Buyers given Fedex Ground Rates instead of Fedex Home Rates Starting Jan 2018, ouch!

[babclassics]

Has anybody noticed that starting in Jan 2018 the shipping calclulator AND eBay check-out process is giving a 48% to 51% discount on large heavy Fedex shipments if your settings pass full discounts on to the buyers? The max discount for Fedex is supposed to be 37% for home delivery.  Since home delivery is the lions share of shipments (at least for me).  It seems the 37% rate should be passed on the sellers, NOT the 51% rates unless they have a verified business address.  Once this happens there is no way to recoupe this revenue and you just have to eat the loss on shipping.  I am guessing this is a new "bug" in the system.  The help desk simply told me to contact Fedex to get an adjustment,  ha ha ha.  Please let's hear if others are having this problem?  It took me a while to figure out what was causing the buyers to be undercharged, but the math works out that they are being undercharged by about 12 to 14% on Fedex Home shippping for large cartons.  This adds up fast for sellers when a single Fedex label can cost over $50!

[rfmtm]

Ebay FedEx has never worked correctly and the issues constantly shift from one problem to another.

FedEx can not fix problems that ebay creates, plus with ebay the seller of record, you can't even deal with FedEx directly for actual FedEx issues.

Best to just link your own FedEx account to ebay to get the nice ebay discounts, but always quote and ship from the FedEx site.

[berserkerplanet]

Something does appear to be wrong, but you really need to stop focusing on those percentages. They are a moving target and of no use in discussing or diagnosing FedEx shipping issues since they are amounts calculated by and known only by eBay and vary widely depending on service, shipment weight, and shipment cost. The percentage numbers eBay shows you are calculated AFTER the fact to show the effective discount off counter rates after eBay adjusted list rate table lookup is done.

FedEx Home Delivery Rates are simply FedEx Ground rates plus a straight $3.60 Residential Delivery Charge.

It does not appear that it is a simple omission of the residential surcharge based on my numbers below, so your title incorrectly describes the issue.

24# 18x16x13 box:
To zone 1: Calculator shows $14.35 while actual label flow shows $15.44 ($1.09 difference)
To zone 5, Calculator shows $19.14 while actual label flow shows $20.77 ($1.63 difference)
To zone 8, Calculator shows $29.52 while actual label flow shows $32.76 ($3.24 difference)

Can't see any pattern. (not direct incorrect use of 2017 rates, or wrong dim weight, or omission of Res SC, etc)

Correct 139 dim weight divisor appears to be being used everywhere (verified for label flow base rates and calculator counter rate, but impossible to tell for calculator discounted rate because variable unknown discount - will assume it's correct there too though)

The fuel surcharge numbers on the label flow amounts also make no sense (as per usual). It should be 5.5% of base rate+ Res SC but isn't even close and seems to vary. (Fuel SC goes up to 5.75% tomorrow)

Something is broken. @Anonymous @dcintennessee

[dcintennessee]

🤣🤣 for tagging me @berserkerplanet! Other than a penchant for playing detective, I may be useless on this. But, thank you, and I'll try to assist. I agree to ignore the discount percentage, because it's like a box of chocolates...you absolutely never know what you'll get.

I have a theory about where/how the $3.60 residential surcharge appeared in 2017, and how/where it's different now. There's one 2017 transaction I didn't question at the time, frankly because it was in my favor. I'll look back at that transaction. 

The one thing I think we've seen PROVEN is that when programming shipping rates, the various areas requiring changes are NOT handled by the same person/team at ebay. If @Anonymous starts with that premise, perhaps a long-lasting solution can be reached. We've consistently seen rates programmed differently in one or more of these places:

1. The ebay shipping calculator 

2. The shopping cart where the buyer pays shipping 

3. The shopping cart where the seller purchases labels 

4. Whatever mechanism displays shipping rates in search, where (sometimes) rates mysteriously are inflated and don't match the (accurate) rates displayed after clicking on the listing. And...for highly competitive listings, sellers whose rates appear inflated in search won't even get the benefit of that click-through. 

Rate calculations MUST match in at least 4 district areas, and often they don't. ONE supervisor or ONE QC team should confirm that the same (accurate) rates are programmed in each place. That simply is not happening. 

[berserkerplanet]

You are correct on all those points. And there do appear to be too many cooks in the kitchen.

I'm stumped on this one at this point. The numbers above are from a current listing of mine (I looked after babclassics raised the alarm), and the numbers make no sense.

I generally start with an assumption that eBay doesn't just make up shipping cost numbers with a random number generator, and that the numbers are instead a systemic error from use of a wrong divisor, ignoring retail/not retail flag, using last years rate tables, etc. I should be able to stare at the numbers, work backwards, use the rate tables, and see a pattern to the failure, but so far nothing I've tried fits the amounts.

There is either something new broken or there is a missing piece of the puzzle like a new negotiated dim weight divisor (although I don't think that would fix my particular numbers here since actual is so close to dim), or some other non-standard treatment of FedEx rates that we haven't been informed of yet that changes the calculation (and that might mean that the estimated amounts are correct but that the actual label calculator is broken/not updated, or vice versa.)

Insufficient data. I await Trinton's input.

[rfmtm]

One thing is for sure, these issues are all ebay based as have been numerous previous problems.  In the past I have talked at length with the FedEx technical department, who confirm these types of problems are not coming from FedEx, but are due to ebay's in house calculations.

[dcintennessee]

@rfmtm, I've seen others recommend purchasing labels directly through FedEx, primarily because it's a cluster mess if a package vanishes. My FedEx account is linked to my ebay account, but whenever I look at buying labels directly from FedEx, it's a significantly smaller discount than I get when buying through eBay.

I don't want to hijack this thread with a debate over extending the shipping discount to buyers, since that's another matter altogether... However, if you DO pass through the discount, and use calculated shipping, there's a step I've missed somewhere. With those two criteria, I don't know how to make this work properly. 

[rfmtm]

@dcintennessee  All is related, due to the same ebay miscalculations.  If you received confirmation that your FedEx account is linked to ebay, you still have to wait till the monthly rate table update.  Then when things are working properly the rate you see on ebay should be within pennies of what you see on the FedEx website.  The only exception would be for FedEx Smartpost, as those are separate tables that apparently don't link.

Unfortunately, the numbers are only the same when things are working correctly, which rarely is the case.  Otherwise you will see larger differences, sometimes very large.  However, what you see on FedEx is generally what you will ultimately be billed, regardless of what is shown on ebay.  Then the problem is, it is usually higher than what ebay showed and/or billed your buyer.  No big deal if less than a dollar, but sometimes it can be tens of dollars, and this has nothing to do with surcharges.

From what I can gather, all these problems are because ebay downloads its rate tables and does its own local calculations, instead of actually accessing the FedEx quote system.  This is ok, but not if the formulas are wrong or used differently through out the ebay shipping system.  Worse is when the rate tables are not kept up to date and in sync with FedEx, which often happens.

[berserkerplanet]

I have never seen a rate table overcharge error brought up here as you are describing. Every error is either shipper error, or egregious FedEx mis-weighing or mis-measuring of a package which is documented on the tracking and conflicts with the original shipping data at label creation time.

Have not seen a single one where the base rates billed by FedEx didn't correspond to the measured data and calculate out correctly (within pennies) based on the data.

Unless! you are saying that those inflated Bill weights FedEx sometimes provides are their roundabout way of backbilling* for incorrect rate table use somehow? FedEx thinks discount should have been 20% while eBay calculated and created label with a 30% discount, so FedEx reverse calculates and presents an inflated Billable weight and/or dimensions to get that 10% back?

Sadly, I wouldn't doubt it, but have seen no evidence of it (although evidence is hard to come by when one doesn't have the "real" discounted rate tables to reference and use to crosscheck).

*because in general, "the rate is the rate", and FedEx and eBay deal only in weight and dimension variables for billing, so to adjust for a rate mis-alignment they have to fudge one of the variables (weight or dimensions) to add an upcharge without breaking the software - there is no eBay invoice line entry for "the rate wasn't the rate so we're adding X dollars more"

All speculation, and pretty tinfoil, but a total mess if there is any truth in there.

[rfmtm]

No, the ebay miscalculations have nothing to do with FedEx mis-scanning weight and/or size, which is strictly a FedEx issue.

The ebay calculated errors are of their own doing within their own software, or as mentioned they often lag in downloading and syncing their rate tables properly.  Other problems in the pass also included not setting the residential flag correctly.

These problems often go away for awhile, then crop up again.  Sometimes as small errors and sometimes as major errors for the seller.  Over the years, they seem to be the worse when FedEx changes their rate tables and/or discount tiers.  Other times it is strictly when ebay has made changes to their shipping center.

FedEx has been quite clear on this, that the problem is at ebay and they have no way to correct them at their end.  Ebay has been aware of these issues for quite some time.  It sometimes gets fixed and then something else gets broken.  One other thing that seems to also be clear, it is always the ebay seller that gets stuck with the higher bill.

If you look back over the boards, you will see numerous ebay FedEx problems including some pretty extreme ones.  In the past I often compared ebay quotes with my commercial real time FedEx quoting system with multiple rate table access, including ebay's.  Sometimes a close match other times something off.  Even have had a FedEx tech actually in the computer center monitor my incoming quotes and manually compare them to what ebay showed, and it was obvious something at ebay was off.

Don't really know what's happening now, as once my personal FedEx rep retired, it was just to much hassle to put up with all the problems.

[berserkerplanet]

(To be clear I am talking about actual label charges here with any associated FedEx after the fact upcharges, not listing or checkout eBay calculator issues)

I have to re-iterate that I haven't seen an examples of what you describe that I can recall.

For those that post here to report problems (which obviously isn't all and maybe only the most egregious), it always comes down to either seller error with correct higher FedEx charges, or outrageous FedEx claims of increased weight or dimensions and incorrect higher charges that directly correlate to the numbers FedEx claims to have measured.

Not a single instance I can recall where FedEx charge was just some random amount higher with no spurious surcharge of weight/dim claims.

The eBay FedEx label charges at label creation time always reconcile to within pennies of the final FedEx charges for me, and I assume others based on lack of evidence to the contrary posted here (unless we are not ever hearing about it here.

I welcome input from anyone that can post numbers here regarding an unexplainable FedEx upcharge that is NOT due to shipper mistake (weight, dimensions, bad address, etc), to FedEx claiming magic growth in size or weight of pkg, or added FedEx surcharges for special conditions (redelivery attempts, additional handling for packaging and other things eBay labels can't handle, etc).

[rfmtm]

I agree, FedEx is not charging some random higher amount, except as you noted when the weight/size scan is off, or some additional surcharge is added.  That is a separate issue.

What I am saying is ebay at times shows an incorrect quote to the seller, and is what the buyer pays.  Then FedEx charges the correct amount, which isn't the same and usually higher, sticking the seller with the difference.

This doesn't happen all the time, but when the residential flag is wrong, the rate tables aren't in sync, or other ebay issues occur, it does.  Sometimes only for a small amount, others times for larger amounts.

Glad it is working for you, but sooner or later if you ship using ebay FedEx often enough, you will run into a problem that is due to ebay and not FedEx.  Both FedEx and ebay are aware of these problems, and ebay does generally refund for their mistake when called out on it.

Still the other issue with ebay FedEx, is with ebay as seller of record.  As ebay has no clear protocol when something goes wrong with your shipment, or FedEx overcharges, and FedEx can't help you.  While shipping direct with FedEx, you just call your rep to address problems, which often can easily be taken care of.  

[dcintennessee]

@berserkerplanet, I checked my records regarding the transaction I mentioned yesterday. I've had only one FedEx package that went to a business. I remember it distinctly, because the buyer paid more than I paid (on a listing with no handling fee), and I paid less than the calculator said it would be. I took notes about the differences, but it was during a busy spurt, and I never tried to figure out why I was seeing 3 different rates.

Are you aware the ebay shipping calculator tool shows the same cost for FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Delivery? Until you mentioned the residential surcharge, I thought those two rates actually ARE the same. Nope.

Sure enough, I paid $3.62 less than my notes say was displayed by the rate calculator. At least on that particular day, the shipping calculator AND the buyer's shopping cart reflected a residential surcharge for FedEx Ground. The seller's shopping cart for purchasing the label was accurate.

Oh Good Lord!! They literally must be attempting to correct the shipping calculator right now. I was checking the FedEx rates for 2 Priority Mail shipments going out today, to see if the calculator tool and the label price would match. They did NOT.  Label #1: Shipping calculator said $11.63; that label would cost me $16.52. This package is going to a rural area, and shows a $4.40 residential delivery fee, which is darn close to the $4.89 discrepancy.

Label #2....who knows, because it appears they just started monkeying around with the calculator rate tables. When I looked at the shipping calculator tool for Label #2, it was displaying the higher cost as the discounted cost (like it was the first day of the FedEx rate change). I looked at Label #1 again, and now the calculator says $16.23, but if I tried to buy that label it still would be $16.52.

Nancy Drew is going back to work. I have a feeling that @babclassics was right. At least for awhile, the shipping calculator tool and the buyer's shopping cart did NOT reflect the residential surcharge, while the seller's cart for purchasing the label DID include the surcharge for residential delivery.

Any seller who shipped FedEx HD for the past few days needs to check their records.

[babclassics]

Wow, what a great amount of feedback on this post! Really appreciate all the detailed writeups. Will try to summarize my take away from what everyone has said:

1. Agree the post title could have been better. Probably should have said “The buyer-check-out FedEx pricing is different from the seller label-purchase-pricing even though eBay knows the exact address details and exact package weight and dims in both pricing interfaces” but that was just too long.
2. When my package is dimmed and weighed correctly, the charge I get on eBay when purchasing the label is almost always within $1.00 of the amount that eventually comes back on the next months invoice as the actual FedEx charge, so that has not changed for me. If that is happening for others I suspect the cause lies elsewhere and is a subject for a different post.
3. My latest label from Sunday happens to be Ground instead of Home and it did come out slightly in my favor. I agree the whole issue is probably not just home versus ground. The difference is not always $3.60 which appears to be the usual home charge. So there likely are other (or multiple) factors in the calculations that I don’t yet see.
4. Very strongly agree that the root of the problem is “too many cooks”. I detect there are at least 3 different interfaces for FedEx pricing. I think there should only be 1 or perhaps 2 at the most. Used to be in IT, all we did before I quit that job what make everything object oriented in the code (only one place (one common piece of code) that everybody uses for a specific calculation). Obviously in search results or when no exact zip code is known I would expect moderately different pricing (an estimate if you will)… but once the user is logged in and checking out there is no excuse for the buyer charge to not match the cost of the label assuming it is printed on the same day.. At least that seems logical to me 🙂
5. Here are a couple examples of issues for me ---- Jan 19 – wgt 30lb dims 19x18x17 to zip 19132 home buyer charged 24.90 I was charged 28.08 (which I think is correct) ---- Jan 09 wgt 42lb dims 36x18x18 to 87477 home buyer charged 47.74 I was charged 57.63 (ouch) ---- Jan 21 wgt 32lb dims 25x18x18 to zip 21046 business addr buyer charged 30.23 I was charge 29.14
6. The suggestion on linking eBay account to FedEx was helpful but I am seeing only about 20 percent discount using that route. The eBay discount can be much more like 35 to 50% so I would use that in most all cases unless I think eBay is overcharging me for the label which does not really happen much if at all.
7. Was puzzled by the response about buying label from FedEx and “quote and ship” from the Fedex site. Is there really a way to do that? I need the buyers to see the shipping cost based on their zip during the search for an item, especially if the sort by price plus shipping. So not sure how I could do what is suggested other that just not price the shipping and wait for the buyer to request an invoice? That would not be workable for me.

It does occur to me that at least one side problem has to do with final address. I have had buyers tell me that when they change the “deliver to” address during check-out they see problems. Sometimes they see the shipping jump way way up to a nearby address. I have been accused of bait and switch more than once when the delivery address is nearby to the “default delivery address” (like your mom across town) that gets used for pricing. I guess the buyers would understand the shipping changing if the change the delivery zip code to a far away place, but they have told me the pricing goes ballistic when they do this even for a nearby address. I suspect that the seller pass through discount gets dropped when the buyers changes shipping address choice during check-out. Probably a separate subject, but it could account for same cases

Thanks everyone!

[nawlinsron2]

I do a couple Fedex a month, and it's always a mild irritant that the buyer gets MY discount.
It's a buck or 2, but it's still principle.