New International Shipping. Houston, We Have a Problem

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@devon@ebay

I am tagging you as you were the one that originally worked with the shipping team.

Please pass this up to the powers that be. There are significant legal and financial risks to eBay and Sellers with how the new International Shipping has been implemented. This is a bit long but please bear with me.

Part of me hopes I am barking up the wrong tree but based on what I have seen with my own listings and responses from others, I fear I am not.

The below email was received about the new International shipping program on Nov 15

This infers that listings that I have in GSP will roll over to the new program. No mention of Business Policies. I took this as if I have GSP activated on my listing these items will be migrated over. There is no mention about listings that do not have GSP or listings not having a Business Shipping Policy.

The below email was received on Nov 22

The second email does not even speak about GSP and now it states eligible listings.

Nowhere in either of these emails does eBay mention anything about listings without Business Policies.

The second email also had this.

This leads you to the below page.

Again, this speaks to GSP and International Standard listings. Nothing about listings that do not have Business Policies or currently do not allow international shipping.

The below is what is written on the new eBay help page.

This does not even say what listings are eligible nor does it speak about Business Policies for shipping. Who decides what is eligible? It is also not clear on what an eligible listing is or what will happen to current listings that are listed as US shipping only.

Below is the excerpt on prohibited items from the same page.

There are a lot more items than just fragrances that cannot be shipped internationally due to hazards and flammability.

Some countries do not allow jewelry to be imported and others have restrictions on certain types of jewelry and that is before you even get to a monetary cap amount.

Other countries do not permit knives at all.

Then we have items that cannot be shipped out of the country due to security laws.

More on the risks with those later.

Below was a response from you to questions on items being included and sold internationally where they should not be.

This is a HUGE issue.

Instead of taking the logical route and only including listings with GSP or International policies, someone somewhere made the decision to do the opposite and blanket migrate everything, including listings that do not currently allow international shipping if no business policy is on the listing.

You have a large number of sellers that do not use business policies for various reasons. Business policies are not required at this time.

Sellers that do not use GSP, do not have excluded countries set up. People that do not use Business Policies also do not have excluded countries set up. There are Sellers that have never sold internationally and have no idea that you can exclude countries. So now you have listings that potentially can be sold to countries that have issues with certain items by sellers that have NO IDEA this is going to happen.

You have sellers that absolutely cannot by law, ship some of their items out of the country. None of that is in the list above and some of these items cross many different categories.

You also have Sellers that have no idea that the items they sell cannot ship internationally because they have never allowed international shipping.

Then you have the issues that have already been brought up such as the used Levi’s, toner and then there is jewelry that cannot be shipped to certain countries and a host of other nuanced issues that depend on the item being sold and where it is going.

eBay has arbitrarily taken Seller listings that they have set up in a specific way, such as only allowing US shipping options with no international shipping or sales and has now made those listings available to the world because someone made the decision to move these listings without regard to the legal ramifications behind it. Those legal ramifications are not only for the seller, but also eBay.

Why is eBay at risk? As I have shown above, there is nothing in writing, short of your response that talks of listings without business policies. eBay has made this change, not the seller. eBay has not communicated what that change entails.

There are also reports of listings that do have policies set up for no international that are rolling over as well.

eBay is also taking responsibility per your TOS for the new program.

But then there is this.

How can Sellers agree to not sell ineligible items when they do not even know their items are being offered with international shipping until a sale happens?

The emails about the new program are not clear and for many that currently do not offer international shipping, think this does not apply to them because they do not use GSP or other international shipping. They are not told in the email they are being mandatory opted in in the first place.

Then there is the “here” link takes you to the list I screen shot above with respect to prohibited items that is ambiguous and subject to change at any time.

Then we have the TOS in general.

You are opting Sellers into a program with an implied TOS agreement that the Seller is not required to acknowledge or agree to, that they cannot even find unless they go looking for it, for a program they have been opted into without their consent or knowledge? The link to the TOS that we are arbitrarily agreeing to is not in any of the emails and you must go hunt for it.

And now for the serious part

Skipping the whole Levi’s thing, there are some items that deal with militaria and technology that absolutely cannot leave the country, and not by just local laws or laws pertaining to agriculture or CITES. These items are varied and in many categories. None of which are listed in the prohibited list above.

Attempting to ship certain militaria and technology violates serious Federal laws and can result in Federal charges and/or convictions. Sellers of these items know they cannot ship these internationally, they have their shipping set to the US only. These sellers have brought up issues with eBay before with people using freight forwarders to bypass the rules. eBay has not been able to prevent these sales, even where the seller had the correct shipping rules in place and now eBay has just thrown all those listings out there as well regardless of what shipping the seller has on the item. If these sellers are not using business policies, you have just exposed them (and eBay) to some serious risks. Risks that include federal jail time and hefty fines.

The argument last time this was brought up was that the FF was the exporter and therefore they were responsible. eBay is now the exporter.

What needs to happen and happen soon.

The default should not be Opt Out, it should be Opt in. If that is not an option, at a bare minimum the following should happen with future migrations.

Clearly communicate the default is opt in with a link to opt out or instructions on how to do so on the welcome email. It must be made clear to a Seller that does not currently sell internationally that their listings will be migrated, even if they currently do not allow international sales or GSP. A seller should not have to go hunt and peck and post on a forum when they have been arbitrarily enrolled in a program to find out how to opt out.

Cleary communicate to the sellers what listings will migrate in the welcome email. This needs to include verbiage and direction on listings that do not have Business Shipping Policies set up. A link to information on the process for excluding countries also needs to be provided and not be buried behind 4 clicks to find the information.

eBay needs to abide by the sellers current shipping on the listing when the shipping is set to US only and not migrate these listings, or make Business Policies mandatory so that the seller can correctly identify those listings that cannot be shipped internationally.

eBay needs to update the eBay International Shipping page to clearly outline all of the above.

eBay needs to provide clear guidance on prohibited items and when the list is updated, this needs to be communicated.

Lastly, what Seller protections for the Seller account are going to be in play because of the lack of communication around what listings will migrate and when? If a VERO is filed or there are issues because a seller is cancelling transactions with problem with addresses initially because they were not notified that certain listings were being migrated, is eBay going to protect the seller and remove account dings due to eBays migration of ineligible listings to a mandatory program?

I am going to end this with I sell internationally and am not against the program, I am however, really, really concerned at the risks involved for sellers on how this is being implemented.

blingfling123

10 View listings

Posted 3 years ago·Last reply 3 years ago

33 comments

kh-belma

·3 years ago

0 View listings

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.

supermegabot

·3 years ago

26107 View listings

In general I don't have an issue with offering EIS, but only if I can offer the buyer other options and flat-out refuse to use it for others.

Last I saw, eBay insurance through EIS is only up to $100 and you can't buy shipcover insurance if you use EIS.

I'm not going to ship anything valued over $100 internationally without a viable insurance option, that's insane.

downunder-61

·3 years ago

0 View listings

Ha ha, I love the bit from the eBay employee - "I will get back to you IF (not when) IF, I hear back from them (the shipping team)

Says it all really doesn't it? The various 'expert teams' don't even bother answering their own employee's questions, or more likely perhaps they don't know how to answer.

Reading these boards over the last year or so, I thank my lucky stars everyday that I got out from selling here when I did.

an-57470

·3 years ago

0 View listings

You are correct that many items were made available to the world without permission of the seller, but the flip side is many items that were available to the world are no longer available (or even listed) because of the weight and package dimension limits with the new program. Very poor and poorly communicated decision on eBay's part.

semisurplus

·3 years ago

17124 View listings

Well I just ran into an interesting situation involving this, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Something I had originally set up to ship domestic only just sold via the EIS. It was a real old listing with a fixed shipping cost (not calculated) and was purposely set up to NOT SHIP internationally. Here's the kicker, it has NO WEIGHT OR DIMENSIONS in the listing. NONE, ZERO, THE CELLS CONTAIN NO DATA. SO HOW DID EBAY KNOW WHAT TO CHARGE THIS BUYER FOR INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING?

dbfolks166mt

·3 years ago

1086 View listings

Depending on what it was they probably just located a similar item on eBay or the internet or looked at the listing and guesstimated.

semisurplus

·3 years ago

17124 View listings

I have replied on this thread a few times but I did confirm that items we had that were NOT selected to ship via the GSP because we will not export them are now perfectly able to ship via the EIS. This is against our original settings obviously and is probably the worst thing Ebay has done to sellers that I can think of. Either Ebay needs to add a button very fast in order to allow single listings to opt out, or I now need to spend a ridiculous amount of time delisting specific items. If it isn't happening already, foreign buyers will be taking advantage of what is now basically a loop hole allowing them to buy items that shouldn't be exported. And if someone does buy something in the meantime and I or any sellers refuses to export it, will Ebay protect me/them from a possible negative feedback?

reallynicestamps

·3 years ago

2496 View listings

I agree with the second one.

The first I would change to The phone reps don't work for eBay but for a sub-contractor in Utah.

I've had a hard time getting US phone reps to understand that Canada has different laws and currency than the USA, while the overseas (Phillipino) reps have a less provincial outlook, possibly because they have a cousin working in Winnipeg.

The social media reps are fine.

sapphire_studio

·3 years ago

1148 View listings

Yeah I almost added to the end of it to use the social media reps instead.

dbfolks166mt

·3 years ago

1086 View listings

I saw this train wreck coming when the EIS was first announced and eBay could not seem to get its story straight regarding the program. I was using GSP but in the wake of the pending automatic conversion over to EIS I opted out of the GSP and will not use the EIS or be shipping internationally until when and if eBay ever gets this program smoothed out.

There is no doubt in my mind that eBay did this purely to increase revenues, either that or Pitney Bowes who ran the GSP program dumped eBay.

simply-the-best-for-you

·3 years ago

This One Goes to Eleven - Nigel Tufnel5978 View listings

@anjofak found the thread, here it is, where Kyle from eBay says it's handled by EIS. Post 17.

reallynicestamps

·3 years ago

2496 View listings

FWIW- There is a scam, I've heard it called the customs scam, where the buyer does not pick up the shipment, instead claiming Not Received.

Once he has his refund, he pays the customs, and gets his item before it is returned to the seller.

The GSP stopped this scam by having import fees paid up front.

@elizabeth@ebay How does EIS prevent this scam?

Note that I am posting from Canada and don't really have any skin in the game.

Also, it is Standard Business Practice that the importer/buyer should know what can and cannot be imported into his own country.

Not the seller.

How does EIS deal with shipments returned as not allowed? Does the buyer have to wait until the seller has the shipment back? That can take months since returned shipments are not a high priority with any shipping company.

elizabeth@ebay

Admin3 years ago

Communtiy Advisor0 View listings

@reallynicestamps wrote:

FWIW- There is a scam, I've heard it called the customs scam, where the buyer does not pick up the shipment, instead claiming Not Received.

Once he has his refund, he pays the customs, and gets his item before it is returned to the seller.

The GSP stopped this scam by having import fees paid up front.

@elizabeth@ebay How does EIS prevent this scam?

Note that I am posting from Canada and don't really have any skin in the game.

Also, it is Standard Business Practice that the importer/buyer should know what can and cannot be imported into his own country.

Not the seller.

How does EIS deal with shipments returned as not allowed? Does the buyer have to wait until the seller has the shipment back? That can take months since returned shipments are not a high priority with any shipping company.

Hey @reallynicestamps. We review the tracking information, which would show it's awaiting pickup (or something along those lines) and we would close the case in the sellers favor. Of course cases are reviewed on each individual basis, but the seller is often protected in this scenario.

anjofak

·3 years ago

1059 View listings

I know as a business we opted to not ship to Germany whom has some insane boxing requirements/costs and Europe due to the sellers Being taxed for disposal of items purchased or whatever they call it.

Hopefully that hasn't been fixed against us..lol

simply-the-best-for-you

·3 years ago

This One Goes to Eleven - Nigel Tufnel5978 View listings

@anjofak wrote:
I know as a business we opted to not ship to Germany whom has some insane boxing requirements/costs and Europe due to the sellers Being taxed for disposal of items purchased or whatever they call it.
Hopefully that hasn't been fixed against us..lol

@anjofak There was just a post the other day about this from eBay. It was confirmed that the reshipper handles all the packaging issues for Germany.

semisurplus

·3 years ago

17124 View listings

elizabeth@ebay

Well it's been over a month just since this post and nothing has still been done about this as far as I can tell. THIS IS SO VERY SIMPLE = PUT AN OPTION (one of the new stupid little sliding blue buttons) IN THE LISTING, TO SHIP, OR TO NOT SHIP INTERNATIONAL, JUST LIKE THE GLOBAL SHIPPING PROGRAM HAD!

I am in the electronics business. I have plenty of things in my Ebay store that I will not ship internationally and were set up so they would not ship via the GSP. So did those items automatically get opted into EIS now against my original settings? The majority of items in my store I WILL ship international. Maybe Ebay doesn't know that in the world of business, some companies sign contracts with their vendors stating they will not ship their particular goods to international destinations. This is done for a wide variety of reasons and is common in the business world. Could be based on competition/markets you are allowed to sell in, could be because it's military, technologically sensitive, or something more basic like too fragile, too expensive, too big, etc, etc. BUT THE OPTION TO SHIP INTERNATIONAL MUST BE HANDLED ON AN ITEM BY ITEM BASIS - NOT AN OPT IN OR OPT OUT YOUR WHOLE ENTIRE STORE BASIS. This has to be one of the worst thought out (or not thought out at all apparently) changes in Ebay's history.

kalyoth

·3 years ago

1126 View listings

ebay did resolve my issue. I can confirm the listing setup does have a toggle switch for international shipping off or on. That does not, however, modify your ebay profile: account settings, shipping profile - for international shipping. That is a separate item you have to change as well. I have international opted out as a global account setting. If I have an item I want to offer internationally, I toggle it on during listing creation per item.

semisurplus

·3 years ago

17124 View listings

Thank you for your response. I do have questions. What is your setup, do you subscribe to a store, business account, personal account, etc? The only international shipping I can "toggle on" is if I'm shipping directly myself and NOT using EIS. I can click to select certain destinations, etc. but that is not through EIS. I just need to able to opt out specific items from shipping internationally via EIS = but not all. I talked with Ebay via phone a few weeks ago and no one could tell me how to do this. Of course this was all TIER 1 support and I usually know way more about how the Ebay site operates than they do.

simply-the-best-for-you

·3 years ago

This One Goes to Eleven - Nigel Tufnel5978 View listings

@semisurplus wrote:
Thank you for your response. I do have questions. What is your setup, do you subscribe to a store, business account, personal account, etc? The only international shipping I can "toggle on" is if I'm shipping directly myself and NOT using EIS. I can click to select certain destinations, etc. but that is not through EIS. I just need to able to opt out specific items from shipping internationally via EIS = but not all. I talked with Ebay via phone a few weeks ago and no one could tell me how to do this. Of course this was all TIER 1 support and I usually know way more about how the Ebay site operates than they do.

You can't. It's been discussed in several threads here if you search. If you use EIS, you cannot choose to ship some on your own. My understanding is, it's all or nothing.

I have shipped 5-6 items now through EIS & there have been no problems, but yes, a lot of questions are unanswered.

stainlessenginecovers

·3 years ago

5572 View listings

@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:
@semisurplus wrote:
Thank you for your response. I do have questions. What is your setup, do you subscribe to a store, business account, personal account, etc? The only international shipping I can "toggle on" is if I'm shipping directly myself and NOT using EIS. I can click to select certain destinations, etc. but that is not through EIS. I just need to able to opt out specific items from shipping internationally via EIS = but not all. I talked with Ebay via phone a few weeks ago and no one could tell me how to do this. Of course this was all TIER 1 support and I usually know way more about how the Ebay site operates than they do.
You can't. It's been discussed in several threads here if you search. If you use EIS, you cannot choose to ship some on your own. My understanding is, it's all or nothing.

Actually you can- but you have to edit each one seperate; click the options at the top of the 'shipping' and then choose to 'use your own shipping'; then add a price to flat rate (I did $1500, which is 4x more than the item, and it stuck). I then went back and bulk edited all higher dollar items to 'exclude' shipping to all international continents (had to check about 10 boxes but it changed over 200 of my listings in one move).

simply-the-best-for-you

·3 years ago

This One Goes to Eleven - Nigel Tufnel5978 View listings

@stainlessenginecovers wrote:
@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:
@semisurplus wrote:
Thank you for your response. I do have questions. What is your setup, do you subscribe to a store, business account, personal account, etc? The only international shipping I can "toggle on" is if I'm shipping directly myself and NOT using EIS. I can click to select certain destinations, etc. but that is not through EIS. I just need to able to opt out specific items from shipping internationally via EIS = but not all. I talked with Ebay via phone a few weeks ago and no one could tell me how to do this. Of course this was all TIER 1 support and I usually know way more about how the Ebay site operates than they do.
You can't. It's been discussed in several threads here if you search. If you use EIS, you cannot choose to ship some on your own. My understanding is, it's all or nothing.

Actually you can- but you have to edit each one seperate; click the options at the top of the 'shipping' and then choose to 'use your own shipping'; then add a price to flat rate (I did $1500, which is 4x more than the item, and it stuck). I then went back and bulk edited all higher dollar items to 'exclude' shipping to all international continents (had to check about 10 boxes but it changed over 200 of my listings in one move).

@stainlessenginecovers Interesting. Ebay said there wasn't so I was just going by what they said.

Personally, I don't have an interest in doing this, but I know many others do. That sounds like a LOT of work though. It was pretty convoluted to do it in GSP though, too.

semisurplus

·3 years ago

17124 View listings

And that is the whole problem. With GSP you could easily opt out of shipping a single listing internationally. All they need to do is add the option back, it shouldn't be that hard for a 26.5B company. All or nothing is terrible. I too have shipped with EIS every week, commercial items, no big deal, and I've already had repeat buyers so it is working good it seems. However at some point something is going to get shipped, by someone, not me, like some military part requires a license (Ebay knows nothing about this stuff, it is up to the seller) or maybe it will just be something that a seller has an arrangement with the vendor on to not export, and they arent paying attention to automatically being put it in the EIS, and they're going to get sued, etc, etc. There are possible legal consequences to sellers by Ebay applying "all or nothing". If it's "all or nothing" than some sellers (like me) are going to have to divide their stores in 2 and have one that will ship international and one that wont and that is just ridiculous. I've been here 22 years, they make the weirdest decisions time and time again and they rarely benefit the seller.

stainlessenginecovers

·3 years ago

5572 View listings

Actually I am NOT surprised that a 'roll out' has issues; and sometimes those 'issues' are NEVER fixed to be 'easier'. It may not ever be fixed for the underlying reason that they simply want the business for both EIS as well as the FV Fees attached with the sale. Sell sell sell to everyone everywhere always!

Again, easiest work around is the 'edit' all you DON'T want to ship international, and simply 'exclude' all continents all in one motion.

I did 200 listings in about 3 minutes.

simply-the-best-for-you

·3 years ago

This One Goes to Eleven - Nigel Tufnel5978 View listings

@semisurplus ITA it should NOT be all or nothing. That's ridiculous. I've been here since 97 & as a former Software Developer, I scratch my head a lot with certain decisions (or worse who knows if it was even a "decision" & didn't just happen, like so many change). Aside from the points you've mentioned, there just may be items that price-point wise, people don't want to sell overseas.

Unrelated question, have you noticed that EIS is slower than GSP? It really seems that way to me. Both Canada & Japan were much slower. Have a Norway now, but not sure how quick Norway usually was. Japan used to be SUPER fast for me with GSP & direct, as in around a week fast, even faster when mailing direct. It took I think 2 1/2 weeks. Just wondering if you've noticed it?

semisurplus

·3 years ago

17124 View listings

Honestly we don't keep track of how long something takes to arrive, that would be too time consuming for us. We ship very fast though which helps. We figure everything is all good unless we hear that something went wrong, which isn't too often. Ebay is a secondary sales channel, we use it as our small order desk and a way to unload old inventory. Honestly we like helping out the people who are doing repairs, hobbyists, prototyping etc. Sometimes we actually sell something to a big company but for the most part we chalk our store up to mostly helping other people by allowing them to buy a small quantity at a cheap price. At one point we were doing about 300-400 orders a month. Rising shipping costs have put a damper on that, and we've been losing money on the shipping on most low dollar orders over the past few months. Yet we still have people complain about our shipping prices. Shipping cost is the only 5 star review where we actually have a 4.9 instead of a perfect 5.0 rating. For some reason the public seems unaware of what things cost to ship. We are now slowly moving to "calculated" on all shipments, even on 1st class, as we're tired of trying to keep up with cost changes, as you know USPS has changed prices 3 times now since July and I'm tired of having to change our costs every time. Ebay is too time consuming as is.

kalyoth

·3 years ago

1126 View listings

Just a personal seller in the US - no business / shop / store etc. I build listings direct on desktop browser (Firefox) of ebay. Under account settings, shipping profile - for ebay international shipping, that is the full account switch for all your listings - enrolled / not enrolled. In the individual listing I create, I have a toggle on & off visible to me for international shipping directly under domestic shipping. I then just select the carrier from there. I am an actual shipping cost seller with occasional insurance added fees on higher value items. I do not make many items international anymore unless they are marketplace specific. Too much local destination legal drama growing around the world - especially in Europe.

dbfolks166mt

·3 years ago

1086 View listings

This does not pertain to the EIS program nor did it to the GSP before that. The capability to choose to sell an individual item internationally has always been there but it means you are handling the logistics on your own and not using the GSP or the EIS programs.

stainlessenginecovers

·3 years ago

5572 View listings

@semisurplus wrote:
elizabeth@ebay

Well it's been over a month just since this post and nothing has still been done about this as far as I can tell. BUT THE OPTION TO SHIP INTERNATIONAL MUST BE HANDLED ON AN ITEM BY ITEM BASIS - NOT AN OPT IN OR OPT OUT YOUR WHOLE ENTIRE STORE BASIS.

@semisurplus

There IS A WAY to bulk edit the items you don't want to ship internationally without having to click 'each' item; Edit all items at once to 'exclude' all the international locations.

Mine were hit/miss with some large kits being 'excluded' (as I had all items over $100 NOT on GSP) and some are showing they can ship internationally.

I did the 'edit' all at once for all items I wanted (either check mark them, or put in parameters (price) or category etc. and then simply exlude all international continents.

elizabeth@ebay

Admin3 years ago

Communtiy Advisor0 View listings

@blingfling123 wrote:

@devon@ebay

I am tagging you as you were the one that originally worked with the shipping team.

Please pass this up to the powers that be. There are significant legal and financial risks to eBay and Sellers with how the new International Shipping has been implemented. This is a bit long but please bear with me.

Part of me hopes I am barking up the wrong tree but based on what I have seen with my own listings and responses from others, I fear I am not.

The below email was received about the new International shipping program on Nov 15

This infers that listings that I have in GSP will roll over to the new program. No mention of Business Policies. I took this as if I have GSP activated on my listing these items will be migrated over. There is no mention about listings that do not have GSP or listings not having a Business Shipping Policy.

The below email was received on Nov 22

The second email does not even speak about GSP and now it states eligible listings.

Nowhere in either of these emails does eBay mention anything about listings without Business Policies.

The second email also had this.

This leads you to the below page.

Again, this speaks to GSP and International Standard listings. Nothing about listings that do not have Business Policies or currently do not allow international shipping.

The below is what is written on the new eBay help page.

This does not even say what listings are eligible nor does it speak about Business Policies for shipping. Who decides what is eligible? It is also not clear on what an eligible listing is or what will happen to current listings that are listed as US shipping only.

Below is the excerpt on prohibited items from the same page.

There are a lot more items than just fragrances that cannot be shipped internationally due to hazards and flammability.

Some countries do not allow jewelry to be imported and others have restrictions on certain types of jewelry and that is before you even get to a monetary cap amount.

Other countries do not permit knives at all.

Then we have items that cannot be shipped out of the country due to security laws.

More on the risks with those later.

Below was a response from you to questions on items being included and sold internationally where they should not be.

This is a HUGE issue.

Instead of taking the logical route and only including listings with GSP or International policies, someone somewhere made the decision to do the opposite and blanket migrate everything, including listings that do not currently allow international shipping if no business policy is on the listing.

You have a large number of sellers that do not use business policies for various reasons. Business policies are not required at this time.

Sellers that do not use GSP, do not have excluded countries set up. People that do not use Business Policies also do not have excluded countries set up. There are Sellers that have never sold internationally and have no idea that you can exclude countries. So now you have listings that potentially can be sold to countries that have issues with certain items by sellers that have NO IDEA this is going to happen.

You have sellers that absolutely cannot by law, ship some of their items out of the country. None of that is in the list above and some of these items cross many different categories.

You also have Sellers that have no idea that the items they sell cannot ship internationally because they have never allowed international shipping.

Then you have the issues that have already been brought up such as the used Levi’s, toner and then there is jewelry that cannot be shipped to certain countries and a host of other nuanced issues that depend on the item being sold and where it is going.

eBay has arbitrarily taken Seller listings that they have set up in a specific way, such as only allowing US shipping options with no international shipping or sales and has now made those listings available to the world because someone made the decision to move these listings without regard to the legal ramifications behind it. Those legal ramifications are not only for the seller, but also eBay.

Why is eBay at risk? As I have shown above, there is nothing in writing, short of your response that talks of listings without business policies. eBay has made this change, not the seller. eBay has not communicated what that change entails.

There are also reports of listings that do have policies set up for no international that are rolling over as well.

eBay is also taking responsibility per your TOS for the new program.

But then there is this.

How can Sellers agree to not sell ineligible items when they do not even know their items are being offered with international shipping until a sale happens?

The emails about the new program are not clear and for many that currently do not offer international shipping, think this does not apply to them because they do not use GSP or other international shipping. They are not told in the email they are being mandatory opted in in the first place.

Then there is the “here” link takes you to the list I screen shot above with respect to prohibited items that is ambiguous and subject to change at any time.

Then we have the TOS in general.

You are opting Sellers into a program with an implied TOS agreement that the Seller is not required to acknowledge or agree to, that they cannot even find unless they go looking for it, for a program they have been opted into without their consent or knowledge? The link to the TOS that we are arbitrarily agreeing to is not in any of the emails and you must go hunt for it.

And now for the serious part

Skipping the whole Levi’s thing, there are some items that deal with militaria and technology that absolutely cannot leave the country, and not by just local laws or laws pertaining to agriculture or CITES. These items are varied and in many categories. None of which are listed in the prohibited list above.

Attempting to ship certain militaria and technology violates serious Federal laws and can result in Federal charges and/or convictions. Sellers of these items know they cannot ship these internationally, they have their shipping set to the US only. These sellers have brought up issues with eBay before with people using freight forwarders to bypass the rules. eBay has not been able to prevent these sales, even where the seller had the correct shipping rules in place and now eBay has just thrown all those listings out there as well regardless of what shipping the seller has on the item. If these sellers are not using business policies, you have just exposed them (and eBay) to some serious risks. Risks that include federal jail time and hefty fines.

The argument last time this was brought up was that the FF was the exporter and therefore they were responsible. eBay is now the exporter.

What needs to happen and happen soon.

The default should not be Opt Out, it should be Opt in. If that is not an option, at a bare minimum the following should happen with future migrations.

Clearly communicate the default is opt in with a link to opt out or instructions on how to do so on the welcome email. It must be made clear to a Seller that does not currently sell internationally that their listings will be migrated, even if they currently do not allow international sales or GSP. A seller should not have to go hunt and peck and post on a forum when they have been arbitrarily enrolled in a program to find out how to opt out.

Cleary communicate to the sellers what listings will migrate in the welcome email. This needs to include verbiage and direction on listings that do not have Business Shipping Policies set up. A link to information on the process for excluding countries also needs to be provided and not be buried behind 4 clicks to find the information.

eBay needs to abide by the sellers current shipping on the listing when the shipping is set to US only and not migrate these listings, or make Business Policies mandatory so that the seller can correctly identify those listings that cannot be shipped internationally.

eBay needs to update the eBay International Shipping page to clearly outline all of the above.

eBay needs to provide clear guidance on prohibited items and when the list is updated, this needs to be communicated.

Lastly, what Seller protections for the Seller account are going to be in play because of the lack of communication around what listings will migrate and when? If a VERO is filed or there are issues because a seller is cancelling transactions with problem with addresses initially because they were not notified that certain listings were being migrated, is eBay going to protect the seller and remove account dings due to eBays migration of ineligible listings to a mandatory program?

I am going to end this with I sell internationally and am not against the program, I am however, really, really concerned at the risks involved for sellers on how this is being implemented.

Hi @blingfling123. Thanks for taking time to generate this. I'll get this over the the proper team, and will touch base if I hear back.

moldy5

·3 years ago

7563 View listings

holy moly, he took the time to do all that research & work to post this issue. And you put up "we'll pass it on" Really? And THIS was chosen as the solution??

today I noticed that every single relist or new listing I put up no longer has the GSP spot with the blue half moon on that I usually slide off. Because I don't want to ship everything internationally. No place to opt out? my gawd this sucks.