How has your shipping cost to buyers changed since eBay International Shipping?

[troys_toys1]

For those of you who have been automatically signed up for and are currently using the new eBay International Shipping program, I (and I'm sure many others) would like to know how your shipping prices for US buyers has changed. Also, if you are selling world-wide and were not before EIS, are you seeing any non-US international sales?

Please reply with what types of items you sell, pre-EIS typical shipping label costs and post-EIS shipping label costs and any other information you think may be useful.

Thank you! 🙂

[raanana]

I opted out as well for now. Curious  what will be eIS price  for a postcard from Canada to USA,if price is similar american prices,than I can ship cheaper with Tracked Packet USA and also use my own stamps.

[sapphyres-designer-jewellery]

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@dinomitesales wrote:

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The only reasonable explanation I've seen to opt out of eIS is "I don't want to do business with the United States for personal/political reasons". Ok, fine, but I hope you're specifically telling the reps that if you receive a phone call from eBay. And I still don't understand why that means you have to opt out of eIS entirely - it services many more countries than the USA (and from what I can understand you can exclude USA from the service). Unless you already have a) shipping options to every country serviced by eIS; and b) can provide a cheaper shipping option that eIS (impossible to know at this point), then I don't understand why anyone would want to opt out.

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I'm forced to opt out by what I sell.

I want to opt out anyway because I'm sure I can't ship a coin to the UK for 7.30 with eIS considering it's 6.35 to ship it to the Hub, so I doubt eIS wants 95 cents to forward it to the UK.

I get that there's lots of benefits being in eIS, like shipping to a lot more countries. Yeah, I can't ship to every country in the world, but probably in half the countries people don't really collect coins... so there's no customers there anyway, if there are customers in some of these places they are wealthy and there's only a few, so why would they necessarily stumble upon my store if I had eIS shipping?

Stallion has great rates for small things going internationally, and I do sometimes ship without tracking on small items (to countries were there are not lots of fraudsters). eIS is not going to be able to offer my buyers cheaper shipping than I can offer. I shipped a coin today to Malaysia for 9.58 (cheaper than Canada Post). The buyer probably wouldn't have bought if it was eIS shipping.

C.

[dinomitesales]

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@sapphyres-designer-jewellery wrote:

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I'm forced to opt out by what I sell.

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I don't believe you're "forced" to do anything. Yes, the items you sell aren't eligible for eIS, so eIS won't be shown as an option on the listing. Why does this mean you have to opt out of the program entirely? If you plan to never ever sell an item that is eligible for eIS then fine, but I don't understand the harm in remaining opted in.

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I want to opt out anyway because I'm sure I can't ship a coin to the UK for 7.30 with eIS considering it's 6.35 to ship it to the Hub, so I doubt eIS wants 95 cents to forward it to the UK.

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But, even assuming your item WAS eligible for eIS, I don't understand this argument. You can still show your $7.30 shipping rate with Stallion on your listing and customers can see it and choose it and you can ship to them direct.

I think people are misunderstanding how eIS works and thinking that it just overrides whatever shipping option you have on the listing?

[byto253]

Question.  With EIS shipping in a listing, is "Import Fees" in addition to "Shipping Fees" or is it included in the "Shipping Fees".  Reading this EIS listing for example, I am not sure. 

e.g.  Shipping: C$41.73 and Import Fees: C $20.59 

 

[marnotom!]

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@byto253 wrote:

Question.  With EIS shipping in a listing, is "Import Fees" in addition to "Shipping Fees" or is it included in the "Shipping Fees". 

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I'm pretty sure it's a separate line item, just as "import charges" are listed separately for items listed with the UK Global Shipping Program, and how they were listed separately for the old US Global Shipping Program.

If the "import fees" were part of the shipping fee, there would probably be a note saying that they're included in the shipping charge, just as when you get a receipt for a fill-up, the GST amount is separated out on the bottom with a note that it's included with the total.

[byto253]

Wish that was clearer to viewers of the listing. 

It makes sense as I would assume that Import fees include the tariffs, which will increase in an auction as the price is bid up.  

[dinomitesales]

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@byto253 wrote:

Question.  With EIS shipping in a listing, is "Import Fees" in addition to "Shipping Fees" or is it included in the "Shipping Fees".  Reading this EIS listing for example, I am not sure. 

e.g.  Shipping: C$41.73 and Import Fees: C $20.59 

 

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It's definitely "in addition to" the shipping fees. Here's an example for a $300+ item where the import fees exceed the cost of shipping.

[marnotom!]

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@byto253 wrote:

Wish that was clearer to viewers of the listing. 

It makes sense as I would assume that Import fees include the tariffs, which will increase in an auction as the price is bid up.  

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I don't know how much clearer it can be. At least if the item is a BIN, the various charges can be seen at Checkout and the buyer can remove the item from their cart if they don't like the charge breakdown.

For what it's worth, I just looked at a listing for a vintage boombox that's forwarded from the US with US eIS.  The "import fees" were C$0.00 both on the listing page and at Checkout, but at Checkout, GST and BC PST charges showed up as line items.  I can see that raising a few hackles from some buyers.

[visual-sound]

I can relate to that. Regarding DT, somethings I like and some I don't. My biggest concern if the weakness coming from Ottawa.

[burning_moon_video]

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@dinomitesales wrote:

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@raanana wrote:

In last few days I checked postcards  offered by US sellers.There are still some who offer reasonable s/h or even free,but most are through the ebay shipping for 17-30$ only without any options to choose anything else.Me personally wouldn't pay as much for shipping of a postcard unless it is unique or valuable. It might work good for some,but I doubt ,that it will for those who sale small unexpensive items .

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American sellers are ignorant when it comes to shipping internationally. They don't care about providing a reasonable shipping cost for us here in Canada (or to anyone worldwide); they probably have their listings set to ship to USA only and may or may not even realize their listings are showing to international buyers via eIS.

We here in Canada are more savvy. If we can provide a cheaper or better alternative to eIS then we can include it on our listings. But I still don't understand why this is reason to opt out of the service.

The only reasonable explanation I've seen to opt out of eIS is "I don't want to do business with the United States for personal/political reasons". Ok, fine, but I hope you're specifically telling the reps that if you receive a phone call from eBay. And I still don't understand why that means you have to opt out of eIS entirely - it services many more countries than the USA (and from what I can understand you can exclude USA from the service). Unless you already have a) shipping options to every country serviced by eIS; and b) can provide a cheaper shipping option that eIS (impossible to know at this point), then I don't understand why anyone would want to opt out.

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The problem is if we all conformed to eBay and opt in to eIS and just throw our hands up and say OK that's it I guess that's the only option, then eBay will have no incentive to provide us with other shipping options. They'll just think we're all good with the service even though it's most definitely going to hinder sales to the US. That's why I encourage people to pushback and tell eBay (reps or whoever) that this service isn't right for Canadian sellers and we need more options for shipping to the US (eg. integrating Zonos at checkout and bringing back discounted Canada Post labels). 

[vintage_america]

Ouch. I can’t see too many Americans wanting to pay those fees. Sad.

[byto253]

Shipping: C $42.78 (approx US $30.46) eBay International Shipping.
See details
Located in: London, Canada

Import fees (in addition to shipping fees)  Est. US $8.60 Final at checkout

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The way it is presented assumes that the viewer will connect the dots and add import to shipping but when dealing with money and a big audience, IMHO,  you cannot assume anything.   Also no need to have any potential confusion with a market that is already leery and skittish about import fees. 

Myself, whether listing or communicating I never provide 2 numbers and assume the reader will add them up, I always provide the total.  

Anyway, IMHO, I think this would be a more transparent way to present the fees to potential buyers. 

[nostalgicaftertaste]

Curious to hear from anyone who has enrolled in the program and has listings with free domestic shipping.

I'm confused because before the tariff situation, a US buyer that purchased an item off me would either be charged calculated rates for Canada Post Tracked Parcel - USA or Canada Post Expedited Parcel - USA. This shipping cost would go to me as the seller to facilitate international shipping, even if that same listing had free shipping for Canadian buyers.

I made a sale with this new program, but the transaction was treated as though the buyer selected domestic, free Lettermail shipping, not International Shipping. As things currently stand and unless I missed something, this is a problem because if someone purchases a low-end item (e.g., a $10 trading card) with free shipping, I wouldn't receive any shipping funds to cover the cost of shipping it to the facility with tracking.

I'm not sure if this is an error due to the newness of the program or due to me misunderstanding how the program works in practice, but an eBay representative helped create a ticket for me so this can be addressed one way or another. If the issue is on my end, I wouldn't even know how to create a shipping rule to cover these situations if they're being treated as domestic transactions.

Anyone else in a similar boat?

[ypdc_dennis]

A sale through this program is  domestic for shipping purposes. The Seller only has to get the sale to the centre in Canada (taking it across the border to the Buyer is not the Seller's problem).

[jtg204]

Do we know yet if IES uses (charges buyer) the first listed domestic option, or the lowest domestic option?

[marnotom!]

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@jtg204 wrote:

Do we know yet if IES uses (charges buyer) the first listed domestic option, or the lowest domestic option?

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Just a wild guess, but I'm thinking that as FVF are charged on the lowest domestic shipping option for an international sale (whether or not eIS is used), the buyer will be charged for that option.

Don't quote me, though.

[troys_toys1]

I think eBay is going to see that EIS doesn't work at all, I've been enrolled in this new program for about 3 or 4 days now and usually I was getting about 3 sales or more a day from USA and so far I haven't gotten a single sale because to ship a t-shirt used to cost the buyer about $7 and now it's $22.99 shipping plus $4.46 import fees for a total of $27.45, an increase of over $20 for the same item. This is why I never buy from the states because shipping is insane, I don't understand why eBay would even offer EIS, they're basically screwing over their customers so they can profit on shipping meanwhile decreasing sales because no one wants to pay these ludacris shipping prices. 

The only logical solution here is to opt out of EIS and figure out (if it's even possible) to charge a certain percentage extra on each sale to account for tariffs and you can then use Zonos to pay the tariffs ahead of time yourself. The main benefit here is we get the discounted Canada Post rates and no shipping charge to the ebay hub.

[flipistics]

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@troys_toys1 wrote:

I think eBay is going to see that EIS doesn't work at all, I've been enrolled in this new program for about 3 or 4 days now and usually I was getting about 3 sales or more a day from USA and so far I haven't gotten a single sale because to ship a t-shirt used to cost the buyer about $7 and now it's $22.99 shipping plus $4.46 import fees for a total of $27.45, an increase of over $20 for the same item. This is why I never buy from the states because shipping is insane, I don't understand why eBay would even offer EIS, they're basically screwing over their customers so they can profit on shipping meanwhile decreasing sales because no one wants to pay these ludacris shipping prices. 

The only logical solution here is to opt out of EIS and figure out (if it's even possible) to charge a certain percentage extra on each sale to account for tariffs and you can then use Zonos to pay the tariffs ahead of time yourself. The main benefit here is we get the discounted Canada Post rates and no shipping charge to the ebay hub.

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eIS doesn't make sales go back to what they were. Nothing will short of a new President getting elected. It does provide SOME sales though, and opens up many additional countries without having to worry about all the new shipping regulations that are springing up, especially in the EU. Since I've been enrolled, almost 20% of my sales have come through eIS. That's a nice little bump.

You also won't get the eBay discounted Canada Post rates (to the USA). Most 3rd party label companies don't seem to have Zonos integrated either. 

[jtg204]

You also won't get the eBay discounted Canada Post rates (to the USA). Most 3rd party label companies don't seem to have Zonos integrated either. 

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Netparcel has Zonos integration. 

You can link to your own Zonos account, or have Netparcel use it's own Zonos account and invoice you later.

I have not used this method yet, so maybe there's a catch?  Waiting for another US order to test it out.

Tracked Packet USA rates are lower for me than the SnapShip sfsb 'discount' rates.  Not so much on < 0.75kg but 

$18.32 vs $22.94 for 0.76kg to 1.0kg

$22.55 vs $28.50 for 1.51kg to 2kg

The fees for Netparcel/Zonos are supposedly the same ($1.99 + IEEPA + 10%):

[reallynicestamps]

Ok, so as expected EIS is much more expensive than doing it directly - $13 vs. $22.67.

Well not necessarily.

Note "import fees will apply on delivery".

While eIS is charging $1.91 for those fees and $22.67 for shipping, there is a question in my mind about what the shipping company would be charging on the buyer's doorstep for "customs brokerage fees" which seem to be integrated into the eIS shipping cost.

In theory that would be $1.91 same as eIS, but.....

Remember how UPS used to charge $25 or more for "brokerage" on imports to Canada? 

There was a thread over 5000 posts long about that- preGSP and eIS for shipping from the USA.

My concern would be what happens if the US buyer decides to refuse the shipment because of those doorstep fees?
Will the shipper hand over the package and come back to the seller for payment?

Will the shipper return the package to the seller?

How long will the return take?
How will eBay treat the "refused" shipment? 

EBay has so far said that refused shipments are Undeliverable and the seller owes the buyer nothing.

https://www.ebay.ca/help/policies/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy?...

But the buyer is also covered by the chargeback policy of their credit card.