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Final value fees always seem to come out of the pending payment. I’m not sure about monthly store fees—we might still get an invoice for those, and if so they could be paid through PayPal. My invoice for July is in process, so I can’t tell for sure yet.
I use the packing slip that you get by selecting the orders on the “Manage orders awaiting shipment” page, choosing “print shipping labels or invoices,” then selecting “invoice/packing slip.” I just looked at the other one you described, which looks totally different. When I print that one, it doesn’t have either my address or the buyer’s on it—I guess that’s a bug, since there is a checkbox to hide the “ship from” address, but checking it makes no difference. Anyway, printing packing slips individually for each order is too cumbersome for me—I want to do them all at once before I start shipping.
It’s wild that there are two completely different documents called a packing slip and we’re just using whichever one we each happened to find, without realizing there’s another option.
Currently packing slips don’t include sales tax collected by eBay, and they really should. The slip is being sent to the buyer, so the total needs to match the amount they paid.
But I agree most people probably never look at packing slips, or else I’d be getting more queries from people about why they were overcharged.
Not only are these people horrible but it’s embarrassing that they’re so bad at it. They’re like criminals in a Coen Brothers movie. Makes me wonder what other tech companies get up to that we never hear about because they hired more competent thugs.
I have 4 International First Class packages shipped to Europe 3/27-4/9 that still haven’t arrived. 3 were last seen in Chicago in April, and 1 has been sitting in German customs since 5/2. One that I shipped 4/8 did just recently make it through to Latvia.
For now I’ve switched to only offering GSP, except for Canada which seems to be OK.
Someone on the eBay forums said they ran out, put up pre-orders, then ran out of the pre-orders. Everyone used the special coupons on airjackets, I guess.
According to the Seller Center page on International Standard Delivery, it uses dimensional weight: “Dimensional weight is calculated by multiplying the length by width by height of each package in inches and dividing the total by 166; ((L*W*H/166)).” This is like Priority Mail, except that with Priority Mail dimensional weight only applies for packages above 1 cubic foot. For the new International Standard Delivery, no such minimum is mentioned.
This leads to several potential problems —
1. If your dimensions aren’t set accurately for small lightweight items, the shipping price charged to the customer could be way off. A 10x10x10″ box would be charged at the 7 pound rate.
2. For multiple-item orders, eBay doesn’t seem smart enough to combine dimensions. When I sell four of a 9x6x4″ item, and go to print a label, the default dimensions are just 9x6x4″. This could lead to customers being charged less than the items cost to ship.
3. If eBay ever did learn to combine dimensions, it would have to combine the box dimensions because that’s all it has, so it would come up with something like 9x12x8″. That’s probably going to be much too large and could result in a substantial shipping overcharge.
BUT WAIT. I went to the “print your shipping label” page for an international order, and actually dimensional weight isn’t being applied at all. It wants to charge me the same $13 even for packages over 1 cubic foot. So is it supposed to be using dimensional weight and the software is bad, or not and the documentation is bad? Maybe it’s supposed to only be for packages over a cubic foot, and both are bad.
This could potentially be a decent service, since it’s cheaper than First Class and includes free insurance, but I’ll wait for clarity on this issue first.
Oh, another one I forgot. When I print a label on eBay, there’s a dropdown that lets me select the date the package will ship. When it’s after midnight in my time zone, but not yet midnight in eBay’s time zone, the date printed on the label doesn’t match the date I picked. By default, it will print a label for the day that just ended.
Above all, make combined shipping work better. I get lots of combined orders on lightweight items, and I offer First Class or Priority. If a buyer orders several items that are each under a pound, eBay will mindlessly charge them for multiple First Class packages instead of combining everything into one Priority shipment. It won’t even tell them during checkout that they could save money by combining — they’d have to individually select Priority for each and every item in order to see that the combined shipping is less that way. It’s so embarrassing every time I have to explain this to a customer. Who knows how many sales I’ve outright lost.
“Tracking uploaded on time and *eventually* validated” is exactly what that metric means, yes.
If your tracking number is uploaded on time, but it’s scanned late and delivered late, you will get a ding for “Late shipment rate” but not for “Tracking uploaded on time and validated.”
If you buy it on time and it’s scanned on time, but delivered late, you will not get any dings.
Oh, okay, I think I get it now. I do use the option to pass along my shipping discount to customers, so my customers are charged commercial rates, and it works fine. If you don’t have that option turned on, then your customers are supposed to be charged USPS retail rates. Except there *is* no retail rate for First Class packages over 13 ounces, so eBay is apparently charging people retail Priority rates instead. $7.85 is the retail price for 1 lb Priority Mail to zone 4.
This obviously should be fixed, but as a workaround in the meantime, I’d suggest turning on the option to charge your customers the commercial rate, under Manage Shipping Settings -> Carrier specific discounts. Then if you want to mark up shipping, just add a handling fee.
First Class Package rates for 14+ ounces are commercial-only, but they’re still published by the Post Office:
https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/Notice123.htm#_c104
They max out at $5.53, so charging more than that for First Class shipping is definitely an eBay bug.
For what it’s worth, I’ve had over 70 First Class orders since the rates changed and so far no one has been overcharged.
Luftmentsh,
I’m pretty sure any arrangement in which third parties like eBay were to remit sales taxes on behalf of sellers would have to be expressly authorized in the code.
That’s what Washington State and Pennsylvania did — they made it so “marketplace facilitators” like eBay and Etsy can collect and remit sales tax for their sellers. So now if you sell something to Washington on Amazon or Etsy, they handle everything and you don’t have to register or file a return (unless you have nexus in Washington, in which case you still do).
Currently, the law only requires marketplace facilitators to either collect and remit tax for sellers *or* notify customers that they’re supposed to pay use tax — which I assume is why eBay is not collecting WA tax now. I’m wondering if, with this new Supreme Court ruling, they could close that loophole and just force eBay to do it?
Other states would be smart to do things this way, since realistically it’s the only way to get sales tax from small sellers without massive levels of noncompliance. And it’s an end run around that “substantial nexus” test — at least, if it holds up in court it is. But who knows what states actually will do.
FedEx added dimensional pricing to FedEx SmartPost starting January 22:
I found articles about this on tons of shipping and logistics websites, but apparently no one bothered to tell their customer service people.
A Premium store costs $59.95 a month on the Yearly plan and gives you 1000 free fixed-price listings a month, then additional listings are a dime each. So if you have two stores with 1000 items in each one, that would be $119.90. The same 2000 listings in a single store would cost $159.95, for a savings of $40.05 a month. But if either store ever dips below 1000, that eats into your savings, and you could even wind up behind. You’d certainly be behind for however long it takes to build up the second store to 600 items. I guess it depends on your tolerance for the hassle of managing two stores, but to me the savings don’t really seem worth it.
Also consider what happens if eBay changes their store pricing again and suddenly you’re paying more for having two stores instead of less.
On the other hand, if you have a lot of one kind of item for sale — and if it’s something that people like to collect lots of, like baseball cards — then having a separate specialty store might be useful to increase cross-sell and repeat business. That would tempt me more than the fee savings.
