eBay

allen1853 · ‎12-10-2022

I try to ship Worldwide, unless I encounter a problem shipping to a certain country or they are a pariah for some reason, like Russia and Belarus. The USA and eBay also apparently prohibit shipping to some countries like Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Myanmar. So when creating listings I have an exlusion list. I decided to check one of my listings and I see that eBay, some bot? some new policy? some glitch? has expanded my Excluded Country list to the following: Afghanistan, Barbados, Belarus, China, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Hungary, India, Libya, Martinique, New Caledonia, Reunion, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela. (But not Cuba or North Korea?) Some of those countries are on my list but I certainy have no problem shipping to French Colonies or the Caribbean. Before I try to bulk edit my listings and remove those little countries from my excluded list I wonder if there is something I am missing?

allen1853 · ‎12-10-2022

Part two, still me. I just tried to bulk edit and also tried revising a single listing. There is apparently no more exclusion option. You have to agree to ship "Ships worldwide" or you can select from a very limited and/or broad list of countries by "Destination". The options are:

Ships worldwide

or

Destination:

All countries in N. and S.America

Canada

Mexico

Brazil

All countries in Europe

United Kingdom

Germany

France

Russian Federation

All countries in Asia

China

Japan

Australia

(There are boxes in front of each to check but the edit bot here removed them for an invalid HTML violation.)

So you can only agree to ship to all of North and South America OR just three countries. All of Europe or just four countries in Europe including Russia. All of Asia or just three countries in Asia. No excluding rogue nations or human rights violators? No Africa? No Egypt, Morocco or South Africa? Only if you select "Worldwide"? Is this yet another example of eBay "fixing" (destroying) something that wasn't broken? I think I will just leave my listings as is. My apologies to the French Colonies and Barbados. I never excluded you, some eBay bot must have.

spark-chaser1 · ‎12-10-2022

Just taking a wild guess, but they must have some algorithm that relies on department of state recommendations or other watchdog organizations to restrict shipping to areas with mail delivery malfunctions?

To be clear, I don't really know. For sure, I can understand a few on the list, but Barbados? Give me your items and I will go there and deliver them, then sip pina coladas on the beach... 👍

dbfolks166mt · ‎12-11-2022

Are you by chance using or have been converted from the GSP to the EIS? I just checked my international settings and still have the option to exclude individual countries by expanding the list under each area.

https://www.ebay.com/help/shipping-items/selling/setting-shipping-options?id=4089

allen1853 · ‎12-11-2022

No. I never did use GSP. I use the ISP regularly but never "opted in". I just created a listing using one of mine and "Sell Similar". The original has the bizarre list of excluded locations. The new listing only gave me the options in part 2 above. So here's the thing, eBay is forcing me to either ship Worldwide with no exclusions including rogue nations like Russia and Belarus and countries where shipping to is a nightmare like China OR I have to specify destinations and none of those include Africa. Not cool eBay, Not cool.

iart · ‎12-11-2022

We can't ship to China? I guess the traffic only goes one way. Imagine all those poor, empty cargo ships traveling from the US back to China.

pjcdn2005 · ‎12-11-2022

@allen1853 wrote:
Part two, still me. I just tried to bulk edit and also tried revising a single listing. There is apparently no more exclusion option. You have to agree to ship "Ships worldwide" or you can select from a very limited and/or broad list of countries by "Destination". The options are:

Ships worldwide

or

Destination:
All countries in N. and S.America
Canada
Mexico
Brazil
All countries in Europe
United Kingdom
Germany
France
Russian Federation
All countries in Asia
China
Japan
Australia
(There are boxes in front of each to check but the edit bot here removed them for an invalid HTML violation.)

So you can only agree to ship to all of North and South America OR just three countries. All of Europe or just four countries in Europe including Russia. All of Asia or just three countries in Asia. No excluding rogue nations or human rights violators? No Africa? No Egypt, Morocco or South Africa? Only if you select "Worldwide"? Is this yet another example of eBay "fixing" (destroying) something that wasn't broken? I think I will just leave my listings as is. My apologies to the French Colonies and Barbados. I never excluded you, some eBay bot must have.

eBay has always been backwards in that they group 'ship to' countries together like that. But you can check off worldwide and then exclude countries by scrolling down to the excluded countries list which is just below the handling time box. Or, you can exclude them on all of your listings by going to shipping preferences and setting your exclusion list there. https://www.ebay.com/ship/prf

Those exclusions that you have on your listings aren't the same as what I've seen on some other sellers listings so going to your preference page and resetting everything may help get rid of some of those.

reallynicestamps · ‎12-11-2022

No.

Those countries that you choose will see your listing AND the cost of shipping.

The others that you do not Block will see your listing BUT tell the customer to get in touch with you for a shipping quote.

Those countries you Block will not see your listing.

The countries that are under embargo are not on the list because Americans cannot ship there in any case, which is annoying for those of us who enjoy our vacations in Cuba.

You can go to the list, hit clear to allow them all, then go down the list and check off those you do not want to deal with. Then hit Done at the top.

It's an ugly set up. Just another annoyance with the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad new selling form.

reallynicestamps · ‎12-11-2022

Also-- there are three vertical dots on each box. Click on them for more choices.

allen1853 · ‎12-12-2022

Yes we can. What we cannot do is EXCLUDE China.

allen1853 · ‎12-12-2022

Sadly, what you describe is the way it used to be for me. There is no longer any such "Excluded Loctaions" box below Handling Time. Ebay sometimes rolls out their changes on batches of Sellers at a time. They no longer allow ME to exclude any countries. My ONLY options are to ship Worldwide OR Select entire Continents OR two or three specific countries in a continent. NOTHING in Africa. Who knows if Oceania is part of Asia? Who knows where they put the Middle East or the Indian Subcontinent? The situation is normal, all F'd up.

allen1853 · ‎12-12-2022

There is no longer such a list of option for me and whichever Sellers are in the batch eBay has so far revised this way. My ONLY options are as indicated in part two of my post. You will someday see when they get around to changing how you and other sellers pick which countries you want to ship to.

allen1853 · ‎12-12-2022

No. There are no vertical dots. Just boxes to click on to the left. You too will see when they revise how YOU select countries to ship to. It is exactly as I posted in part two of my post which is why I posted. It is, in a word, idiotic. But it is typical of eBay.

pjcdn2005 · ‎12-12-2022

@allen1853

It doesn't make sense that only some people would have that option but you can still use the shipping exclusion list in shipping preferences and apply it to all listings.

https://www.ebay.com/ship/prf

https://www.ebay.com/ship/prf/excludeRegions

allen1853 · ‎12-12-2022

Sadly, pjc, I cannot give you access to my computer and show you the lack of options for excluded countries. I agree it does not make sense but eBay frequently rolls out changes to sellers in batches. Contacting CS is usually a huge waste of time. They either have no idea or lie to you to get you off the phone. Trust me, if I could exclude about a dozen bad ator countrues, I would, but I can't. It is unlikely I will actually have sales to those countries but it is the principle of the thing.