It took me a LONG time to figure out what was going on. I couldn't print a label for a 3 ounce package to Australia when I usually ship at least one small package to some international destination every day. I tried changing the item value, the item wieght, toggled gift/merchandise, you name it, I tried everything short of editing the address. So, I googled the error code and found the top results was ebay community chats, but no real answers. The prob is the new rule prohibits goods in flats, but I had selected international PACKAGE, same as always. It was confusing, because we have not been able to ship in flat rate envelopes in years and years! From what I read, ebay is giving wrong answers this morning. I was worried that I would have to go to the post office (and worried that for some reason that I couldn't even ship first class international package from there either!) and that is a 16 mile round trip.
I tried through click and ship, and it worked, but the label wouldn't print on the regular 2-per-page adhesive labels. I ruined 5 labels , even taped a piece of paper in the start of it to make it longer but could never get it right, before finally wising up and taking the labels off the wax paper, and arranging one in the proper orientation!
So, this cost me 2 hours, 5 extra labels, and $2.15 extra because there was no ebay volume discount!
What is amazing is that ebay didn't even know there was a problem, much less being able to help fix it!
Now, if we had made a mistake, we would be held accountable, punished, penalized, reduced visibility in search results, etc. But let ebay make a mistake like this and it's perfectly fine. So, for people trying to figure out what is going on, just go to the USPS website and ship thru there. Take your adhesive labels off the paper and put one label in the opposite direction so that it will print on the label.
I don't know if I will bother calling ebay and asking for the $2.15 I lost. I really should ask for the 2 hours labor trying to figure out how to make their broken system work before realizing it was inoperable. And not to mention the stress and frustration that this has caused me.
If anyone has the time to call them, they should mention the expense this is costing, the time, etc. Ebay knew about the rate increases and regulations changes a long time ago. They seem to wait until something breaks before working on the problem and the seller has to suffer. I hate to imagine what the sellers that have 20 or 50 or 100 or even 500 packages to ship international today is going to do. That extra $2 adds up! As someone else mentioned, we have to meet our promised ship time, and the customer might not be understanding about how ebay's sustem was inoperable. Some sellers will be getting reduced stars and negative feedback out of this screw up!
