eBay International Shipping Program - What’s The Point Of It?

[Anonymous]

I have a background in logistics and have worked for a Big 3 auto plant in their Xdock as well as several other big name companies as a shipper/receiver.

The EIS program doesn’t make any sense from a logistics standpoint.

Seller mails the item, item arrives for inspection at a 3rd party freight forwarder, item passes inspection, item is mailed out again, item then goes through another inspection at the destination country’s customs and is then handed to that country’s postal service for delivery.

This is wasteful. That extra stop, inspection, warehousing and postal cost doesn’t make any sense. If the item will be inspected by the destination country’s customs, why is it being inspected by a 3rd party that is impossible to contact? Just send it through the mail system. It’s faster, more cost effective and if it’s a prohibited item in the destination country, that country’s customs office will confiscate it.

EIS is a bad system that makes no financial or logistical sense.

[klhmdg]

It makes a lot of financial sense.

A lot of sellers refuse to ship anywhere but to the US.

Because of other countries laws and regulations.

Also as you stated "customs will confiscate" 

Who do you think loses when this happens??

There are many reasons this is a good system that hopefully will continue.

Because you dont understand the issues of foreign shipments doesnt make it a bad system.

[dolcetreasures]

It’s a great system, one of the things eBay got completely right. It basically removes nearly all the liability from the seller (barring something unforeseen on the initial shipping route). 

[soh.maryl]

When/if a package to an international shopper is shipped to the EIS (essentially a freight forwarder) the seller's responsibility for safe delivery ends when the item is delivered to the EIS location.  That fact, alone, is invaluable to the seller.  Think about it.  

[powell-memorabilia]

You might be right - hard to say, as eBay would have the data.  My thought is that it is cheaper to catch items that aren’t allowed before shipment - cuts down on shipping fees, removes hazardous items, and offloading to a reseller would be much easier.  

[1tuna]

the item is not really inspected here in the USA since the packages are not even opened

a shipping label and customs are  slapped on an off it goes

@Anonymous 

[Anonymous]

No, it does not make financial sense. Think about it. There’s already an entire system set up to mail goods anywhere in the world with federal laws against opening mail that’s not addressed to you. This keep mail safe on it’s journey with federally regulated postal services. 

Then you take a third party, Set up a warehouse, hire workers, buy a bunch of equipment that already exists at customs ports, have mail addressed to this third-party and guess what you’ve just done?

Not only have you just spent a whole bunch of money on infrastructure that already exists, you have a recurring costs due to labor and electricity costs, but you’ve lost the assurance that your parcel won’t be opened by anybody in the mail stream by delivering it to the Xdock.

Federally regulated custom ports are different because they can be trusted and already have the infrastructure to process large volumes of parcels.

And if it’s confiscated by customs the seller is burnt because the seller should know better than to send, for example, a switch blade to Canada, which are illegal here.

Removing responsibility from the seller and placing that responsibility either on eBay or the buyer who expects to get his item unmolested by a random guy in some third-party warehouse is absolutely absurd.

If you don’t want to take on responsibility for what you put in the mail, don’t ship internationally. Period.

[Anonymous]

If that’s the case, then EIS makes even less sense than it already did.

[klhmdg]

@Anonymous   you are so way off BUT it seems you know it all so keep thinking it.

You can lead a horse BUT if they "have a background in logistics" then...

 NO 3rd party person is opening anything.

This program catches 95% of items before purchase that can not go to other countries because of their regulations.

NO seller is going to know every in an out for all countries.

Also helps with the packaging requirements for countries like Germany.

Im still not sure your beef since it appears you are Canadian and not a seller???

[12345jamesstamps]

My question is what if....its gets too busy to handle such a load of packages for this hub? Just curious. I understand UPS is not a part of this. But if there is a strike next month everyone will be using other forms of shipping and thus everyone will be extremely busy and probably will not be able to handle the business. 

[Anonymous]

Okay.

If no one is actually inspecting and clearing customs prior to leaving the USA, EIS is unnecessary. 
The destination country’s customs will take care of inspection, 99% of the time.

If “NO seller is going to know every in an out for all countries.” that is fine. That country’s customs port will take care of prohibited items.

All ebay needs to do is issue an accurate customs label for the destination country, have the seller print it, put it on the label and the destination country’s customs will clear it, no?

I am in Canada, I am not a seller, I am a buyer. I am trying to understand why my orders are sent to a warehouse, “inspected” (the CBSA already does that), have a third-party tracking number issued (that is not USPS), given back to USPS, sent to Canada, inspected by the CBSA and, finally given to Canada Post to deliver to my address.

Why do those wasteful extra steps occur when the infrastructure to inspect packages and deal with prohibited items already exist?

Seller mails the item, USPS takes the item to Canada, CBSA inspects the package, it clears customs, is handed over to Canada Post and arrives at my doorstep.

much simpler, no middlemen, less waste.

EIS makes absolutely no sense.

[valueaddedresource]

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@Anonymous wrote:

No, it does not make financial sense. Think about it. There’s already an entire system set up to mail goods anywhere in the world with federal laws against opening mail that’s not addressed to you. This keep mail safe on it’s journey with federally regulated postal services. 

Then you take a third party, Set up a warehouse, hire workers, buy a bunch of equipment that already exists at customs ports, have mail addressed to this third-party and guess what you’ve just done?

Not only have you just spent a whole bunch of money on infrastructure that already exists, you have a recurring costs due to labor and electricity costs, but you’ve lost the assurance that your parcel won’t be opened by anybody in the mail stream by delivering it to the Xdock.

Federally regulated custom ports are different because they can be trusted and already have the infrastructure to process large volumes of parcels.

And if it’s confiscated by customs the seller is burnt because the seller should know better than to send, for example, a switch blade to Canada, which are illegal here.

Removing responsibility from the seller and placing that responsibility either on eBay or the buyer who expects to get his item unmolested by a random guy in some third-party warehouse is absolutely absurd.

If you don’t want to take on responsibility for what you put in the mail, don’t ship internationally. Period.

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@Anonymous I believe you may be severely over-estimating the cost to eBay for this program.

No, they did not "set up a warehouse, hire workers, buy a bunch of equipment that already exists at customs ports" nor did they spend a bunch of money to replicate infrastructure that already exists - they have simply contracted with a third party (maybe more than one) that was *already* offering these types of services, created a program with certain policies and procedures to fit what they wanted to offer, and are calling it "eBay International Shipping".

That doesn't mean there aren't any costs to eBay of course, but they definitely didn't start from square one and build this entire operation themselves.

As far as why it would be worth it to eBay to take on the costs of even having a 3rd party do this for them, as others here have pointed out, there are many sellers who for whatever reason have decided they do not want to offer international shipping themselves - too much hassle with customs paperwork, too much risk with returns etc.

By having a program like this available, eBay hopes to overcome some of the obstacles preventing sellers from being willing to engage in cross border trade. The benefits to eBay are obvious - if they can convince more sellers to participate, that may increase sales worldwide and more sales = more fees for eBay.

So just to be clear, when assessing the value here it's not really a comparison to sellers shipping internationally directly themselves - the value proposition to eBay is the potential to win over sellers who do not wish to ship internationally by providing a service which allows their goods to be offered to international buyers while still providing the seller with a basically domestic selling experience.

[norskmediashop]

Im still trying to figure out if EIS is more expensive for the customer....we always used ebay standard, and ever since that was automatically rolled into the new eis instead, we lost all of our UK and Canadian customers....so either its more expensive for them or the search changed in how they find or see items. For some items it looked like it was about the same price when comparing ebay stand to eis, at least with shipping to the UK yet much higher to other locations. We were thinking about opting out, but I guess its just easier to leave it in place. Have a few items set up with just usps first class instead to see what happens as I prefer pirateship export anyway and can just use that but have any of you noticed a lack of intl buyers since EIS?