EBAY international shipping - a disaster!

[geertjan-paypal]

When selling to someone in Europe, EBAY says to use the "international shipping center".
Seller sends to EBAY in Illinois, EBAY does customs, taxes, and uses a shipper to send to the buyer.

My most recent purchase - the parcel is correctly addressed to my in the Netherlands, with the correct ZIP code and all. However, DHL made a mess and tried to deliver from Kongen which is 340 miles away from my delivery address.

A buyer cannot contact "ebay international shipping".
The parcel service used, does not have a customer service contact.

Parcel is now on it's way back to EBAY. No fault of the seller, no fault of the buyer, a fault of the shipper chosen by EBAY. And the seller cannot contact EBAY international shipping center.

Net result: if you want to damage your seller reputation, use "ebay international shipping".

I am looking for better ways to handle this. Suggestions?

[slippinjimmy]

You follow the same procedure that you would for any Item Not Received situation.

https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/returns-items-not-received-refunds-buyers/get-help-item-hasnt-arriv...

[dbfolks166mt]

     As the buyer once the expected delivery date has passed you should simply open a INR eBay case or a INR through your cc company. EIS should handle the claim and fully refund your purchase.

     I don't shop that much on eBay and being a US based seller I am not sure if there are any filters to remove EIS handled items from search results. However, there is no guarantee that a seller who ships to your directly using some form of international shipping will not also make a mistake.

[geertjan-paypal]

Unfortunately, I don't want to do that, out of respect for the seller.

A US-based seller sells something and offers via "ebay international shipping".
A international buyer (me) buys it.

You ship it to "Ebay international shipping center". You choose your shipper carefully and the item successfully arrives at Ebay in Illinois.

Ebay Illinois does customs, etc, then sends on the item to me (international). And the Ebay-selected shipper for this 2nd leg creates a mess: item not delivered, etc.

Do you, as a seller, really want me to open a case with Ebay, reflecting bad on you, the US-based seller, for a shipper you did not even select and, like me, the buyer, has no influence on?

I have too much respect for you as seller to open a case against you for something that Ebay, not you, have done.

And I hope you appreciate me not wanting to damage your seller score over an incident you didn't start and which you have no influence on.

Since "ebay international shipper" behaves like a seller, one should be able to contact them, and rate them (for the 2nd transport leg) independent of scoring you. It is unfair to bad-score an Ebay incident against you as seller.

[geertjan-paypal]

Thank you for your response.
It is true that you, as seller, can also ship directly (actually, I don't know if Ebay even allows that these days), but if you do that, and you make a mistake, then that may reflect on your score. This is only true if you ship directly.

The situation is different here.

There are two legs: you (seller) ships to Ebay in Illinois and that is your responsibility.  Let's assume you do this right.

In Illinois, Ebay, not you, selects a shipper for the 2nd leg. You have no influence over the process of the 2nd leg. And it goes faul, do you appreciate the buyer opening a case for a problem on the 2nd leg, something you did not do, something you cannot influence?

I have too much respect for you as seller to bad-score you for something Ebay did and something you did not do.

I would like to be able to score "Ebay international shipping". And it won't be the same happy score you, as seller would get: Ebay international shipping is not reachable, does not respond to complaints, so you can guess the score they'd get.

[dhbookds · Accepted solution]

Since ebay handles the shipment from Illinois........it is no longer the responsibility of the seller......so filing a case will not harm him at all.  Likewise, if the item is lost/not delivered, ebay, not the seller, will refund you, the seller will retain your payment. 

Filing a case lets Ebay know the shipment wasn't made.....and if they get enough complaints, they will undoubtedly reassess using that carrier......   That said, no matter what carrier is used.....none are perfect and there will be problems....but the ebay guarantee protects buyers (and in international shipments, protects sellers also). 

[dbfolks166mt]

Thank you for your response.
It is true that you, as seller, can also ship directly (actually, I don't know if Ebay even allows that these days), but if you do that, and you make a mistake, then that may reflect on your score. This is only true if you ship directly.

     You can certainly choose to ship directly to international buyers. There are lots of sellers that do not use the EIS program for various reasons. You just OPT out of the EIS program in your seller settings. 

https://www.ebay.com/ship/prf 

The situation is different here.

There are two legs: you (seller) ships to Ebay in Illinois and that is your responsibility.  Let's assume you do this right.

In Illinois, Ebay, not you, selects a shipper for the 2nd leg. You have no influence over the process of the 2nd leg. And it goes faul, do you appreciate the buyer opening a case for a problem on the 2nd leg, something you did not do, something you cannot influence?

     If the buyer opens a case for an item that you shipped through EIS and your item arrived at the hub safely then if a buyer opens a case for something that happened after it left the hub then the case should revert to the EIS center to handle. I would have no problem with a buyer opening a case for an item that EIS has responsibility for the seller protections are one of the nice things about EIS.

     What I have more of a problem with is the carriers that sometimes fail to handle items as if it was their own and damage items during transit but as you stated that is something I cannot influence.  

     
I have too much respect for you as seller to bad-score you for something Ebay did and something you did not do.

     In reality unless EIS mislabeled the package for the international leg this is not eBay's or EIS's fault either it is the carrier. I just had a package that was sent air mail from the UK and took over 3 months to arrive. No fault of the seller but the fault of the carrier.      

I would like to be able to score "Ebay international shipping". And it won't be the same happy score you, as seller would get: Ebay international shipping is not reachable, does not respond to complaints, so you can guess the score they'd get.

     There are several things I would like to score the EIS program on but carrier issues are not one of them. 

[umccars]

If the seller shipped through the EIS, they're covered. File the claim. It won't hurt the seller. 

[quicksilverdiecast]

I ship EiS everyday and have very few issues with it, about 25% of sales go through EiS, here is the info you need, once a sellers parcel arrives at he ebay EiS shipping hub in ILLINOIS, your responsibility for it being delivered correct by EiS is done. From there it becomes Ebays baby...advise the buyer to open a case of DNR through ebay, then contact ebay after the case is opened and have then close it out through EiS in your favor and ebay will refund the buyer and not from your account.   Best advise is once you educate yourself on how tos of EiS shipping and is good for developing a base of INT'L buyers....P/S the biggest issue is with ebays shopping cart where if the buyer choses a number of different items ebay forces the buyer to pay shipping on each item and will not let you or them even request a combined total unless the message you..THIS ONLY SERVES TO DRIVE BUYERS AWAY FROM YOU AND THE EBAY PLATFORM....AS THE SHIPPING, WHICH IS ALREADY EXPENSIVE, BECOMES OUTRAGEOUS AND THE BUYER RUNS AWAY, MOST LIKELY BLAMING YOU! When it is Ebays fault!

[quicksilverdiecast]

I used to sell direct and almost got ripped numerous times...and here is why...if you ship direct thru any service other than EiS, they will deliver the parcel regardless of paying any kind of import tax that a buyer is supposed to pay, voluntary at that point...very risky because if they do not pay it the carrier will charge YOU back for that amount of import taxes, Many other countries are not as up to speed tech wise and on those orders that require a signature to validate shipping delivery, many of those countries do not have any kind of electronic signature, even if it was delivered correctly and the "Buyer" files a claim(playing the system) and since there is no signature they win and you lose both item and money(I almost lost 400.00 this way) and had to be "creative" to win my case, this was a huge problem with South America and even lead to the original GSP as sellers stopped selling internationally. For those who chose to ship this way, direct, there are many pitfalls you can get caught up in, where the EiS system eliminates 99% of the problems...

[dbfolks166mt]

I ship EiS everyday and have very few issues with it, about 25% of sales go through EiS, here is the info you need, once a sellers parcel arrives at he ebay EiS shipping hub in ILLINOIS, your responsibility for it being delivered correct by EiS is done. From there it becomes Ebays baby...advise the buyer to open a case of DNR through ebay, then contact ebay after the case is opened and have then close it out through EiS in your favor and ebay will refund the buyer and not from your account.   Best advise is once you educate yourself on how tos of EiS shipping and is good for developing a base of INT'L buyers....P/S the biggest issue is with ebays shopping cart where if the buyer choses a number of different items ebay forces the buyer to pay shipping on each item and will not let you or them even request a combined total unless the message you..THIS ONLY SERVES TO DRIVE BUYERS AWAY FROM YOU AND THE EBAY PLATFORM....AS THE SHIPPING, WHICH IS ALREADY EXPENSIVE, BECOMES OUTRAGEOUS AND THE BUYER RUNS AWAY, MOST LIKELY BLAMING YOU! When it is Ebays fault!

     When the buyer opens a case for an item that went through EIS the case automatically gets routed to EIS. The few cases that I have had on items that went through EIS the only thing I received was informatory message from eBay there was nothing I had to do or even could do. EIS handled the whole thing. 

     Agree with regards to the combined shipping and eBay was supposed to be fixing that. The current workaround is to work with the buyer to do a custom listing putting all the items into one listing. I have only done this once but everything went fine. 

[mr_lincoln]

@geertjan-paypal 

-Prior to EIS I only offered certain items for Internatinal shipping.  They were listed with USPS First Class International Package.  For me it was the low-cost solution to ship internationally.  

-Right around the time eBay was rolling out EIS I had a Buyer in Canada ask I if I would ship something to their country.  I had Opted OUT of EIS on my account.  I added USPS First Class International Package to the listing and the Buyer bought it.  When I went to purchase the label for that service the label flow forced the EIS label, the item shipped to IL, I lost track of it, could not see how it was moving, etc.  I had NO clue what happened to the package, never heard from the Buyer.

-EIS is a profit center for eBay, they are paying employees to unpack and repack items moving through their hub.  They are charging Buyers shipping costs that include a % to cover wages, packing materials, etc.  I suspect they are then shipping via the lowest cost way to increase their profit margin on a package's shipping cost.  While I have never seen what a Buyer pays I have some folks in the UK tell me the prices are high.

-I no longer offer anything internationally, some Buyers use freight forwarding companies so I have sold items outside the US that way BUT, if eBay-Adyen had the feature PayPal did to block foreign funding sources I would have that turned ON.  

[geertjan-paypal]

Thank you for your insights that a mishap on the 2nd leg of the transaction (from EIS to me) won't hurt the seller. I didn't know and, as I explained before, I was cautious with the score of the seller, especially since the incident happened through no fault of his, and I did not want to damage his score.

In my case, BTW, there was a happy ending. After 3 days of "on van", "delivery failed" tracking messages, followed by "return to sender" status tracking, someone finally woke up.

On Friday I received notification of a "missed delivery" in my mailbox from a shipment whose tracking I did not recognize. When picking up, I received a parcel with an address sticker that only showed the name of the shipping company located at an address in Germany.
Seems that someone picked up on what happened, put a new shipping label on (carefully covering the EIS shipping label, which I can still see under the new label), and put the parcel back in the system.

And since lightning doesn't strike twice, the parcel then traveled from Germany to me in the Netherlands and I received the contents in good order. The seller had used proper packaging which was a good idea because the box clearly showed it had been through a lot.

I now know that the next time I use EIS, once tracking shows the parcel arrived at EIS, I can use the Ebay complaint system if the shipper fouls up again. The latter is not entirely unlikely, the contact phone numbers I had (and numbers found on the Internet) now go to an auto-answer telling that this particular carrier no longer has a customer service (only an chat robot which doesn't understand issues like this).
That second shipper is Ebay's choice and, if it fails, Ebay's damage and I will no longer lose sleep over it; I do now know I should not select this carrier for my own shipments unless someone else (EIS) picks up the tab in case of a mishap.

Learn something new every day.  Thanks everyone!

[dbfolks166mt]

I used to sell direct and almost got ripped numerous times...and here is why...if you ship direct thru any service other than EiS, they will deliver the parcel regardless of paying any kind of import tax that a buyer is supposed to pay, voluntary at that point...very risky because if they do not pay it the carrier will charge YOU back for that amount of import taxes, Many other countries are not as up to speed tech wise and on those orders that require a signature to validate shipping delivery, many of those countries do not have any kind of electronic signature, even if it was delivered correctly and the "Buyer" files a claim(playing the system) and since there is no signature they win and you lose both item and money(I almost lost 400.00 this way) and had to be "creative" to win my case, this was a huge problem with South America and even lead to the original GSP as sellers stopped selling internationally. For those who chose to ship this way, direct, there are many pitfalls you can get caught up in, where the EiS system eliminates 99% of the problems...

     Quite agree with you. There is no way I would ship international direct. Even when I used the GSP the countries I would ship to were very limited. Under EIS with the seller protection they offer I ship virtually worldwide. 

[lambd_18]

I wish I had read this before - this service is such a ridiculously bad fake piece of a crap service. UNBELIEVABLE. My reputation as a seller has been already damaged by using it twice. NEVER again.