eBay: Please lift the restriction on shipping charges on some categories

[itolduandso]

devon@ebay

We ask eBay to eliminate at least temporarily those limits on shipping charges. There is a possibility of tariffs anywhere and eBay is not handing these presently. Even if global shipping rolls out to .CA this is still going to force people not using the global shipping to have to cancel sales. I can't increase prices to cover tariffs because that would hurt non-US sales. The only other way to handle this is via complex splits between platforms or via manually editing each individual shipping cost for each listing which is time consuming but probably best way right now.

What eBay is promising is futures. It's pie in the sky for me right now. eBay buyers from the US are cancelling because the way eBay buyers shop is by price (unlike on Etsy where it's more by uniqueness and where I have most sale nowadays.)

eBay please allow flexibility on shipping cost. Lift those restrictions on how much I want to charge. I'm not Amazon and I don't sell on Amazon. So eBay shouldn't try to be Amazon.

It's disappointed buyers that is the problem. If buyer sees higher price, won't place order. But some buyers are willing to pay the price for tariffs. It's less often the case on eBay than Etsy, but it still happens. Every sale is good for eBay as well. So why not acting now.

Thanks.

[mrdutch1001]

THere are no limits for shipping costs when listing on.CA. You seem to be asking .COM to change its ways...not gonna happen. You work with what is available not what could be/should be or want it to be....

[itolduandso]

There are quite more than a dozen Canadian sellers on Ebay.COM with 10K or 100K of feedback profiles. Secondly, there are non-Canadian sellers present from countries without their own domains.

[mrdutch1001]

and??? eBay provides the platforum>it is up to the seller to utilize that platform to the best of their abilities with whatever tools and features are provided by said platform. Selling on eBay is a choice...and it is a seller's choice to use the site ...

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@itolduandso wrote:
devon@ebay

We ask eBay to eliminate at least temporarily those limits on shipping charges. There is a possibility of tariffs anywhere and eBay is not handing these presently. Even if global shipping rolls out to .CA this is still going to force people not using the global shipping to have to cancel sales. I can't increase prices to cover tariffs because that would hurt non-US sales. The only other way to handle this is via complex splits between platforms or via manually editing each individual shipping cost for each listing which is time consuming but probably best way right now.

What eBay is promising is futures. It's pie in the sky for me right now. eBay buyers from the US are cancelling because the way eBay buyers shop is by price (unlike on Etsy where it's more by uniqueness and where I have most sale nowadays.)

eBay please allow flexibility on shipping cost. Lift those restrictions on how much I want to charge. I'm not Amazon and I don't sell on Amazon. So eBay shouldn't try to be Amazon.

It's disappointed buyers that is the problem. If buyer sees higher price, won't place order. But some buyers are willing to pay the price for tariffs. It's less often the case on eBay than Etsy, but it still happens. Every sale is good for eBay as well. So why not acting now.

Thanks.

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@itolduandso 

@mrdutch1001 

As an FYI here is the ca for shipping cost limits.

https://www.ebay.ca/help/selling/shipping-items/maximum-shipping-costs?id=4655

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/shipping-items/maximum-shipping-costs?id=4655

Page appears to be mirrored on dot com but did not compare item to item. (US page in US funds.) Because ebay does not include dates to help pages also unable to confirm if this info is STILL in affect.  Personally, I didn't know there were limits until someone else pointed it out to me. In this situation the over the limit is more of a workaround due to a problem that has arisen out of sellers control if I have interpreted correctly. 

[mrdutch1001]

interesting...as in all the years I have been listing/selling on .CA, I have never seen that in print and I refer to  the eBay help pages often...I have no idea when eBay would have placed that there, so I guess I stand corrected for my previous wrong information...I personally, have never had need for even those maximum shipping rates....

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@mrdutch1001 wrote:

interesting...as in all the years I have been listing/selling on .CA, I have never seen that in print and I refer to  the eBay help pages often...I have no idea when eBay would have placed that there, so I guess I stand corrected for my previous wrong information...I personally, have never had need for even those maximum shipping rates....

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@mrdutch1001 

Possibly got implemented in the decade when the kerfuffle with shipping charges being billed as part of the transaction FVF's and sellers way to "attempt" to bypass those fees. Figure if a seller is using ebay labels those fees should be connected to that. Bill it against handling fees only.

[itolduandso]

Are you working for ebay or trying to work for ebay? How does your comment solve the issues sellers are facing? I don't see how.

[itolduandso]

Heaphones Headsets etc have this limit for example on .COM you can't add shipping over certain amount, like 15 USD or something.  But there are plenty other subcategories.

[mandicrafts]

Looking at the .ca restrictions on max shipping (flat rate) it appears to be mostly books, CDs, video games etc, so MEDIA. And from what I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a US tariff on those items. 

[reallynicestamps]

Free Shipping.

Don't Panic!

Which is cheaper: a $10 item with $25 shipping or a  $35 item with Free Shipping?

If the buyer is not willing to pay $35 for the shipped item, you won't get the sale.

But buyers love love love Free Shipping.

To the extent that I saw a Wayfair ad on TV last night where the last thing said, after the little playlet of the ad, was an actor breaking the fourth wall with "And shipping is FREE!".

No it isn't.

It's included in the price

Again.

Which is cheaper: a $10 item with $25 shipping or a  $35 item with Free Shipping?

[reallynicestamps]

There were restrictions on the shipping charge for books decades ago.

I sell books and have had no such restrictions for years.

Including a shipping charge of over $100 for a large heavy and scarce title shipped to Norway.

[recped]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

There were restrictions on the shipping charge for books decades ago.

I sell books and have had no such restrictions for years.

Including a shipping charge of over $100 for a large heavy and scarce title shipped to Norway.

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The shipping caps for Media never went away, what did happen many years ago is eBay raised the maximum charges allowed SUBSTANCIALLY so that issue in effect went away for 99% of transactions.

The original cap for Media was US$4, I think the current cap is US$20, even when the original cap was in effect there were exceptions for certain types of multi-unit items such as Box Sets etc Plus if I recall correctly the caps only affected Flat Rate shipping. 

These are some of the reasons why after the initial outrage the topic of shipping caps basically vanished, until this thread I had not seen a single post on the topic for probably 15 years, definitely since 2011 when fees on shipping were introduced.

I understand why it's back, with DDP one needs to include the prepaid tariffs in the price US buyers pay. The only way to do that is to include those costs in the shipping amount as it's a) the only way to avoid aditional eBay fees and b) it's not possible to have "country pricing" where the item is one price for US buyers and a different price for everyone else.

If you are shipping realtively low value items it's not a problem to add the trariff amount to shipping and stay within the caps but if you ship something worth hundreds of Dollars even a modest tariff rate couldd put you over the cap. I assume that is the issue for @itolduandso and why this thread was started.

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[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@recped wrote:

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

There were restrictions on the shipping charge for books decades ago.

I sell books and have had no such restrictions for years.

Including a shipping charge of over $100 for a large heavy and scarce title shipped to Norway.

---

The shipping caps for Media never went away, what did happen many years ago is eBay raised the maximum charges allowed SUBSTANCIALLY so that issue in effect went away for 99% of transactions.

The original cap for Media was US$4, I think the current cap is US$20, even when the original cap was in effect there were exceptions for certain types of multi-unit items such as Box Sets etc Plus if I recall correctly the caps only affected Flat Rate shipping. 

These are some of the reasons why after the initial outrage the topic of shipping caps basically vanished, until this thread I had not seen a single post on the topic for probably 15 years, definitely since 2011 when fees on shipping were introduced.

I understand why it's back, with DDP one needs to include the prepaid tariffs in the price US buyers pay. The only way to do that is to include those costs in the shipping amount as it's a) the only way to avoid aditional eBay fees and b) it's not possible to have "country pricing" where the item is one price for US buyers and a different price for everyone else.

If you are shipping realtively low value items it's not a problem to add the trariff amount to shipping and stay within the caps but if you ship something worth hundreds of Dollars even a modest tariff rate couldd put you over the cap. I assume that is the issue for @itolduandso and why this thread was started.

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This is in reference to shipping limit caps and anything else eBay related. 

@recped 

@itolduandso 

Not saying that this is what happened in this case. Just a possible scenario. Because the help pages are NOT dated or that when they are updated, hard to know what eBay policies/practices are still actually in play. Speak to anyone in support, eBay, Facebook, Twitter, CS who knows where and you are always at risk at getting bad info. Same thing can happen to the users that frequent the board. You can even get a variation of a help page depending on the words you use for a search. Throw in AI and Google best results and the knowledgebase becomes a hodge podge of good and bad info. Ohhhh....forgot the ever popular....Left up to interpretation. Makes it extremely difficult to know what to take at face value, with a grain of salt or as being the gospel according to eBay. 

Put another way....Winging it is the new normal for most things eBay!!!