topic international shipping options updated???? in Selling

international shipping options updated????

sajapansales — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 06:17:09 GMT

I don't understand why nobody is talking about this.... all of my international shipping options have been changed.

for instance: "Economy shipping from China/Hong Kong/Taiwan to worldwide" was changed to "International Economy : untracked (11 to 35 business days)"

and "Express International Flat-Rate Postage" was changed to "International Express : tracked-signature (3 to 7 business days)"

I contacted ebay customer service via 'chat' and they were utterly useless as always. a) told me to contact australia post about it... lulz... b) told me they "didn't know, but hope not!" in reply to me asking if the changes were permanent or not. Facepalm.

I have about 600 listings I need to update if these changes are permanent. However, it would be nice if they changed shipping options to ones that are actually relevant ... I have shipping options that were previously untracked, which are now listed as 'tracked' in the Postage and Payment section... so all my customers are going to be confused... and in the busiest season (pre christmas) of the year....

Frustrated!!! doesn't begin to describe how I feel.

Someone please tell me you're experiencing the same thing as me... I've checked other Aus sellers and noticed the same changes so, I'm sure i'm not alone here...

pic attached.

Re: international shipping options updated????

twyngwyn — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 06:41:45 GMT

there are a few threads about this....see:

https://community.ebay.com.au/t5/Selling/international-sales-economy-air-options-when-listing-don-t-make/m-p/2104189

https://community.ebay.com.au/t5/PowerSellers/Standard-International-Flat-Rate-Postage/m-p/2103750#M75648

https://community.ebay.com.au/t5/Selling/international-sales-economy-air-options-when-listing-don-t-make/m-p/2104189#M162353

Re: international shipping options updated????

sajapansales — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 06:48:47 GMT

thanks for that.

the one you posted twice (?), I've no idea what theyr on about... friday gremlins?? manual relist is the solution? doesnt make sense to me.

Other one - sooooo, these changes are permanent then? Hopefully they're going to continue adding more options and the current ones are just placeholders or smthn... either way, updating this stuff in november is just soooooooooooooooo dumb.

Re: international shipping options updated????

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 06:52:15 GMT

On ebay Australia, they 'update' things every Friday (or, fiddle with things, change things)

Fridays are BIG days for errors and glitches

Re: international shipping options updated????

gillians_gallery — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 07:01:43 GMT

I am tired of international postage bugs, for over a year and a half the express option has been about $15 undercut, while reg post has shown $10 over (calculated). I have just setup an ebay business policy for postage and removed all int express options and removed handling too so reg post now is only $5 over with 0 handling, balances out.

Rediculous that I had to do this though.

Re: international shipping options updated????

toygirl70 — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 08:22:02 GMT

The folk implementing this total stuff are incompetant at best and with servere commonsense deficiencies

Re: international shipping options updated????

steen1equestrianriding2 — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 08:55:45 GMT

They updated this about 3 days ago........... and there are stuff all options for Australia Post re International. No untracked option just untracked with signature. This will put off a lot of Innternational buyers - they just want the item in their letter box when they get home. Plus of course signature costs an extra $5.49! I'm sure they will be happy to pay that.

Re: international shipping options updated????

steen1equestrianriding2 — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 08:57:27 GMT

If you try to use' International - untracked' you get an error message at the top of the page accusing you of posting from a different location and won't let you finish the listing

Re: international shipping options updated????

yoda007 — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 23:59:26 GMT

I have the same thing. I checked other Aussie ebay sellers, some have this and others have not changed ( still have Standard International Flat Rate Postage) I spoke to ebay on Sat and the lady told me they have a system error that has caused this and unfortunately we were one of the sellers that were affected. They are working on fixing it and we have to be patient. If you look at the estimated delivery date it is contradicting the 3-10 days delivery. If you try to list anything it also comes up with the tracked, untracked postage options. The Standard International flat rate postage is not showing up for international anymore (at least on our listings)

I am waiting for complaints from international customers when their items don't arrive in 3-10 days. I sincerely hope this is not another "new" ebay listing change as it will cause problems.

Re: international shipping options updated????

sajapansales — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 05:10:09 GMT

Pretty strange isn't it... Yeh, i'm waiting for complaints too. But before that happens, I'll contact every international customer that selects an erroneous/incorrect shipping method and confirm the shipping time for them. Actually, I do this with every single order already.. (manually send them a message confirming everything), but I'll send the international guys a special one to be clearer.

I actually quite like the changes. The new shipping titles make more sense than some of the old ones... for instance the old 11-35 day shipping method (which nicely fits Japan Post's SAL shipping method in terms of shipping time) was called "Economy shipping from China/Hong Kong/Taiwan to worldwide" which is a horrible name.. misleads my customers into thinking that the item is coming from China (ie. has connotations of 'low quality')..... something that really kills one of my strongest selling points, which is that all items come from JAPAN! (ie. has connotations of 'high quality'). But I had to use that instead of the 'Standard International Flat Rate Postage', because the shipping time for that was causing so many complaints about late arriving packages (it was a gross-underestimation of the actual time it took for delivery).

The new name is 'International Economy : untracked (11-35 business days)', which, to be honest, is pretty much perfect for me. Not sure why they didn't use this previously... the more generic the name, the better, one would think... Since any details can be clarified in the item description. imo...

Really wish ebay would understand that people from all over the world use this site to ship items from somewhere other than Australia... we don't all use Aus post.... let us customise the names of the shipping methods so our customers get accurate information from the 'postage and payments' page (since many dont read the item description beyond the first few lines, presumably)... very frustrating having to find the 'best fit' instead of EXACT FIT! grrr...

Anyway, for now I'm keeping track of any new/updated items, as these will all need to be checked once ebay either reverts back to the old shipping methods or confirms these new ones. Recommend anyone else affected does the same.

Re: international shipping options updated????

allfixelectrical — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 21:09:47 GMT

It is about time this change has been implemented to reflect the correct postage options offered by Aust Post but unfortunately it is about 2 years too late.

Hopefully with the new options they can manage to charge the correct postage rate for each service.

For the past 2 years the only international postage rate & method offered that was charged at the correct postage rate was economy airmail and there was no mention of it not being trackable.

Standard Airmail was not offered at all despite being the cheapest trackable method.

Registered Airmail was offered despite not being a valid AusPost service for the past 2 years and was charged at the Standard Airmail rate plus signature.

Express Post International was offered at the Standard Airmail post price.

Express Courier international was offered at the Express Post International rate.

We stopped offering international postage through our ebay store earlier this year due to repeated problems with not received claims being found in the buyers favour when economy airmail didn't arrive in the ridiculous timeframe promised by ebay and due to the fact that no tracking was available and also because of the massive price discrepancies if express post or express courier options were chosen.

I find it absolutely unbelievably incompetent of eBay to allow this situation to go on for so long and as usual, the implementation of it has been done without any warning to those buyers affected by previously compensating in their listings for ebay's programming shortcomings.

As for changing options such as "Economy shipping from China/Hong Kong/Taiwan to worldwide" to "International Economy : untracked (11 to 35 business days)" that again just illustrates their incompetence as they have changed a valid postage method outside of AusPost to one within AusPost which is not compatible.

Similarly changing a method that previously didn't require a signature to one that does should not have been done by eBay and should only be up to the individual sellers to choose. EG "Express International Flat-Rate Postage" should have simply changed to "International Express : tracked (3 to 7 business days)".

I personally am quite over having to manually edit over 5000 listings everytime ebay implements new changes and with it usually new bugs, glitches & errors. Even their bulk editing tool does not work properly in many cases. As a result, I will be waiting patiently to see if the new international postage options appear to work and be stable before reimplementing any international sales in my own store.

No wonder this platform is sinking further down the toilet as each year goes by.

Re: international shipping options updated????

goodthingsforsalerobert — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 23:04:34 GMT

Just had a long discussion With Ebay on International postage the subject was Economy postage variations Ebay vs Aust Post.

I pointed out that economy -untracked signature vs International untracked.

International untracked is locked out and cannot be used as an option.

So why is it there?.

Response was yes thats correct should use economy untracked-signature.

BS was my reply, you are not offering freight options the same as AP.

i asked them to send me an email outlining what would be done to fix this.

There Email reply was "we could not authenticate you during the call, we thought the information below might help you make sure your account information is up to date."

Dumb as...........................

I will not drop this and about to make another call

Re: international shipping options updated????

goodthingsforsalerobert — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 23:25:30 GMT

Ebay not taking calls ???

Re: international shipping options updated????

clubesquire — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 23:37:31 GMT

Further to my phone conversation with eBay yesterday, I sent an email this morning. I too am looking for something in writing. I'm not hopeful, given what I'm reading here.

Our situation, like many others, is that we can now only list for sale within Australia. The moment we add any of the international shipping options our listing fails to list. Our sales are slow as it is, very slow, and it was the few international sales that were keeping things ticking over, so to speak.

eBay cannot give me a time and date for remedy. All they tell me is, 'We're aware of the issue and have a tech team looking at it.'

I can't help it. I'm really down with it all this morning. It's terribly disappointing. I look ahead to the ramifications and they're not good if this isn't fixed quickly.

I wish you all well. I can see that most of you have bigger issues than ours, so it must be terrible for you. I Just hope someone is actually on the job and really trying hard to sort it all, for everyone's sake.

Melina.

Re: international shipping options updated????

onekiwi0 — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 03:10:19 GMT

(I also have a thread running on this topic on my lotsamagsnbags id ...)

what confuses me now after a hopeless answer from ebay via email, posted on my thread...is

I recently received a sale from the USA.

pleased to have the sale - although it looks as if I need to post and add a signature - at my cost of $5.49 as they would be expecting a signature and I don't want to have an unhappy buyer on my hands.

and suggestions?

Re: international shipping options updated????

sajapansales — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 04:57:05 GMT

I always clarify what each shipping option includes, tracking or not, shipping time, cost, etc... in the item description, as well as an automated screen/message generated by ebay ... + I send them a manual email/message every time I get an order... tell them clearly all the above details. Then if they want to cancel the order or add tracking / upgrade shipping etc.. they have 12 hours to do so.. if I dont hear from them, I ship the order within 1-2 handling days. Still going strong on 100% pos feedback in abt 2 years of operation and a total of about 1500feedback over 3 accounts.

So I recommend doing the same.. particularly with the current shipping option changes/problems that are occurring.

& if they do end up being upset, just offer a discount on next purchase... or upgrade them to include tracking for free or something.. take it on the chin. Most people are pretty understanding though in my experience.

Re: international shipping options updated????

clubesquire — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 06:57:05 GMT

Hi everyone. I don't know how much this relates to all the issues of international shipping, or whether it relates only to the specific issue I raised.

But, I just received a rather lengthy email back from eBay, the essence of it though being that the international postage issue will be remedied sometime later tonight.

I hope the info is right and at least helps some of you.

Melina.

Re: international shipping options updated????

bjlcr — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 23:48:51 GMT

I cant understand why Ebay would implement overeas mail with no tracking when they always insist on tracking.If i change it to registered post .The postage is to high for what I am posting.Most of the time.I tried changing it back but there are no options for airmail with tracking.

I used chat to try and ask why ebay had changed my posting to untracked with signature.

he couldnt even read english and didnt understand what I was talking about.

i was trying to chat with him for 30 mins and he assured me that Ebays listing system is fine..OK.

Re: international shipping options updated????

goodthingsforsalerobert — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 00:16:04 GMT

Ebay has fixed International Economy untracked thank you Ebay

Re: international shipping options updated????

jfmgray — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 00:57:41 GMT

yes and it works. Now I just have to edit over 1000 listings that were automatically changed to the untracked signature option.