When will the local and international shipping options be renamed correctly?

[thegaminggamer]

 Because even though the automatically calculated prices are at least correct (knock on wood), the names have the potential to confuse. Issues include but are not limited to:

1) "Australia Post Parcel Post Parcel" (ridiculous name) and "Australia Post Regular Parcel + Tracking" are redundant because all parcels come with tracking by default.

2) "Australia Post Regular Parcel Registered" - Only letters can be registered, not parcels. Same applies to international parcels.

3) There was an overhaul in the way overseas parcels work, plus "Sea Mail" no longer exists.

Is this an eBay issue or is this due to Australia Post not updating eBay with their changes?

Also, the international shipping delivery time estimates (eBay's or AusPost's fault?) are a bit optimistic and that's even taking into account the lengthening of the handling time.

Is there any rhyme or reason in delivery time estimates? Australia Post (and common sense) already acknowledges that a parcel from Victoria to Western Australia will take longer than Victoria to itself or Victoria to New South Wales. Yet, the delivery times from Australia to others countries always remain similar, whether it's to the US, the UK or to Asian countries, or to Southern American countries (they in particular love to complain about slow parcels).

I think it would be fascinating if we could attach a live camera on an international parcel so we can see exactly what happens to it.

[lyndal1838]

Sea mail very definitely does exist although why anyone would use it is a mystery.....it is far more expensive than Economy Air and has no Seller Protection due to the time it takes.

[thegaminggamer]

Does it? I'm looking at the postage guide booklet (October 2016) but it only mentions economy, standard, express, and courier. I know that the US Post abolised sea/boat mail long ago. And if what you say is true, then sea mail might as well not exist in Australia (barring a significant price decrease).

[the_pooze]

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@thegaminggamer wrote:

1) "Australia Post Parcel Post Parcel" (ridiculous name) and "Australia Post Regular Parcel + Tracking" are redundant because all parcels come with tracking by default.

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Yet interestingly when selecting this as a postage option I consistently get a warning telling me to select another postage option as this service is no longer available.

Trying to engage eBay staff to have this corrected as it clearly does exist, they continually insist it does not and they know becaus Aus Post have given them advice to this effect.  They can't even get out of their own way to check when offered a tracking number to look into. 

[thegaminggamer]

Scratch that. I just looked a bit more closely. Sea mail does exist in very small writing under the economy air heading. Economy air has a weight limit of 2kg but Economy sea is for 2kg to 20kg.

So a 20kg economy sea parcel is $160.68 and a standard parcel is $182.68 - considering sea mail is so slow and has no tracking I would expect to pay something more like $80-$100. At this price point, you might as well pay the extra $20 for peace of mind.

[digital*ghost]

I'm not sure why the latest international postage prices were ultimately made odd amounts (particularly considering if you pay for them over the counter, they'll get rounded down anyway), but technically all of the Australian postage prices are odd as well - eg a 500g parcel is actually $6.77, the rest is GST, while there is no GST charged on international postage. 

Re: the postage options on eBay - they did actually remove the superfluous options at one stage, but in the process they also removed some other options that were still very much applicable (eg Standard - Registered, as someone who sends primarily large letters, for quite a while I had to pick 'parcel with signature on delivery' to differentiate between standard letter postage and registered letter postage). When they brought "Standard - Registered" back, they brought the superfluous ones back as well, and just left it at that, I suppose. 

eBay's ETA on international parcels is based on Aus Post's estimate, and they are both being completely stupid about it, because AP don't actually quote a delivery estimate, they quote an "average time the parcel takes to arrive in the destination country" estimate. Meaning, when AP quote 6 days from Aus to the US, they mean the parcel will land in the US about 6 days after being posted, and then it is handled by customs  / USPS, and delivered whenever. Ergo when eBay - who love their fine print but don't know how to look at it themselves - set up the ETAs, they used 6 days etc. 

[transport-posters]

I don't think eBay will change this any time soon.  I have asked eBay twice to separate South America from North American in the grouping because of the big price difference between the two, and to introduce more country sub-options in Europe due to the considerable price differences between some countries, and they said basically, "Thanks, we'll take it under consideration."

That was about three years ago now.

[max-power-models]

Apprently its a very difficult problem to fix with no date forth coming.

[thegaminggamer]

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@transport-posters wrote:

I don't think eBay will change this any time soon.  I have asked eBay twice to separate South America from North American in the grouping because of the big price difference between the two, and to introduce more country sub-options in Europe due to the considerable price differences between some countries, and they said basically, "Thanks, we'll take it under consideration."

That was about three years ago now.

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I used to specify postage costs to other countries until I ran into that problem. Sending something to Mexico costs more than sending to the US, even though they're both technically in America. That's why I used automatically calculated postage now. This was before Australia Post separated the world into the 8 or whatever zones they have now.

[lm-entertainment]

I emailed ebay customer service a while back making a suggestion that the "Australia Post Express Post Satchel 1kg" be added to the drop-down menu for postage options - as it's been in existence for over a year now. I'm pretty sure the amount of coding that is required to add in a single option is not much at all. 

Anyway, I was given the reply that it would be forwarded to their business improvement section - but with a hint of "we couldn't care less." 

It is frustrating that these postage options aren't accurate because it would make things a lot simpler when it comes to record-keeping and monitoring expenses. 

What's also alarming is the huge amount we pay in fees as sellers - yet there is rarely anything given back - even simple conveniences.