eBay is no longer a viable place to purchase items internationally.

[recosus-im5cxo2p]

I've been buying and selling here for over 9 years at this point, and I know for most that's just an amateur number.

In that time I've dealt with countless 'tested & working' items turning up dead or not as described.
No matter where there were from though, the situation was dealt with pretty easily. eBay would examine my case and refund me, sometimes I'd have to return things but it was usually no big deal, just drop it off at the local Canada Post building.

Now it seems in recent times the GSP program is revised, out with Pitney Bowes?? And in comes DHL. You'd think this would be a saving grace but its somehow WORSE than PB.
Not only are they STILL downsizing packages and making them susceptible to damage, they are now way slower at handling your item, and the return process is a DISASTER if you're rural based like I am.
It would be great if eBay could examine my address and determine that there is in fact no DHL drop off remotely close to me. But they just auto generate the shipping label and tell you to have DHL come to you- except that DHL does NOT do pickups for an "import shipment" !!

Furthermore there is no longer any case tracking. I've called eBay CS 4 times now, and I'm told my case is being worked on... Ok... Where can I see the updates on this?? It used to be mostly transparent with the buyer and seller, now I'm left in the dark waiting to see what will happen.
The last insult to injury here is the fact that you are no longer refunded duty!! So this whole experience has been time wasting, money wasting, confusing (multiple CS reps telling me different / conflicting / flat out false things) and very frustrating.

I'm at a point now where if I continue to get no updates on this I will just open up a charge back with my credit card issuer and see if I can get some of my money back that way.

Surely I'm not the only one having a heck of a time dealing with GSP returns? Must be nice for those who live near a DHL drop off point, but for the rest of us who don't, not so fun. I'll definetly be dropping eBay for ANY international shopping from here on out.

[marnotom!]

Okay, @recosus-im5cxo2p, if you're still following your Answer Centre thread, I've had a moment to sort through your post and find the questions you posted to it and figure out that the "case" you're referring to is the conversations you've had with eBay Customer Service on the phone about your return issues.

As @femmefan1946 has suggested, going the route of the phone reps really isn't the best way to go about this as many of them don't appear to be well-trained (if trained at all) in dealing with issues with eBay International Shipping from the buyer's perspective.  Going with the online chat options on the site or through Facebook or X / Twitter seems to be the better way to go, especially if you're looking for something like a case number.  I'm wondering if a case really was created for your situation, to be honest.

As for your question about whether you're the only one having issues with returns of items handled by eBay International Shipping, well, the Answer Centre and general discussion boards only reflect the experiences of those who post to them, so there may be others in a similar boat as yours, but they haven't posted about it.

The thing with eIS it's very much a work in progress and I suspect that it's had to change course(s) with its plans as shortly after it was starting to get rolled out, fuel prices jumped considerably (thank you, Vladimir Putin) and a lot of cost-cutting measures had to be implemented to ensure eBay's forecast losses on the program remained manageable.  The addition of DHL to the eIS fold for Canada appears to be a pretty recent development and I suspect the suits in San Jose didn't give rural and remote locations in Canada much thought when working out a returns system.  That said, I used to live in a remote location on Vancouver Island that DHL didn't serve, period.  I would imagine in a situation like this, I'd be looking for somebody going "to town" in the near future and ask them to drop the package off for me at the DHL agent there.  Is this not an option for you?

eBay may no longer be a viable option for you for buying items from outside of the country, but the fact is, international B2C sales in general have becoming a lot more complicated and expensive over the past ten years.  My wife buys a lot from overseas from sources other than eBay and from my perspective, the days of somebody sticking a customs form on a parcel and handing it over to the post office are long gone.  Most of these shipments aren't handled through the postal system and are forwarded/consolidated in a manner similar to what the GSP did nine years ago and what eIS does now.

From what I can see, you do some selling, too.  Are you keeping up with what sellers selling to the EU are facing in the near future?  See this discussion board thread:

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/EU-General-Product-Safety-Regulations-GPSR-Total-Nightma...