Had it with Ebay - forced my account to enroll in Intl Shipping

[rugerskick]

I don't ship international.  All my Ebay policies I have had set FOR YEARS! - are set up to not ship international.

Today they messed with my account.

First, I had to log in about 5 consecutive times in a row, I mean after logging in, they sent me to...the same login screen again!  Multiple times.  I get several emails from ebay saying a new device logged in.  Its the same tablet I have used the last two years.

Its gonna be one of those days, I thought.

I did not see any warning or notification email from them saying they decided to enroll my account in Intl Shipping program.  So I had no idea they pulled this garbage move.

I go to create a draft item.

I see in the shipping area, where my default policies are, gee I appear to be shipping international despite no shipping policies or business policies set to do anything international.

So I go into my preferences right away and opt out.  They need to know a reason.  Good grief.

And now it takes up to 24 hours for the opt out to take effect.

THIS IS SO WRONG TO FORCE PEOPLE INTO THIS.  ALL MY SETTINGS WERE SET TO NOT SHIP INTERNATIONAL YET THEY OPT ME IN TO INTL SHIPPING AND DON'T EVEN TELL ME.

NOT A GOOD MOVE EBAY.  NOT GOOD.

[hollysfinds]

Well don't you know that ebay knows what's best ( insert sarcasm here).

They don't care what we think, just shove everybody into international shipping whether they want it or not. 

I've never sold outside of the US either so why would they think I'd want to now.

I opted out immediately. 

[chapeau-noir]

You are not shipping internationally, you are shipping domestically - eBay handles it from there including risk.

[klhmdg]

I cant imagine why someone wouldnt want to use EIS.

This is international shipping that all you have to do is send it to the US hub and they do all the rest.

Its like people who wont ship to a Po Box. Makes no sense.

Good thing you can just opt out.

[inhawaii]

I see you on the boards all the time.

It's discussed here all the time.

I'm surprised you didn't know about this.

[shar_27]

Wait and see, Pretty soon, eBay will start charging a beneficial fee of the grandstanding EIS

[rustydalmatian]

Then you change your selling preferences and opt out.

[stainlessenginecovers]

Why would you care?

25,000,000 eyeballs or 180,000,000??

7x more chance to sell.

Cost you $0.00

No 'extra' fees

No chance of 'return/refund'....

In fact, it's better than just shipping domestically.

But; you can choose to 'exclude' certain items if the item type, dimension, weight, or $ amount (I think now $2500 max?)

Only drawback- you do have to have the correct weight/dimensions.

[isaiah53-57]

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@klhmdg wrote:

I cant imagine why someone wouldnt want to use EIS.

This is international shipping that all you have to do is send it to the US hub and they do all the rest.

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@klhmdg

I reserve my final opinion on this program for about 6 months to a year - Sounds good reading about it, but the statements they make about no fault(?) returns and NADs are vague at best - Also, by my experience, when ebay makes things sound easy, thats not all all how it turns out - I would assume the logistics and the manpower needed is staggering - Given they are auto-enrolling everyone, I cant for the life of me see how they will be able to get the Intl packages shipped to them, check every one of them to make sure it is what the seller says it is, turn around and repack or retape each package, do all the customs paperwork and then reship them.

My guess is things go reasonably well over the short term as they will take it easy on sellers to keep them interested, but then when they see how much this labor and logistics intensive program is costing them, especially if they dont keep enrollment high, or the problems really start getting out of control, then we will see the program for what it really is - a  reasonable and commendable attempt to expand international sales, with a short shelf life - I hope I'm wrong...

[powell-memorabilia]

eBay didn't sign you up to ship to international locations - EIS has you ship to Chicago.  I'm not sure what people object to - EIS takes the risk and expense on returns.  Seems like some would opt to only ship EIS 🙂

[cardxcraft]

You should read up on the EIS program.  The nuts and bolts: you get all of the benefits of domestic shipping, while Ebay and its partners bear the responsibility from their domestic facility and the international portion. 

No foreign transaction fees, no worrying about whether or not your $1500 item is going to get a regional scan.  You get all of the upsides and none of the downsides.

I really encourage you to read up on it, and think about giving it a try.  I've used EIS extensively, and not one problem has presented.

[asset_liquidators]

There are plenty of reasons not to ship internationally as well as to not ship to a PO Box. You cant ship a 76lb+ item to a PO Box? Not to mention shipping any package over a few pounds via USPS can cost way WAY more than other carriers. I do allow for PO Box shipping on small, lightweight items though so it is really a matter of not using USPS on heavy packages (not necessarily a PO Box thing).

As far as internationally, there is NO way I would trust someone to repackage one of my items to send it overseas. Also, ebay says they will cover returns under most normal circumstances. Well, that is pretty vague. It is only a matter of time before we start seeing posts from people complaining because ebay didn't cover it like they said they would.

[nuclearomen]

they auto enroll everyone into it, they did me quite a while ago, i'm still opted in but my policies exclude all international shipping so it doesn't effect me unless change those. EIS is still young to tell (for me) there has been quite few issues reported with it on the boards. My issue not doing it is the exact weight, can't know that until it's fully packaged, everything is approx on listings, and usually within few ounces of actual weight but there are times when it will be enough to raise to the next shipping cost tier. 

[nuclearomen]

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@isaiah53-57 wrote:

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@klhmdg wrote:

I cant imagine why someone wouldnt want to use EIS.

This is international shipping that all you have to do is send it to the US hub and they do all the rest.

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@klhmdg

I reserve my final opinion on this program for about 6 months to a year - Sounds good reading about it, but the statements they make about no fault(?) returns and NADs are vague at best - Also, by my experience, when ebay makes things sound easy, thats not all all how it turns out - I would assume the logistics and the manpower needed is staggering - Given they are auto-enrolling everyone, I cant for the life of me see how they will be able to get the Intl packages shipped to them, check every one of them to make sure it is what the seller says it is, turn around and repack or retape each package, do all the customs paperwork and then reship them.

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@isaiah53-57 according to EIS pages, they say they are not in most cases even opening packages like they did with the old program, according to them they are running packages through scanners and say "in most cases packages will be scanned and not opened/repacked" - how true that is and how many packages they actually are opening to see contents when scan isn't enough idk. 

[cardxcraft]

@asset_liquidators

@nuclearomen 

Definitely understand.  Luckily, I sell postal history, and all of my items are flat...largest is 12x9 at 5 ounces, and 8x6 at 3 counces.  I've been pushing EIS pretty hard without taking in to consideration the factors you both brought up.