Two comments (apologize will be long and detailed):
1. INR is largely because the shipping lead times enforced by eBay is based on either:
A) courier providers standards but ignoring the regional variation those providers provide to the public
or
B) based guidelines provided by International Post Corporation (IPC) which is a company formed between 26 member organizations in the Universal Postal Union (the UN body for all postal services in the world) to provide a courier grade service standard especially in the process integration and data exchange/standards. So, if seller is offering postal services from a provider outside the IPC, then great chance won't be meet the IPC standards.
2. Even if INR rate is high, it still the same platform. These variations in policies applicable to members leads to:
A) Provide competitive advantage to one group over another group. One group would be granted the right to offer more shipping choices to buyers than the other group who would be forced to offer the more expensive options: postal services (e.g. EMS) or courier services (which priced to include clearing services that is not needed for most of eBay sales anymore with eBay acting as agent to collect VAT/Custom taxes at the ship to address country)
B) Based on point A above, raise questions if such policy revisions are compliant with US coemption regulations or EU competitions regulations (the communication came from eBay entity in Germany)
eBay is not a traditional eCommerce platform that is serving local consumers market served by traditional retailers. Most of the buyers and sellers are using eBay for garage sales, finding items missing on the primary market, secondary sales channel, and stock flush.
Yes, they introduced the Stores Subscriptions, many years ago, in an attempt to be a primary eCommerce platform for Retailers but the secondary markets are dominating their revenue from all primary sources (i.e. eBay charges).
Hence eBay has a strategy for growing there from secondary sources through partnerships:
1. Payoneer who is a very expensive middleman forced on sellers for no added value.
2. Driving sellers towards the courier providers. They will start with International Sellers, and they will roll out this new policy to cover all other providers.
If they really want to address the INR issue, then they have the following:
1. Make the seller / buyer fully responsible for offering and accepting the term of service.
Or
2. Roll out your shipping program across the globe (and ensure they price it correctly for all what buyers will get, don't charge them for services and fees that they won't get)
I strongly believe that the second is more viable, fair, and reasonable.
