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And as a funny tag, I wonder if eBay listens to Scavenger Life. The Podcast just dropped, I just posted our issue with shipping to Puerto Rico…and I just got a follow-up call from eBay. They called me at 6:15am! They called to say that they are still looking into this, so no change, but they called just the same.
They fear the wrath of the trash elves! 🙂
Hey Guys, this is Troy in Colorado. I am the one that called on the Puerto Rico issue. Here is the full story, and as much info as I can give. Around the beginning of the year, we had a sale to someone in Puerto Rico that messaged us that they could not pay for the item because eBay was giving them a message that we did not ship to Puerto Rico. We looked at the sale and when we tried to send the invoice, it only gave us International Shipping as the option. We could not change this to Domestic shipping, so the cost was obviously way too high. We called eBay and the rep kept telling us that Puerto Rico was International to the US (something I have had to argue with 3 reps now and PROVE that Puerto Rico is Domestic Shipping). Eventually, the buyer asked to have the order cancelled. This has now happened to us 3 other times, the most recent in the past week.
I finally was able to get one rep to understand that this is a programming flaw that is losing us these sales (not that it is huge, as my wife and I do this full time, but still a flaw). The rep has had to be a liaison between us and the technical team, and she is not in a good spot (I told her I would love to talk to someone on the technical team directly and get her out of the middle). She said the techies told her that eBay is doing something in their programming to identify “non-continental US” shipments, so anything to Hawaii, Alaska, and US Territories are flagged the same. I told her that this made no sense, as two weeks ago we shipped to Hawaii with no problem. And I kept telling her that we have shipped to Puerto Rico in the past with Domestic Shipping with no problem.
The only thing I can think of that is triggering this is that in the eBay Site Preferences, you can ask to have an automatic note on your sale if it is “International”. I turned this on a while back as it is nice to see when shipping if something is International while we are packing. For whatever reason, these Puerto Rico shipments were flagged by that note as International, and that may have caused the issue.
I have since turned this flag off, and the rep is supposed to contact me again this week with what the issue is. It has been very frustrating, and not as much with the lost sales, but in dealing with the corporate bureaucracy (which is one reason that we left our corporate jobs and decided to do this full time). We keep having people that 1) don’t see that this is creating a problem for us and 2) keep telling with us that Puerto Rico is International!!! I literally walked a rep through the USPS site to show him the Domestic shipping from Colorado to Puerto Rico. At least he finally got it…
I have a link below to a screenshot from our last sale that I can show you that the shipping is defaulted to International for us to Puerto Rico.
Thanks for everything you guys do on the Podcast. Your podcast help me to decide that we can make a living at this full time, since you post your numbers. I was an accountant for 20+ years, so I was doing my own calculations on what it would take to do this full time, and seeing you guys posting numbers and doing this full time helped me decide to flip the switch, turn away from $100k+ per year at a job I hated, and do this full time. I’m loving owning my time now, and having a chance to see my family more. It is still a ton of work, and I keep LOTS of numbers (old accountants don’t change), but I love the work and the time!
