eBay's New International Shipping Policy Could Be Costly
By: Ina Steiner
Thu Sept 22 2011 022:04:49
Dear Ina,
I have come across yet another flaw amongst EBAY's new policies. I recently had a transaction involving an international shipment. Since shipping internationally for my business is a little complicated, I instruct all international buyers to contact me for a cost on shipping. I also have set my international shipping prefs to reflect this in all my listing, set to "0".
Recently I had an international buyer purchase an item from my store. They apparently went through the checkout and made payment, before I could send an invoice including a shipping cost. However the amount paid was only for the item and did not include any shipping costs.
When I pulled up the order details for this transaction, it showed "FREE SHIPPING" for this international transaction. I spoke to a CS-Rep at EBAY, and was told that if I had not used the shipping calculator, nor provided any shipping costs for international shipments, the DEFAULT was "FREE SHIPPING".
I asked if this was correct, if they could double check, and I was told that it was, and had recently been implemented, they thought at the same time the new fall changes took place. For those of us sellers, that can not use the shipping calculator, nor can provide some kind of flat rate, for international sales I fear there will be a lot of explaining to do with future international transactions where "Free Shipping" will show up in transaction.
*Please withhold my name, "big brother" reads your blog.
