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Hello all Scavengers,
I just got this message from Ebay:
We are writing to inform you that your recent transaction sold through the Global Shipping Program to …. cannot be completed.
The item in question has been deemed restricted. This could be due to import/shipping restrictions or eligibility requirements within the Global Shipping Program. The item will not be shipped forward to its final destination and will not be returned to you.
Don’t worry! Your buyer will be notified and refunded automatically by eBay within 72 hours. You will retain the buyer’s original payment. At this time, the transaction is considered complete, and no further action is needed.
The restricted items were two US military Jerry Cans but the buyer had purchased several other items too and all were packaged together.
This is a first for me but it got me thinking:
Where will my items end up?
Does Ebay destroy them?
Or is there an Ebay garage sale?
Hoping you all are safe and well!
Sigilini
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I have no idea what his deal is, but this guy gets it:
He even gets to use your pictures.
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Yup, Temudgin’s link. I had a tube radio denied entry to Canada. Later, I was able to find the radio in 8ten1944 sold items. I now restrict the sale of tube radios to the US only.
I think that this guy/gal/company also sells their own stuff. Not all the things I see in their inventory are restricted.
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I see what you mean about 8ten1944, all his photos have inconsistent backgrounds so it makes sense that he takes photos off other people’s listings. So weird!
How would he get those Ebay items, I wonder? Does Ebay sell them to him for pennies or is he an Ebay employee that just sells for Ebay to recoup their losses?
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I’m a bit surprised that eBay allows the seller to resell the items on the platform and use the original seller’s photos. I would think they’d want the disposal process to be a bit more obscure. Sellers do give up the rights to their photos so there’s nothing they can do about that but if I was a buyer that didn’t get my item I’d be mad. It appears to me that Pitney Bowes confiscates some items that are not actually restricted, using an over-broad interpretation of what’s restricted at times. But I guess no one cares since both buyer and seller are refunded when they confiscates the item out of GSP.
The seller apparently uses the Ryanne & Jay method – set a high price; list it and forget it. Maybe the seller is a lurker here? 🙂
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Temudgin, your reply provided some key words that helped me find the thread below. It kind of answers my original question.
The outpoint is that Global Shipping should block any items that cannot be shipped international BEFORE the purchase is made. Ebay DID do that with one of my items (a military manual). They blocked the buyer from making the purchase. But they did NOT block the Jerry Cans and later said they (or Pitney Bowes, I guess) would not ship them.
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So…Joe Bloggs sells a jerry can to a fellow fraudster in Canada for $1,200 (because he sprayed “Property of General Patton” on it to make it plausible). Said piece of junk gets confiscated, and Bloggs and Bloggs’ “customer” both get $1,200, and Pitney Bowes sells the jerry can to 8ten1944. Bloggs and Bloggs’ pal are now up $1,200 (minus of course the cost of the jerry can, which is about 10 dollars this side of the pond, and a can of spray paint)
This has happened, hasn’t it? I mean, someone’s done this already with some kind of faked-up item.
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My jerry cans were about $50 each. I did not do anything to the cans, I sold them as is as found with description of what they were based on what I saw embossed (not painted) on the cans.
My buyer was from Japan. He tried to purchase a military manual as well with the jerry cans and the military manual was not approved for international shipping and it was blocked from purchase.
So my question is if that is the case, then why did the jerry cans not receive the same message if indeed they were not approved for international shipping?
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Sorry- I was just about to edit my post to say that situation is hypothetical- wasn’t meaning to suggest that you were doing that!
I checked the 8ten1944 shop and it appears only to be selling golf items (there’s an 8ten account which sells lawn mowers) Curiously there’s no business details (at least none I could find) for either.
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I think the explanation is that Pitney Bowes have a continuously-updated database of shipping fees and customs regulations etc.
Quote from Technomy website
“Pitney Bowes combines a sophisticated, constantly-evolving database of information about shipping prices, addresses, taxes, tariffs, and local law with operation of big physical mail and reshipment facilities. All the seller does is ship to one of those hubs, and Pitney Bowes seamlessly re-routes and stamps the package for its trip to the eventual foreign destination. Says Ventana’s Smith: “The buyer understands when to expect delivery, but also might sometimes learn that this product can’t in fact be shipped to Saudi Arabia or wherever, or that the tariffs add so much to the cost that you don’t want to buy it. These are the kinds of digital signals that are critical for consumers to have a good experience.”
So (presumably) the id of the GSP package is linked by PB to the eBay listing, and then the listing’s text is checked against their database to see whether the item can be shipped to destination. For the military manual, the “contravention” was picked up by eBay, and the customer barred from buying; otherwise Pitney-Bowes police the GSP packages when they arrive at their warehouse.
That’s my guess 🙂
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I forgot to elucidate- “the buyer… might sometimes learn that this product can’t in fact be shipped”. So presumably, with some clients, Pitney Bowes operate a point-of-sale policing, but maybe not with eBay. ‘Cos eBay sellers sell an encyclopaedic range of weird and wonderful scavenged items.
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Antique Frog — understood and thank you!
I am still not sure what Ebay does with the items that don’t get shipped. Basically Ebay “purchased” the item by refunding the buyer and not dinging the seller; so technically it is now theirs. Where does it go? Interesting business model…
Seller 8ten1944 is selling a all kinds of different items, not just golf stuff. I saw many “vitamins” and diet pills as well. He has 28K items and I can see by the photos that they are not all the same camera and location so the photos are lifted in my opinion.
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Oh I can guarantee the photos are lifted from the original listings. It happened to a friend of a friend. 🙂 The GSP confiscated items are definitely going to 8ten1944, the only question is how they get to him/her. Sold? Consigned? Auctioned? Is he/she an employee or subsidiary or subcontractor of PB or eBay? And there may be other sellers out there turning these items. I’m only aware of this one.
It appears to me that 8ten1944’s former GSP items are all for sale with US shipping only. (It’s probably part of his deal with eBay/Pitney Bowes, whatever that deal might be, which makes sense since these were items that someone thought were prohibited to ship foreign.) So Antique Frog being on eBay Old Blimey won’t see all those items. As Sharyn says above, that seller appears to have some non-GSP-confiscated items. I’ll bet all the golf stuff is his/hers, so he can sell it with international shipping enabled, which allows it to post on eBay.UK.
Speaking of the UK, did anyone notice that the user name may be a reference to the British Sten submachine gun, developed and used in WWII, and 1944 was near the end of the war when the tide turned to the Allies (more or less)?
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It’s a shame, but if 8ten Industries is the owner of 8ten1944 they named themselves after the 810 area code for Michigan and not a marvel of British engineering.
Here’s 8ten Industries’ offering of collectibles link.
I guess the coins have their listing details lifted from the coin grader’s text; the other listings have words like “You will receive exactly what is pictured. Thank you for looking”. Shipping is to the US only, but extra-mural shipping can be arranged. They have an address for returns in Cass City, MI 48726.
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Aw! And I thought I had sniffed out a fellow enthusiast of such engineering marvels. I bow to your detective skills.
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Maybe a birth date of the owner who couldn’t think of anything original or descriptive? That would make him/her 76.
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(Following is apparently the sort of thing categorised by business schools as ‘SWAG’, but this has maybe less of the ‘S’)
My impression is that this is happening because Pitney Bowes’ database isn’t integrated with eBay’s point of sale. PB claim that their database is used by clients to automatically prevent purchases where the item can’t be imported into the prospective buyer’s country.
Because eBay have no access to PB’s database, eBay items get purchased, get posted, end up at PB’s warehouse, are flagged, are diverted and sold off to whoever is contracting with PB to buy up this “contraband”.
For any eBay listing the number of browsers and watchers exceeds the number of purchasers (to quote Sybil Fawlty “stating the bleedin’ obvious”). Using PB’s database to block prospective buyers on eBay will have a negative impact on sales, especially as the database is being continually updated, so what is permissible to purchase one day may become forbidden the next.
I’m kind of thinking, at some point eBay are going to be sued over this.
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It worked for UK sellers (I think it did) as the UK and NI were in a customs union with the EU and Turkey, so no customs fees were added onto any GSP packages. That’s going to end on 1st January 2021. I had an Australian buyer interested in an old kitchen mincer- they found they were going to be charged 6 GBP fees on a 9 GBP purchase by GSP. I suspect had I posted it outside of the GSP they wouldn’t have been charged.
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