eIS Canada coming October 2025

[cottagewoman]

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Announcements/eBay-International-Shipping-is-coming-to-Canada-this-fall...

[hamsterstamps]

I would be curious to know (approximately) what my American buyer would pay on say a $30 sending that I used to send for $2.00 to the States.  From what I read it would be my domestic shipping (but tracked, so $10) plus whatever they charge for a light flat envelope (is there a pricing chart somewhere?) on redirect, plus the tarriff, plus whatever fee they will charge to use the system.  Or maybe that fee will be built into the outgoing shipping cost?

Overall looks like a nice plan if you sell $50+ items and if you don't - good luck....

[easoss]

I've been hammering this point. If you sell items $20 or under you're finished as far as US selling is concerned. No meat on the bone as the saying goes.

[hamsterstamps]

it would be nice if ebay.ca offered a cheaper premium store price for those who decide to opt out of US selling.  They would lose some money, but maybe keep some of the many sellers who are going to pack it in.

Too bad nobody from Ebay reads the community boards anymore...

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

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@marnotom! wrote:

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

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Re #2. As I suspected sellers in the distance recesses of Canada willl pay more for shipping to the eIS hub as by the sounds of it will be located in Toronto. Needs to be 2 depots to level the playing field.

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I don't think this is as big an issue as you're suggesting, @lotzofuniquegoodies.  eBay.ca has a much smaller seller base than eBay.com, and I think the likelihood of a seller in a remote location selling exactly the same or very similar merchandise as a seller in metro Toronto are pretty slim, so the first seller isn't necessarily going to lose out on an international sale to the second seller on the basis of their shipping price being higher.

I'd think this would be more of a problem for US sellers than for Canadian ones, given the larger seller base.  Canadian sellers have already learned to carve a niche for themselves to be competitive against US sellers by selling lots of unique goodies.  😁

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@marnotom! 

Feel free to think that that is not important. For me or anyone in western Canada postage to GTS is going to be much more (it can be 2 to 3 times more than what we were paying to ship direct to the USA via Tracked. 

Example: Approx 13.00 for 1 kg parcel Belleville to Toronto

                                     18. and change for Calgary to Toronto

                                      11 and change by tracked Calgary to LA

With  Canadian eIS buyer would be looking at the 2 trips plus factoring extended transit times for whole trip. SK And west currently goes by way of LAX and gets delivered in 8 to 12 days max via tracked. No concerns of the black hole called Chicago. 

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@marnotom! 

@byto253 

@itolduandso 

Maybe apples to prunes comparison but:

    LA to LA - 1 lb 5.00

    LA to Miami 1 lb 7.00

US sellers have access to in the neighbourhood of 17 shipping options with discounts ranging from 14 to 77 %. Rates range from 4.43 to 103. usd.  5 options with USPS. 7 options with Fedex. 5 with USPS. Transit from overnight to 8 days. They also have some called an eBay option but nada displayed. (Possibly a another arrow in a US sellers quiver down the road.) When you compare US shipping options to Canada (non eIS) they are VERY limited with miniscule discounts. Maybe to encourage US sellers to use ONLY eIS. 

[marnotom!]

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:

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Feel free to think that that is not important. For me or anyone in western Canada postage to GTS is going to be much more (it can be 2 to 3 times more than what we were paying to ship direct to the USA via Tracked. 

Example: Approx 13.00 for 1 kg parcel Belleville to Toronto

                                     18. and change for Calgary to Toronto

                                      11 and change by tracked Calgary to LA

With  Canadian eIS buyer would be looking at the 2 trips plus factoring extended transit times for whole trip. SK And west currently goes by way of LAX and gets delivered in 8 to 12 days max via tracked. No concerns of the black hole called Chicago. 

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Once again, @lotzofuniquegoodies, my point is that if someone is selling items that are OOAK or have very little competition, the shipping rate is unlikely going to be an issue for a buyer who wants the item badly enough.  It's unlikely that a buyer is going to wait to see if a seller from Belleville or Los Angeles is going to have the very same item as one from Calgary.

Maybe times have changed, but when my wife and I were selling media and pop-culture type stuff on eBay, we successfully sold many items to US and European buyers because nobody else was selling them.  Only once did we have a complaint from an American that we weren't using Media Mail and that was because the potential buyer hadn't clued in that we were in Canada.

As far as items going through the USPS Chicago ISC are concerned, let's wait to see if the mail system is actually used by eIS Canada to get items from Mississauga to Chicago.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@ilikehockeyjerseys wrote:

You can't compare the costs of an eIS program to the old costs of Canada Post Tracked Packet via eBay labels, because that is never coming back. 

You have to compare the cost to whatever rates for Tracked Packet (or other services) that will be available going forward, along with the cost of DDP. 

It woud be nice if they allowed higher volume sellers to consolidate shipments and send them all in one box ala Chit Chats, Stallion, etc. 

I don't think anybody is celebrating this as a way to get back to the old USA shipping. We're not getting $10 duty free US shipping back. If your business was contingent on US sellers only paying sales tax and $10-$20 CAD in shipping for a package that arrives in 5-10 days, eIS won't help you. 

I think people are viewing this as a possible lifeline, where maybe the added international destinations could make up for the US buyers who won't come back due to the added costs.

It will certainly be a culture shock to US buyers who are used to $10-$20 CAD shipping and a lot of them won't return. But the point is that a small number of them might return, and they also might be offset by the added international buyers.

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There have been several very good stories on CTV news regarding this implemenation. Regarding how it will affect small sellers like Etsy and eBay and larger businesses that sell high volumes daily. They also reported how it is affecting Canada's trade numbers to USA. Here are 2 of them. If they repeat one particular one it summed up the nightmare of concerns in the best way I have seen so far. (Online version  seems to be condensed for time.) Major direction appears to be for many sellers removing USA from their ship to list. Either permanently or until all the ink dries. 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/video/2025/08/28/how-the-looming-end-of-de-minimis-tariffs-is-going-to-hurt-c...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/canada-post-will-use-third-party-duty-processor-after-us-de-mi...

[marnotom!]

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@hamsterstamps wrote:

I would be curious to know (approximately) what my American buyer would pay on say a $30 sending that I used to send for $2.00 to the States.  From what I read it would be my domestic shipping (but tracked, so $10) plus whatever they charge for a light flat envelope (is there a pricing chart somewhere?) on redirect, plus the tarriff, plus whatever fee they will charge to use the system.  Or maybe that fee will be built into the outgoing shipping cost?

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If you were sending items to the United States for $2.00, you were technically violating Canada Post and Universal Postal Union regulations on sending merchandise internationally.  Merchandise is supposed to be sent with customs forms, which international letters don't have.  Just giving you a heads-up on that.  There are several threads on these discussion boards that mention this if you're interested in further reading.

I'm going to backpedal on my earlier post about sending stuff to the eIS hub by a trackable shipping method, though.  There doesn't seem to be any sort of rule about that for US eIS so it may well be that you will be able to get away with sending stuff to the Canadian hub as a domestic letter.

As far as shipping rates from the Canadian hub to a US destination go, nobody knows what we're looking at here yet. I will say that eIS rates seem to be a little less than the USPS counter rates for basic, no-frills services.  If a similar formula follows for Canadian eIS, we could be looking at something along the lines of a 10-20% discount off the Canada Post Tracked Packet-USA rate for the items you were sending as letter-post.  (Might be even greater than that given the deep discount SfSB customers get for Tracked Packet.)

[cottagewoman]

I think what will be setup for Canada eIS vs the US program is comparing apples to oranges. eBay knows very well the situation that is presented to Canadian sellers and the reliance on the U.S. market, as well as the proximity and integrations that exist in the shipping logistics channels. US eIS is mostly shipping overseas and that is a tangled web indeed.
Let's wait and see. I think the point will be to leverage the MOST AFFORDABLE shipping rates possible by any carriers available, maybe even using hybrid services to do so involving more than one provider - heck you never know they could LTL on train cars to get over the border! (Just kidding, but not... 😊).
The friction for buyers will be the duties.
Perhaps as the program matures, eBay could partner up with one of the CA couriers to provide affordable Western province to TO domestic service. I think this needs to get established and refined. Thank GOD eBay is going to keep .ca a going concern.

[easoss]

I actually like this idea. Basically a Canada wide marketplace. Opt in, no outside of Canada shipping options allowed at a reduced store cost. Promote buying from Canadians. Great for items that Canadians have interest in, hockey, canadiana, aboriginal art etc. But I worry eBay is more interested in the cut from overpriced shipping programs. 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

Can you ask about whether a seller can ship a consolidated box of orders to the hub? Similar to how if you don't have a Chit Chats branch in your city, you consolidate orders into one single box and only pay one shipping price.

This would be a very important feature for sellers who have any reasonabe level of volume. Even within the same region, shipping might be $10-$15 via Canada Post for an individual order domestially to the eBay hub. But if eBay comes up with some way for sellers to consolidate orders into one shipping box, they would be able to bring that cost down to maybe a $1-$2 per order if they have enough volume.

I am not asking if they will have a service to pack things for us. We pack each item and have it ready to be mailed, but instead of purchasing different shipping labels for each one, we throw them all into a big box with whatever unique code or info eBay needs on each bubble mailer to identify which order it is for. 

[marnotom!]

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@cottagewoman wrote:

Perhaps as the program matures, eBay could partner up with one of the CA couriers to provide affordable Western province to TO domestic service. I think this needs to get established and refined.

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I don't think the volume of packages in the system would ever be high enough to justify a second Canadian eIS hub.  While the shipping cost of the domestic leg might be lower, the costs to ship out of the hub would likely be higher, meaning little to no cost saving for the buyer overall.

[marnotom!]

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@ilikehockeyjerseys wrote:

Can you ask about whether a seller can ship a consolidated box of orders to the hub? Similar to how if you don't have a Chit Chats branch in your city, you consolidate orders into one single box and only pay one shipping price.

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You probably know this already, but for the benefit of others, consolidated shipments to the hub aren't permitted in the US eIS terms and conditions for sellers.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I assume that free shipping is out the window domestically since it sounds like they base what the customer is charged partly on our domestic shipping rates to the HUB.

While you might be able to ship lettermail to the HUB, you may not want to do that because of possible ramifications if multiple packages are never delivered and don't have tracking. eBay might perceive that as "poor performance". 

It creates an odd dynamic where sellers of lower priced lettermail items might have to overcharge for domestic lettermail shipping. 

To explain what I mean:

• It costs me $4 on average to ship an item lettermail (postage, supplies, etc. Sometimes postage is $2.50, sometimes it is $4.29, etc, hence average.)
• I go with free shipping to simplify things, and to avoid negative feelings when a buyer pays $5 shipping and receives a bubble mailer with two stamps and wrongly assumes it only cost me $2.48 to ship their package.
• I get an eIS order. eBay sees "free domestic shipping", and does not charge the US buyer for the domestic shipping portion to the HUB.
• I'm out $4 for Expedited Lite because Expedited Lite costs $8, and I only budgeted $4 for domestic lettermail (on average).
• Again, this is with a $14.99 w/ free shipping listing. Canadian and US buyers would both pay "$0" in shipping, but $4.99 ($4.35 or so after fees) is budgeted for shipping.

Does this not create a situation where it incentivizes Canadians to charge inflated shipping rates domestically, even if the item ends up being the same price? 

As in, maybe I need to change my price point to $5.99 BIN + $8.99 shipping. That way, when there is a US order, the domestic rate for Expedited Lite is mostly covered. While the end price is the same, from a marketing POV this is difficult to justify to domestic buyers who receive an order that they perceive to have cost "two stamps" to ship to them. 

The easy way for eBay to avoid this is to simply have an option where you can assign a different domestic shipping policy for eIS orders. Or, require a certain level of service. For example, if I offer "Free Economy Shipping" and "Canada Post Expedited Shipping" for a flat rate of $9.99, there should be a box I can check when setting up eIS that sets a minimum cost to charge for shipping to eIS. Or something of that nature. 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

This is really inefficient. 

They should either have some sort of way to send batch shipments and mark each individual package with a scannable label for their sytem, or they should find a retail partner that can acccept packages and batch them together. 

Both Stallion and Chit Chats recognize this inefficiency. They have batched shipping to address this. 

[flipistics]

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@ilikehockeyjerseys wrote:

I assume that free shipping is out the window domestically since it sounds like they base what the customer is charged partly on our domestic shipping rates to the HUB.

While you might be able to ship lettermail to the HUB, you may not want to do that because of possible ramifications if multiple packages are never delivered and don't have tracking. eBay might perceive that as "poor performance". 

It creates an odd dynamic where sellers of lower priced lettermail items might have to overcharge for domestic lettermail shipping. 

To explain what I mean:

• It costs me $4 on average to ship an item lettermail (postage, supplies, etc. Sometimes postage is $2.50, sometimes it is $4.29, etc, hence average.)
• I go with free shipping to simplify things, and to avoid negative feelings when a buyer pays $5 shipping and receives a bubble mailer with two stamps and wrongly assumes it only cost me $2.48 to ship their package.
• I get an eIS order. eBay sees "free domestic shipping", and does not charge the US buyer for the domestic shipping portion to the HUB.
• I'm out $4 for Expedited Lite because Expedited Lite costs $8, and I only budgeted $4 for domestic lettermail (on average).
• Again, this is with a $14.99 w/ free shipping listing. Canadian and US buyers would both pay "$0" in shipping, but $4.99 ($4.35 or so after fees) is budgeted for shipping.

Does this not create a situation where it incentivizes Canadians to charge inflated shipping rates domestically, even if the item ends up being the same price? 

As in, maybe I need to change my price point to $5.99 BIN + $8.99 shipping. That way, when there is a US order, the domestic rate for Expedited Lite is mostly covered. While the end price is the same, from a marketing POV this is difficult to justify to domestic buyers who receive an order that they perceive to have cost "two stamps" to ship to them. 

The easy way for eBay to avoid this is to simply have an option where you can assign a different domestic shipping policy for eIS orders. Or, require a certain level of service. For example, if I offer "Free Economy Shipping" and "Canada Post Expedited Shipping" for a flat rate of $9.99, there should be a box I can check when setting up eIS that sets a minimum cost to charge for shipping to eIS. Or something of that nature. 

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Could you not just add a handling fee for international that would make up the difference?

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I could be misunderstanding how it works., but apparently, eBay charges international buyers your domestic shipping rate, and then they deal with the international rate.

So from your own perspective, an eIS order is a domestic order. Except the buyer is the eBay hub.

US Buyer Pays

1. BIN Price
2. Domestic Shipping Rate (Equivalent to what your shipping policy charges Canadian buyers)
3. International Shipping Rate from eIS Hub
4. Fees (Taxes, Duties, Brokerage, etc)

#2 poses a problem because most domestic rates are based on untracked economy shipping (lettermail), which might not be viable for an eIS program, unless eBay agrees to waive any penalties with late or undelivered packages.

This is a problem unique to the Canadian rollout of the eIS, because domestic lettermail shipping being widespread is strictly a Canadian thing. 

I actually completely botched the original post but cannot edit it. It's actually worse than what I outlined.

• Total price for item not counting tax is $15 shipped domestically. ($15 w/ free shipping, $10+$5 shipping, doesn't matter in this case. How the shipping is laid out as a line item doesn't matter, all that matters is that the BIN+Shipping is $15 total.)
• Input costs for lettermail shipping are $4 on average.
• Input costs for Expedited Lite shipping are $8 on average.
• eIS will charge the US buyers my domestic shipping rate to have the item sent to the hub.

Therefore, if I am not comfortable using lettermail to send to the hub, I need to either eat $4 on eIS orders. Or, I need to raise my price by $4 to account for the higher cost of fulfilling an order to the domestic hub. If my item cannot tolerate that kind of rise in price, it is not viable for eIS.

I think they need to account for this reality with a Canadian eIS service. Either by allowing you to set a domestic shipping policy that is exclusive to eIS orders, or by waiving any performance based penalties for items being late or not arriving at the eIS hub. 

A separate box in the shipping policy for eIS orders seems like it would be the most logical solution. So you can charge one domestic rate for your direct customers, and if needed require a different domestic rate for eIS orders. (When I say domestic rate for eIS orders, I mean the rate to ship it from you to the eBay hub in Canada.)

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

If a separate domestic shipping rate for eIS isn't possible, maybe they could add the eIS hub as a separate entity to the current provincial rate tables. That seems like it would be a crude but doable work around. 

If it is correct that domestic rates determine the shipping cost to the buyer for eIS shipping, that might be the most seamless solution. Include eIS as a separate destination in the provincial rate tables. 

[regs43]

I would be interested in a seperate domestic rate check box for eIS orders, becasue my lettermail world won't tolerate me jacking shipping in Canada to 8$ to cover Ex Lite because I may get a eIS order.

[flipistics]

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@ilikehockeyjerseys wrote:

I could be misunderstanding how it works., but apparently, eBay charges international buyers your domestic shipping rate, and then they deal with the international rate.

So from your own perspective, an eIS order is a domestic order. Except the buyer is the eBay hub.

US Buyer Pays

1. BIN Price
2. Domestic Shipping Rate (Equivalent to what your shipping policy charges Canadian buyers)
3. International Shipping Rate from eIS Hub
4. Fees (Taxes, Duties, Brokerage, etc)

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I wonder if they'd charge an untracked option (ie, if you actually offer Lettermail as the shipping option rather than standard shipping or whatever)? If not, you could simply add an additional expedited lite option (or maybe expedited since lite is still upcharging everything right now).

Definitely something that should be looked into though. I agree that a seperate hub option would be an ideal solution.

[marnotom!]

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@ilikehockeyjerseys wrote:

I assume that free shipping is out the window domestically since it sounds like they base what the customer is charged partly on our domestic shipping rates to the HUB.

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Not in the least.  eIS bases its shipping charges on information provided by the seller on the item's packaged dimensions and weight, and perhaps the category of the item as well (for insurance purposes).  Instances where you see eIS charging and arm and a leg for shipping are when the seller hasn't provided this information which is sometimes the case with listings offering free or flat-rate shipping domestically.