ebay World Shipping Program stinks
I live in the US and buy from Britain. It used to be that the seller would ship directly. Now ebay has imposed a scheme. The seller ships to an ebay depot, and ebay ships to the buyer. It is stupid. I pay to ship twice. I just got a small package from Britain. It costs me 70 pounds, about $85. DHL would have shipped for 40 pounds. I resent the extra costs. The sellers seem unable to break the deal with ebay to use the scheme. Nonsense!
11 comments
kalyoth
·3 years agoFirst - you know those costs up front before committing & can just walk away before committing. You can ask the seller to offer you other shipping options - however, it is at their sole discretion as to if they want to offer those services.I have transacted business recently (2 months) in the UK with the seller being able to list other carriers & cost options. So - it's not a fixed requirement for ebay global only.
However, If you wish to assign blame only to the costs, it is ultimately the person making the purchase that is responsible for making that commitment. No one anyone else's.
marnotom!
·3 years agoIt sounds as though you found a seller who's using the UK version of the Global Shipping Program:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/global-shipping-program/default/global-shipping-program?id=4646
It's been available to UK sellers for about a decade now, so if this is the first time you've encountered it in your purchases from Britain, you've been extremely fortunate. Canadians such as myself have been finding that your fellow Americans tend to favour forwarding services such as this and the newer "eBay International Shipping" service because it minimizes the risk--perceived or real--involved in international shipping.
Yes, @martin2001, buyers do pay twice through this scheme. That's how a forwarding service works. The buyer pays the seller's charge for getting the item to the UK forwarding hub as well as the price the Program charges for getting the item from the hub to the buyer. It's just combined into one shipping charge on the listing page, is all.
@kmharrop, if a UK seller is unwilling or unable to create a new listing with more suitable shipping for you, consider using your own forwarding scheme. Maybe you know somebody in the UK who will take delivery of the item and will forward it for you?
kmharrop
OP3 years agoYour suggestion has me paying twice, again.
marnotom!
·3 years agoBut maybe not as much, depending on what sort of arrangement you’re able to make.
glenvonnie
·3 years agoMany sellers, like me, used to ship worldwide, but then international buyers found that they could use the lack of Postal tracking in foreign countries and the slow delivery, to claim items were not received in order to get refunds and get those items for free.
They also used false Item not as described claims to get refunds because they assumed that sellers would choose to give refunds rather than pay for expensive return shipping costs.
So we stopped selling internationally, even to Canada because we were losing serious money, until the Ebay Global shipping program came along.
I don't know how they get the items they reship for us tracked and delivery scanned, but I suspect it's expensive and the price foreign buyers have to pay for the scammers in their midst.
The problem is not sellers refusing to ship internationally, the problem is the Postal services being unable to show delivery of items and the number of scammers who aren't being reined in by those foreign governments.
kmharrop
OP3 years agoA reasonable answer. I still pay a serious premium of preferring Brit toys.
martin2001
·3 years agoI don' t quite understand your post. I also buy things from EU. Regardless of the carrier, the shipping cost is set at the time of the purchase. You don't pay twice to ship. The postage to the ebay's UK local ' depot' is included in the total postage. Perhaps you think that you pay twice as much as you would pay if the seller used a different carrier.
In this particular case, what exactly is a small package? $85 for a small package?
BTW, the seller is not telling the truth. The seller does not have to use ebay to ship. He can use royal mail or any other carrier. He can opt out of ebay international shipping program. If he really wanted, he could have cancel the purchase and relist the item using a different shipper with lower shipping cost. Of course, it depends on how " small" was the small package.
anasazirose
·3 years agoThe seller may indeed be telling the truth. I would not know how to change the shipping from going through ebay, unless I used Pirate ship to purchase the label. But then would the ship to address be the ebay depot or the buyer's home address? THEN, if I manage to do that, and get an INAD, I lose ebay protection of handling all returns without losing the sale.....I think.
pickermall
·3 years agoI don't know how it works in the UK, but here in the US, if a buyer asked me to ship something maybe USPS First Class Intl instead of GSP, I would modify the listing BEFORE they buy. Pretty easy to do that.
buyselljack2016
·3 years agoAs far as I know, that would be a "seller choice" to be in that program, or to "opt out", but to "break the scheme" that likely needs be done before the item is purchased.
kmharrop
OP3 years agoI think it is set in stone when the item is listed. I've asked sellers to change it, and they all say they can't find a way to do it. The whole thing stinks.