| General > General Technical Chat |
| Ebay Global Shipping Program EOL, being replaced by Ebay International Shipping |
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| nctnico:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on March 25, 2023, 09:46:36 pm --- --- Quote from: nctnico on March 25, 2023, 09:13:00 pm --- --- Quote from: tom66 on March 25, 2023, 08:39:03 pm --- --- Quote from: tggzzz on March 25, 2023, 08:15:37 pm ---I would like to see a statement as to when a buyer will be informed about whether a delivery will be accompanied with an invoice for extra fees. Obviously the extra taxes would be irritating, but the shipping company's admin fee would be intolerable. --- End quote --- I would guess eBay has worked out how much calculating import charges actually costs - it's not trivial for some countries which have variable interpretations of customs regulations - and have decided it's not worth doing any more. I don't know how GSP handled the situation of getting import charges wrong, was this something eBay covered or was it always on the buyer/seller? --- End quote --- Ebay's GSP is handled by a seperate, specialist import/export company called 'Pitney Bowes'. I speculate this company has the proper licenses / agreements in place to deal with the various tax collector offices directly so there is very little risk of getting the import charges wrong. They get the data directly from Ebay so they know down to the last cent how much the item has been sold for and what the shipping charges are. This whole setup is iron clad where it comes to getting the import charges absolutely right. --- End quote --- As a seller, that has been a major advantange of GSP: I just let the specialists handle the horrible details. As a buyer, that has been a major advantage of GSP: there are no nasty surprises when something arrives. (I have had unpleasant surprises on other occasions) --- End quote --- BTW: Lately I have been buying from China either through Aliexpress or Amazon. The latter deal with all the customs & VAT stuff which is much easier and cheaper compared to buying from Ebay. |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: nctnico on March 25, 2023, 10:45:19 pm --- --- Quote from: tggzzz on March 25, 2023, 09:46:36 pm --- --- Quote from: nctnico on March 25, 2023, 09:13:00 pm --- --- Quote from: tom66 on March 25, 2023, 08:39:03 pm --- --- Quote from: tggzzz on March 25, 2023, 08:15:37 pm ---I would like to see a statement as to when a buyer will be informed about whether a delivery will be accompanied with an invoice for extra fees. Obviously the extra taxes would be irritating, but the shipping company's admin fee would be intolerable. --- End quote --- I would guess eBay has worked out how much calculating import charges actually costs - it's not trivial for some countries which have variable interpretations of customs regulations - and have decided it's not worth doing any more. I don't know how GSP handled the situation of getting import charges wrong, was this something eBay covered or was it always on the buyer/seller? --- End quote --- Ebay's GSP is handled by a seperate, specialist import/export company called 'Pitney Bowes'. I speculate this company has the proper licenses / agreements in place to deal with the various tax collector offices directly so there is very little risk of getting the import charges wrong. They get the data directly from Ebay so they know down to the last cent how much the item has been sold for and what the shipping charges are. This whole setup is iron clad where it comes to getting the import charges absolutely right. --- End quote --- As a seller, that has been a major advantange of GSP: I just let the specialists handle the horrible details. As a buyer, that has been a major advantage of GSP: there are no nasty surprises when something arrives. (I have had unpleasant surprises on other occasions) --- End quote --- BTW: Lately I have been buying from China either through Aliexpress or Amazon. The latter deal with all the customs & VAT stuff which is much easier and cheaper compared to buying from Ebay. --- End quote --- Never used aliexpress. The Amazon search mechanism is not fit for purpose, for many reasons. I couldn't use either to sell surplus kit. |
| tom66:
--- Quote from: nctnico on March 25, 2023, 09:13:00 pm ---Ebay's GSP is handled by a seperate, specialist import/export company called 'Pitney Bowes'. I speculate this company has the proper licenses / agreements in place to deal with the various tax collector offices directly so there is very little risk of getting the import charges wrong. They get the data directly from Ebay so they know down to the last cent how much the item has been sold for and what the shipping charges are. This whole setup is iron clad where it comes to getting the import charges absolutely right. --- End quote --- I know of PB's involvement. The problem is, items are classified by the seller, and customs office in possibly different ways. For quite some time for instance, into the EU the import duty on camcorders was higher than digital cameras. What was the distinction? It was an ability to record for more than two minutes continuously, without user intervention. Somewhere I have an old Panasonic digital camera which has the "workaround" of prompting the user at the 1:45 mark to press a button if they want to continue the recording. Due to that kind of variability, I suspect if a customs agent is particularly picky, it doesn't matter how good PB's relationship is, they could still end up facing a bill. And no doubt all of that admin is not cheap, even if large parts can be automated. |
| nctnico:
--- Quote from: tom66 on March 25, 2023, 11:44:50 pm --- --- Quote from: nctnico on March 25, 2023, 09:13:00 pm ---Ebay's GSP is handled by a seperate, specialist import/export company called 'Pitney Bowes'. I speculate this company has the proper licenses / agreements in place to deal with the various tax collector offices directly so there is very little risk of getting the import charges wrong. They get the data directly from Ebay so they know down to the last cent how much the item has been sold for and what the shipping charges are. This whole setup is iron clad where it comes to getting the import charges absolutely right. --- End quote --- I know of PB's involvement. The problem is, items are classified by the seller, and customs office in possibly different ways. For quite some time for instance, into the EU the import duty on camcorders was higher than digital cameras. What was the distinction? It was an ability to record for more than two minutes continuously, without user intervention. Somewhere I have an old Panasonic digital camera which has the "workaround" of prompting the user at the 1:45 mark to press a button if they want to continue the recording. Due to that kind of variability, I suspect if a customs agent is particularly picky, it doesn't matter how good PB's relationship is, they could still end up facing a bill. And no doubt all of that admin is not cheap, even if large parts can be automated. --- End quote --- The way these shippers work is that they also have an internal customs department that have the final say about the value. All the big shipping companies (UPS, Fedex, DHL) have their own internal customs department to streamline the process (*). The regular customs service in the NL for example takes at least a week. That is no use for shipping companies that want to deliver parcels within a few working days. * If they managed to get this approved by the local authorities. I had a couple of probes stuck in customs in South Africa for a couple of weeks as they didn't believe the price was correct. --- Quote from: tggzzz on March 25, 2023, 11:22:39 pm --- --- Quote from: nctnico on March 25, 2023, 10:45:19 pm ---BTW: Lately I have been buying from China either through Aliexpress or Amazon. The latter deal with all the customs & VAT stuff which is much easier and cheaper compared to buying from Ebay. --- End quote --- Never used aliexpress. The Amazon search mechanism is not fit for purpose, for many reasons. --- End quote --- Aliexpress is great. You can buy most of the low cost stuff straight from China (or a European warehouse) at much lower prices than a local webshop. Typically I buy things like heatshrink tubing, braided sleeving, mechanical parts, diamond tipped drills, etc from there. Nowadays most stuff arrives in a week or two. And it is not all crap. Recently I needed a new squeeze bottle to wet the spunge for my soldering iron. The one I ordered from Farnell was utter crap (their own multicompcrap brand; I should have been wiser). The one I ordered from Aliexpress is excellent. BTW, I left a negative review on Farnell's website and promptly I got an email saying I could return the bottle. I replied it was already in the garbage and that I overlooked it was from Multicomp which I don't buy. I didn't react to the question why I didn't buy Multicomp branded stuff... it is worse than stuff from Aliexpress! Amazon's search engine sucks badly indeed. To the level it amazes me they even manage to sell stuff. Typically I use Google to find things on Amazon. Amazon is kind of my last resort if I need something quick which I can't find on another (local) webshop. --- Quote ---I couldn't use either to sell surplus kit. --- End quote --- I have abandoned Ebay for that a long time ago. What I list won't show up internationally so that defeats the purpose of listing things on Ebay anyway. So I sell whatever I want to get rid of locally (on a website which is also owned by Ebay but at least the listing is free and no sales fees). |
| SiliconWizard:
International shipping has become horrific for a good while on eBay anyway, how much worse can it get. |
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