There are some glitches, but Smartpost rates for large packages are actually going to cost those high prices due to dimensional weight unless eBay wangles some serious discounts.
The game has completely changed people. You all just can't seem to wrap your heads around the fact that most of this is not a glitch.- Smartpost is NOT what it was last year and may no longer be an option for anything over about 10 lbs and largish.
1. FedEx Rates (including Smartpost went up an average of 5% or so on Jan 1.
2. The better 166 FedEx dim weight divisor from 2107 went away and is now 139 - that means that dimensional weight for a given size pacage is 166/1309 = 1.2 times what it was last year
3. Smartpost rates as of 1/22/18 are now based on greater of dimensional weigh or actual weight
The above means huge increases for some packages.
From my example in my post above: 16" x 13" x 12" 4 pound box going across the country. eBay price was $10.59 and is now $35.47. The $10.59 amount is what I paid for shipping these last year on multiple occasions. and the $35.47 amount is what the eBay calculator is estimating today.
Dimensional weight = 16 x 13 x 12 / 139 = 18 pounds So that 4 pound box ships actually ships at an 18 pound rate starting 1/22/18. We go to the Smartpost "by pound" rate table and look up a zone 8 base rate for 18 pounds and we get $34.76 Have to add in 5.75% Fuel Surcharge ($2.00) for a total of $36.76
(the eBay label page comes up with 7¢ less at $36.69 as the transportation charge - an ongoing oddity where Fuel Surcharge randomly isn't the published one)
So $36.76 is the manually calculated list rate amount for that shipment. How much lower that goes totally depends on what sort of discount eBay provides. In this case, eBay came up with only a 4% discount with an eBay price of $35.47
That is the ONLY THING in contention here. What sort of discounts will eBay provide on these new higher prices? My records showed the discounts ranged from about 4% to 19% last year depending on weight, cost, and the phse of the moon, so I wouldn't expect much in the way of rates ending up much lower than undiscounted.
To recap: the higher FedEx Smartpost rates you are seeing are not a mistake. They are the new rates.
There was an issue with the listing and search result and checkout calculators charging less than the new rates for Smartpost and it looked VERY ROUGHLY like those calculators were not considering dim weight. That would explain why buyers were charged less starting on about 1/21/18 (when eBay updated the label calculator).
Just checked one of my listings (for which I am going to remove Smartpost option for now). 3 pounds and 20x15x7 Listing shows Smartpost to zone8 cost of $10.11 while the label calculator comes up with $32.27 (triple!!) I worked backwards by plugging in dimensions of 6x6x6 that don't trigger dim weight and the label calculator came up with $10.13 - a match for the other calculators.
In this case,
the listing, search, and I assume, checkout calculators are still ignoring dimensional weight and charging far less than the actual cost. That needs to get fixed ASAP. @Anonymous @dcintennessee
