USPS Label "Hazardous" Even When Selected NOT Hazardous

[friendly_lamar]

Today I bought a shipping label through eBay, via USPS Ground Advantage. Even though the shipping options showed, "This package doesn't contain hazardous materials," the label I bought had a giant H in the upper corner, indicating "HAZMAT," as a well as "HAZMAT - Surface Transportation Only," printed on the label.

As, "surface transfer only," would significantly slow down this cross country shipment (PA to WA), creating a very bad customer experience, I cancelled the first label, then purchased another label, ensuring Hazmat was not selected, but it once again purchased as HAZMAT, and now I have had to cancel that label too.

What is happening here? My items were adult diapers, not lithium ion batteries or anything, and certainly are not Hazmat. I'm assuming it is an eBay code bug, but considering I ship everything through USPS Ground Advantage, I am considering shutting down my entire eBay store, until I can confirm this issue has been fixed by eBay.

How can I get support on this from eBay support? If I don't have this issue solved in the next 24 hours, I will have to shut down my entire store, and right during the Christmas shopping season, too.

That, and I am going to have to either:
a) tell my customer I have to cancel his items, due to eBay being broken, and suggest he not use eBay for awhile, himself

b) invoice him for the additional shipping cost directly through PayPal, to cover the cost of not shipping through eBay's discounted shipping services

Both of which are obviously bad options.

 

[tmtt_26]

Multiple threads already about this. Lots of people having the same issue. Check the other related threads

[dbfolks166mt]

     There are already several posts about this issue. One other option you have is to use Pirate Ship to create the label and upload the tracking number to the eBay order. Pirate Ship has the same discounted rates as eBay. I just created a couple labels on Pirate Ship this morning and no issues. 

     Always good to have a backup, or other primary shipping service, in hand as this is not the first issue I have seen posted on this forum about problems with creating and printing labels via eBay.

[friendly_lamar]

@kh-shakhib 
What is going on here? Can we get some support response here.

[samw515]

Have same issue here. Looking for a solution.  No luck.

[dbfolks166mt]

   Have same issue here. Looking for a solution.  No luck.

 Use Pirate Ship to create and print your labels. They have the same discounted rates as eBay and you can simply upload the tracking number into the eBay order. Always good to have a backup service in place this is not the first issue eBay has had with creating and printing shipping labels and it will probably not be the last.  

[dhbookds]

fixed.......per Kyle on Tech board

[june_elizabeth1971]

Same thing here.  Contacted eBay and they said they're "working on it" .

[dolcetreasures]

Ugh, too bad I didn’t notice this. I was dealing with another similar glitch with the from address randomly changing to my address for returns. It was fixed as of yesterday, but I didn’t anticipate the hazmat glitch today. 

[wastingtime101]

@friendly_lamar and others:

According to eBay this problem is fixed, but you'll need to void your affected labels and purchase new ones.

To void a shipping label purchased through eBay, go to this page, find the order and select Cancel from the Actions drop-down. The cancel option is available for 28 days.

It takes between 2-4 weeks to receive a refund on an unused, voided label as the carrier wants to make sure the label isn't used. You'll see the refund on your original source of payment (eBay funds, bank, credit card, etc) and the funds will appear in your account without an email notification.

If something like this ever happens again you can always access discounted rates for USPS and UPS through pirateship.com

[silvervintagephoto]

Happened to me today, too. I just canceled the shipment and processed another label, and it came out normally the second time.

This was an International Shipping Program shipment, too, so I was especially concerned that it would be bounced back if eBay received it with the Hazmat label attached.

[vintage-camerastuff]

I shipped 5 orders this morning with the Hazmat shipping labels.  I don't have time or patience to deal with ebay screw ups.   Just way to much to deal with at Christmas.   

[friendly_lamar]

Yes, it's very concerning that a bug like this would get through eBay code and onto production, where it would then affect sellers.

Typically

• Unit Test - Test a specific function to ensure that unit of the code works as expected.
• Regression Test - Test a unit of the system, part of the system, or a full system flow to ensure a code change(s) did not break previous functionality.
• Integration Test - Test interactions and communication between different components in the code, to ensure proper functioning between them.

By having these tests integrated into your code, you both ensure that if new code does not work, you catch that before it goes live, and likewise, if new code breaks old code, that you catch that before changes go live.

Here, it is clear that eBay developers are pushing untested code to their Production environment, otherwise these bugs would have been caught before they affected eBay sellers. This is unacceptable. eBay must really have some trash coders, developer teams, and poor coding standards and practices. Shameful, really.

[gymrat1966]

Maddening! Had the same issue this AM! Tried the label 3x and cancelled all of them. Nothing hazardous about the plastic action figure, no batteries etc.  Went to PayPal and manually generated a label from there - same cost as the eBay labels. Then had to add the tracking number on the eBay sold item. Wonder if my customer got the "your item has shipped" email 3 or 4 times?

Link to PP ship labels

https://paypal.shipstation.com/orders

Then select link "create new quick label" on upper right side of page.

I also have a Pirate ship account too, that was my next plan after PP.

If I had shipped using Hazard label it would have delayed shipping progress even more during the already slowed down holiday volume - especially if the package couldn't go on an airplane! Then you start getting the "where's my package" messages from your buyer. Sellers don't need that aggravation during the holiday crunch! 😉 

[wastingtime101]

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@friendly_lamar wrote:

Yes, it's very concerning that a bug like this would get through eBay code and onto production, where it would then affect sellers.

Here, it is clear that eBay developers are pushing untested code to their Production environment, otherwise these bugs would have been caught before they affected eBay sellers. This is unacceptable. eBay must really have some trash coders, developer teams, and poor coding standards and practices. Shameful, really.

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You think that's clear? I don't. Have you ever looked at an eBay-generated USPS label? It clearly says Pitney Bowes at the top because USPS labels purchased through eBay come from Pitney Bowes.

Translation: when stuff like this happens with shipping labels, it's rarely caused by something on eBay's end. Obviously eBay takes responsibility to work with the correct parties to fix these things, but it's not likely the failure stemmed from eBay's programming.