBay messing with that space on my behalf, because if there was an INAD return because of it, they are not going to take the hit.
I wonder if de-enrolling from International Shipping will stop this madness. 🤔
44012
·7 months agoYes that is one of my biggest concerns.
I think that it won't matter if you get out of international as the listings will change anyway affecting both domestic and intl.
tarotfindsandmore
·7 months agoYou're safe to put U.S. on pretty much any costume jewelry from 1980 or earlier. The scourge of Chinese trash didn't really start until around 2000 when China was allowed to invade the WTO, so vintage jewelry was almost all produced in the U.S. and Europe (Austria, Germany). Even most stuff from 1980-1990 was manufactured here.
If you're seeing a drop in Chinese buyers, it may well be something on their end rather than ours. Chinese buyers are being dissuaded from buying our goods as a result of what they believe to be a trade war. I know it's discouraging but I don't think it's anything to do with ebay.
gurlcat
OP7 months agoUpon closer look, not all my listings have the United States, only some, but I can't see any pattern, rhyme or reason in which ones were revised by eBay and which ones were not. There's an Avon necklace that WAS, and an Avon brooch that WASN'T. A sterling ring that was, sterling necklace wasn't. I don't see any random 'other' countries put on any of them, but then I haven't looked at all my listings.
Between the stupid new promotion model and this, I am feeling so exhausted and sick of their bleep, why the bleep can't they just leave anything ALONE?!!
AND THEY ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT BE PUTTING ANY WORDS IN OUR MOUTHS, PERIOD. This goes beyond any breech of trust I have ever seen before. -If a seller breaks a policy in their listing, punish them. If a seller's listing is flawed in ways that harm their chances of selling the item, the results are self-punishing. But there is NO justification for getting into our listings and stating things FOR us, as if we made those choices -and not even alerting us about it!!!!
christworks
·7 months ago@toomuchstuffagain35 eBay removed the "unknown" option a while back.
@gurlcat @adamcartwright
Things are not automatically defaulting to the U.S. It seems to be wherever eBay believes it may be from. I think they are sourcing it from similar listings, but we don't know that is where they are getting it from. There may be some AI component involved.
I do not normally fill out the country unless 1) I know for sure and 2) it is relevant. I never fill out the country for modern crap from China. I looked at several of those types of items, and sure enough, China has been filled in. Good for eBay, they got that right!
On my tool pouch, it is a different story. It didn't have a tag, so I left the country blank months ago when I listed it. eBay has since filled in the country of origin as "Mexico." AWP does make some of their stuff in Mexico, but also in China. Without knowing one way or the other, it should be left blank to avoid any INAD claims.
On this plate...it still says "unknown"
I
adamcartwright
·7 months ago@gurlcat
Didn't someone just say in another post that eBay autofilled hers with USA in that field?
That's a problem, too, because it might be setting the seller who left it blank for good reason up for an NAD.
toomuchstuffagain35
·7 months agoWill that field accept Unknown?
adamcartwright
·7 months ago@toomuchstuffagain35
Yes, I have "Unknown" in some of my listings.
Thinking that is preferred to leaving it blank?
44012
·7 months agoYes me!!!!
I have been aggravated and outright angry since last Thursday!!
Vintage items are defaulting to various origins. ETA: most jewelry listings for anything are defaulting to various origins. Vintage and fashion anyways that I am working through.
This not only affects international but if the origin is wrong like for example a Julianna brooch made in CHINA is not going to work for a US buyer who knows better! Or Weiss earrings made in the UK!
I do not always know the origin of an item. We used to be able to use "unknown". Not anymore.
deltilogical
·7 months agoFor my postcards I usually don't take time to select that and often don't know - I am selling many cards abroad and I know most didn't have anything in that pulldown.
gurlcat
OP7 months ago@deltilogical I didn't think mine did either. -Check yours now, they may all say 'United States.'
EDIT: never mind -I checked some of your listings and see no Country of Origin item specific. It is probably a category-dependent requirement, and postcards are exempt.