Sold a book and the buyer paid for media mail but ebay wont let me select media mail lable.

[smittysgamingcorner]

I have been selling for a long time and never had this problem before and the customer service rep was  another case of poor customer service from ebay. I posted a hard cover book and when making the listing I selected media mail since you know its a book. Ebay at no time warned me that I would not qualify for media mail since I listed the book in collectables nor did they not accept media mail as a option when my buyer paid for the shipping. So here I am the buyer paid for media mail and now I have to eat the additional cost for flat rate because ebay took no effort to tell me the media mail stipulations has changed. All they have to do is remove that option when making a listing if you do not select the proper categories. The customer support for when I brought this problem up was the biggest waste of time all they did is repeat the same statement then tell me I can go to the post office to ship it. Oh so now i'll have to pay more because the local post office always charges more than what ebay charges for, use gas and time for something that could have easily been avoided if ebays website wasn't something from the dark ages and just had a pop up explaining the new **bleep** media mail policy. No way to complain about customer service that I know of or any way to file a complaint about the website so hopefully this will help others avoid getting burned on media mail.

[onefootflipper]

---

@aprilmoviebuf2000 wrote:

This has been the case for at least 2-3 years, maybe more.  In order to try and curb Media Mail abuse, MM is no longer an option in categories that don't qualify. 

---

Yet ebay still defaults to media mail in multiple categories that absolutely don't qualify. Every time I sell a video game or a gaming magazine and hit the ship button it defaults to media mail even though those items do not qualify. 

I use Pirateship to ship items that qualify for media mail that ebay doesn't recognize as qualifying. 

[mrtangerineman]

Just had that same experience yesterday: sold a book that I'd had listed for a long time. My terms were Media Mail, as the buyer selected. After I weighed and measured the package I noticed the "Media Mail" shipping options had been greyed out. Huh? I had to get in line at the PO to buy Media Mail shipping (at a higher price) and this morning eBay sent me a message encouraging me to use their shipping services...Ha! Very frustrating. 

[nobody*s_perfect]

There's no discount on Media Mail with eBay shipping; you paid the same $ at the PO as you would have paid for the eBay label. As noted above in this thread, you can purchase MM postage elsewhere online including through PayPal.

eBay's restrictions on MM labels are based on category; the Pink Floyd book that you sold recently was listed in the Entertainment Memorabilia category. Most items in that category aren't eligible for MM, so eBay blocks MM labels for all items in the category.

[tdrake]

---

@mrtangerineman wrote:

Just had that same experience yesterday: sold a book that I'd had listed for a long time. My terms were Media Mail, as the buyer selected. After I weighed and measured the package I noticed the "Media Mail" shipping options had been greyed out. Huh? I had to get in line at the PO to buy Media Mail shipping (at a higher price) and this morning eBay sent me a message encouraging me to use their shipping services...Ha! Very frustrating. 

---

There are no eBay discount for Media Mail. You paid the same at the PO...  except that you wasted time and gas when you could have gone to Pirate Ship for your label.

[lepke1979]

eBay's way of handling media mail is dumb in my opinion. But at the same time, I see a lot of people selling video games using it as the mail option. So I don't know. If it's true USPS tries to collect from the buyer if the seller gets caught wrongly using it. I sort of see why they limit it for a better buyer experience. But even then they seem to do a poor job on how they go about it.

As mentioned, just buy it through Pirate Ship or XPS Ship or some other service. You don't get a commercial discount with whomever you use. It's just a somewhat cheaper, albeit slow way to get books and the like to people.