Our local playgroup in Canada has noticed this frustrating trend and I thought I would get some feedback from the community on here, and inform those who are unaware of eBay’s newish policy.
Above is a screencap of a Jackson Howard Promo x3 auction. The price isn’t bad, but what I want to draw your attention to is the import charges eBay is now charging under their “Global Priority Shipping”. In addition to the ridiculous cost of shipping 3 cards in the mail, they also expect us to pay $16 in import fees, which they categorize as any of the following: brokerage fees, import and duty fees, additional shipping fees.
The problem is that this new initiative has no way to distinguish between loose, sealed, used or new product. It treats these promos the same as it would a sealed box of MtG or sports cards. This is also turned on by default on American auctions if they offer international shipping. They did this without really informing the vendors, and many were wondering why their international sales plummeted.
The exchange rate is already horrible. You can see the difference in price is almost 140%, so don’t expect us to cough up an additional $40 in shipping and fees for 3 cards. It’s even worse when the auction is for 1 card that is around $100, because the fees are pretty much the same.
International Runners, be careful of these fees as they are often listed in small print, especially on the mobile pages. People looking to sell their promos, check to make sure this option is turned off. You may think it looks convenient, but you are going to limit your potential audience. You also can’t turn this off once an auction has gone live. You will have to cancel and relist.
It’s not really an issue of a monopoly. It’s sort of like negative billing. eBay has put this option on by default and sellers have to turn it off. Most sellers I contact had no idea that IPS was on, and those that did had no idea about the ridiculously high additional costs for the buyer.
So as a seller on Ebay, I will come at this from the other side. In the past I have sold dozens of promos, many of which went overseas. The issue is that before this international shipping option, where I just have to pay to ship the item to Kentucky and they do all the work from there including any international shipping charges, I had several cards never arrive at their end location.
Now either the item did indeed get lost or the buyer knew I had no way to prove anything so they screwed me over. I’m actually convinced it’s been both at one point or another. So I switched to the program you point out above.
Since then I’ve sold another handful of things internationally, and twice after the buyer has won the auction they send me a PM and tell me about how bad the import fees are and ask if I can send it to them directly and not go through with the through Ebay. The first time I felt bad about the fee and did send it directly and it got there fine, the second time they claimed it never got there however and since the transaction wasn’t through ebay neither Ebay or Paypal cared to back me up even though I had a tracking number showing it was delivered and they refunded the money. I just had my third international person win the auction and reach out to me directly and this time I told him I’m not going to go outside Ebay and I’m curious to see if they actually go through with buying the item.
One thing to note for sellers, if someone buys an item through this international deal and doesn’t pay you, you have no recourse. You can’t even leave them negative feedback for some reason. All you can do is relist the item, which is a waste of time.
I’m actually thankful you posted this, as now I know what it looks like to the international person, and I can ignore their complaints about the price after they’ve already won the auction because it shouldn’t have been a surprise. I’m not saying it’s cheap, but it looks pretty up front about the cost.
Also, I would totally send a playset of Jacksons to Canada for $100 and cover all the shipping myself. Feel free to shoot me a PM
If it helps with theft, by all means use it, but everyone I know outside the US filters anyone using this service so that we can skip right over your auction. That is also a shot from a desktop browser. The mobile browser buries it at the bottom where it isn’t as noticeable.
You can get up to $100 insurance on an item for $2.75 when shipping through USPS. There’s no reason to charge $40 to ship it up to Canada. That just Pitney Bowes being greedy. The UK version is also just as big a disaster. Google “ebay international priority shipping” read up on the pages of international buyers who want nothing to do with sellers who use this service.
I think it’s silly. I’m in a market for a desperado, since I own only two cores. A seller in Canada is selling one for around ten bucks, which is what I’m expecting to pay. After the postal fees the price is 50$. It’s absurd.
I understand that preventing scams is important and I’m sure this will get the job done - because no one will buy the cards internationally.
Actually it is $60 (there’s a sign on the box saying “Cost $60, not for resell”). But you cannot buy whatever amount you want, which makes the content be worth way more.
Sure, but I don’t think it’s worth 20 times that (or more, depending on how you value other stuff in the box). I think it’s silly how much people are asking for the Jacksons. Though I guess it’s not stupid to ask, it’s stupid to pay that much …
