How do I answer this buyer's question about shipping to their country?
I have a potential auction bidder asking me if the item will ship to Taiwan. I was switched to Ebay International Shipping a while back and most of my listings I've checked had a very LONG list of countries eligible, yippie! But when I look at this one, it's a pretty short list, in fact I think shorter than what it would have been under the Global Shipping Program. Taiwan is NOT included, but nor is it in the 'excluded' list, and neither are untold dozens of other countries which are not in either list. So what does it mean for people in those countries, like this buyer?
Also why would this item have such a short 'Ships to' list, when it's the most innocent thing ever, just a bunch of old jewelry, nothing flammable, no ivory, etc.????
(@wastingtime101 I decided not to put this in the EIS reference thread because I need help fast to answer this buyer's question, so I'm casting my net wider.)
marnotom!
·3 years agoOkay, @gurlcat, I just checked both listings on my phone and there’s a difference between the two that may affect the country list. I’m in Canada, so I’m thinking you may not be able to see this as a US user.
The Buy it Now listing states that import charges may be charged after the fact, but the auction has a line for “duties†and states that they’ll be confirmed and charged at checkout. I don’t know what triggers the charging of “duties†at checkout, but it may be that this can only be done for some of the countries that EIS serves.
marnotom!
·3 years agoJust a wild guess, but it might be a combination of it “being a category thing†and the fact that one of the listings is an auction, which means the EIS bot doesn’t “know†the selling price of the item, which could go higher than the maximum allowed value for some countries.
gurlcat
OP3 years agoI considered that, but the $2500 limit applies regardless of the buyer's country, so why would it show that this item definitely ships to that short list of countries, without knowing what the winning bid will be? I also just checked some other-category auctions I have running, and they have the long list, so it must be something in the title, but I can't guess what.
gurlcat
OP3 years agoI did an experiment that actually appears to possibly support your 'combination' theory. I went to the jewelry lot with the long list of countries, and began creating a brand new listing identical to it. -To be clear, I didn't use 'Sell similar' because of potential confounding factors I've been studying in that feature, too much and too unrelated to explain here, but anyway suffice it to say I didn't want the slightest chance of that contaminating results with this experiment. I started fully from scratch as a 'List an item', then copy-pasted every word of the title and description, uploaded the same photos, and completed the same item specifics identically to the 'long countries list' jewelry lot, and also made it BIN, but with a much higher price of $300, just to avoid the unlikely but possible occurrence of the actual listing and this dummy one both selling while performing the experiment.
Okay, so I posted the dummy one, and sure enough, long country list. So at least the bots are being consistent in that regard. So then the goal was to revise the listing, only ONE factor at a time, to see if what (if anything) would make it have the short countries list. Since it and the one the buyer wrote about were SLIGHTLY different in item specifics, I started there, and I strongly suspected that "base metal" would be it, because I'm pretty sure I've heard of some metals being banned in some countries, and since my 'short-list' lot had "mixed metals" selected, that could be it right there. But NOPE, changing the 'base metal' of the dummy from 'no selection' to 'mixed metals' did NOT trigger the country list shrinkage, nor did the couple of other IS's I changed (which I did one at a time, checking the public shipping view each time). So what DID shrink it? -Yup, changing it to an auction.
So then I did another experiment, created a dummy listing for a single necklace and made it an auction, even played around with its' item specifics including metal, and it stayed 'long list' no matter what. But then I changed the category to Jewelry > Vintage and Antique > Collections and Lots .....and BLAMO, short list.
So what I have to do then is either swallow having an extremely shrunken buyer base for these lots that I RELY ON as my biggest selling item, or falsify their category, potentially making them harder to find. And I know what you're probably thinking -why not just make them BIN? What I would say to that is, I do know that BIN is wiser in almost all circumstances anyway, but vintage mixed jewelry lots (I mean good ones, not the junky "craft" ones like that one I have listed as BIN) is the kind of thing that is absolutely suited to auctioning, absolutely guaranteed to sell in 7 days or less, and for much more money than likely to fetch as a BIN. There are reasons why but a magician doesn't reveal their secrets. 😉 You just have to take my word for it, lol.
gurlcat
OP3 years agoOkay so apparently it's not even a category thing. Here's another listings I have in the 'Jewelry>Vintage & Antique>Collections and lots' category, and look -it has the huge list of 'Ships to' countries, including Taiwan! So WHY doesn't the other one???
