Ebay Are Enrolling Me On The New Global Shipping Programme. What New Hell Is This?!

[sarascompact]

I've just been told that my ebay account is in six weeks time going to be transferred to one with a global shipping programme enforced unless I go to inconveniently time consuming lengths to avoid it.

It all sounds good. Ebay work out the shipping to international buyers and make the listing available to them. But read on.

"All" I have to do is pay for the parcel to be posted to the UK shipping centre.

So let me get this right. Ebay are going to mis-calculate the cost of shipping some of my lightweight but highly fragile items which require bigger boxes than the item size suggests and therefore incur higher fees, they're going to make me pay to ship item part way and they're almost certainly making a nice profit from whatever shipping company and "shipping centre" they've agreed the deal with.

Can someone, anyone, explain to me how this is going to be a successful idea which will benefit me?

My experience wasn't good. eBay charged customer a fortune for a toy to be posted to Poland and as a result they cancelled the order. Nowadays I try and stick to selling in the UK. However, I believe you can untick their shipping option though.

I hope it's as easy as unticking a shipping option beth, I really do. It all sounds like a nightmare!

You just opt out - it isn't difficult.

Just tick the box to opt out I did no problem.

I've had lots of people complaining about the postage and refusing to pay. It's very annoying

That's enough to put me off.

But the real killer for me is what happens when the buyer claims Not As Described, perhaps caused by damage/rifling of package in transit? What would the process be? Could I get hit with high return costs? Could I claim against ebay's shippers on the foreign leg?

My experience has been okay so far. I get a few more enquiries from abroad / mostly Europe and I don't have to faff about international postage - my orders are processed as normal for me and item is posted to eBay. I can then track the item once it reaches eBay until it reaches the seller. So far I've not had a single return but my items although varying in weight/size aren't especially fragile.

*until it reaches the buyer.

The achievable prices are definitely better but in my experience dealing with difficult cases is a real pain and dealing with them when the buyer is not comfortable when communicating in English adds extra difficulty.

If you have a business model of mass sales with cases continually being opened for one reason or another then I can see how the GSP makes sense by not really adding an extra burden.