Automatic Shipping Restriction on Listing on Updated for Covid Causing Buyer Unable to Purchase

[beautyrec]

Hi,

I just want to bring this up to see if anyone encountered the same problem. I have a buyer from French Polynesia reached out and said she wasn't able to purchase from me, even though I didn't set shipping restriction for her area.

I contacted Ebay, and the customer serivce rep shows me this list that was set for shipping restriction on my list

Brazil, Angola, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, French Polynesia, Libya, Mongolia, Suriname, Guyana, Panama, Mauritius, Brunei Darussalam, Chad, Madagascar, New Caledonia, Bahamas, Bermuda, Iran, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Western Sahara, Bolivia, Laos, Congo, Republic of the, Seychelles, Sudan, Guadeloupe, Venezuela, Somalia, Burma, Cuba, Republic of, Reunion, Yemen, Barbados, Belize, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Martinique, Dominica, Niger, French Guiana, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saudi Arabia

Of that I only set restriction to not ship to Brazil. The rest of that when I talked to the 2nd rep is due to Covid and Ebay automatically put it there. However, when I checked USPS website, French Polynesia postal office has resumed since July 2020 after the brief disruption (I used the first class package of USPS for my international shipment) . My item was a new with tag clothing item.

I did go check some other people's listing and saw the same restriction list as the one above that was given to me. So I highly suspect that was a problem with the restriction list on Ebay didn't update somehow.

The only way I was aware of this issue was because my customer reached out. Otherwise, I would not aware that there were all those extra restrictions automatically put on my listing. So I thought I bring this up to see if any other fellow sellers might have this issue as well.  According to my buyer, looks like it's only an issue with US Ebay. She was able to purchase from Europe just fine. 

The second rep I talked to said he would escalate this issue to the technical team. So hopefully it will get resolved. Meanwhile I just want to bring it up to people in case someone runs into the same situation like me.

Tammy

[futuremarine2011]

i ship out of country using ebay global shipping. i send the item to erlanger ky.  pitney -bowes  runs with it .not my headache anymore. end of story

[slippinjimmy]

@beautyrec 

I'm surprised you hadn't run in to this before, the list of countries that eBay blocked due to Covid was much larger originally and it contained a number of countries seller DO commonly ship to (not a lot of Sales to French Polynesia).

eBay started adding these countries back in March and have added and removed some over the following months.

eBay added similar blocks to at least a few other country sites, Canada for sure although the list there was somewhat different than the US list.

At no time was anyone able to figure out who made the blocked list and who didn't, some countries were on the USPS list others were not on any list put out by the popular shippers (USPS, FedEx, UPS etc.)

In any event this is NOT a technical issue, it is by design but seems to have been made by a small but influential group within eBay because the regular customer service people were never told about it.

[beautyrec]

Thanks for your response! I actually ran into a different problem due to Covid earlier where Ebay didn't block me from selling to a country that on USPS list, and I wasn't able to go through with the shipping label (which somewhat lucky because had I did, I'll get to deal with waiting for the package to come back from USPS distribution center.

I actually wouldn't even know there was a block had my customer didn't reach out and asked if I could remove the restriction to sell to her. When logging in my account, I only see my listing with the restriction that I set, not the E-bay list. Awee to know that it has been a problem that not worked on. I did notice that my international sales tanked significantly, but I was thinking it's because of the overall Covid effect. Didn't realize this might be a factor ,too, when buyer couldn't get through the shipping restriction to place their order 😞

Again, appreciate your time to respond!

[beautyrec]

This actually can't be solved with the global shipping. If Ebay put the shipping restriction on any listing, the buyer won't be able to place the order regardless of the shipping method they used. I tried to set it to global shipping option and my buyer still couldn't get through it.

[kar8-9731]

hello
the problem is still relevant
it is still impossible to buy from American sellers
Still no solution ?
thank you

[kh-leslie]

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.