Is eBay's GSP getting worse?

[Tulips]

I was wondering if we could get a little discussion going about eBay's Global Shipping Program and it's future... the thought of it taking over is scary. I had kind of hoped that sellers would have turned their back on it by now.

I've all but given up buying internationally on eBay because of how insane postage prices have become. Sellers who have changed over to the GSP for their own ease, are they experiencing a loss of sales or do they think it's worth it? I certainly don't.

I browse eBay a few times a week, and I see so many listings that have astronomical postage prices that I cannot even fathom how! I saw one of 5 blind bags with a postage price over $100AUD, how is that possible?! The last time I bought something through the GSP it arrived no sooner than normal, the tracking was in fact more difficult to navigate, and it arrived damaged but I couldn't lodge a claim because I couldn't find anywhere to do so without dragging the seller into the confusion because it honestly wasn't their fault.

Sorry for ranting but I honestly wish there was a way to end the GSP, put them out of business so they never repackage a MOC into a too small box ever again. Is this the beginning of a dystopian online shopping future?

[Baby Sugarberry]

The problem is most of eBay's sellers and buyers are all in the US, so the GSP doesn't affect them much.  Personally I think it's atrocious and won't buy from anyone who uses it, but I doubt the loss of some international customers makes much of an impact in total number of sales for most.   

[banditpony]

Eh. I just sold two ponies to Australia via GSP and it only cost around $15USD for my buyer. (Unsure what that is in* AUD)

TBH, I've only had good experiences with it. No one wants to pay priority international.

I notice a ton of people are using 3rd party middleman now.

Eta: a word

[bluerose9978]

Eh. I just sold two ponies to Australia via GSP and it only cost around $15USD for my buyer. (Unsure what that is AUD)

I believe AUD is Australian Dollars.

I don't use the GSP and I'm sorry for all the trouble it has caused so many people. I know some international buyers have started to use their own U.S. go-between shippers and that may be the answer for you, Tulips. They'll have eBay sellers ship to a U.S. address and then when they incur enough items they'll have this service repack and ship to their final destination for a small fee. It's like how the GSP should be run.

[banditpony]

Eh. I just sold two ponies to Australia via GSP and it only cost around $15USD for my buyer. (Unsure what that is AUD)

I believe AUD is Australian Dollars.

Right. I meant I didn't know the conversion... I forgot a word. It's too hard to type on a phone. :/

[Duenia]

I buy internationally frequently, G2s are hard to find in the US lol. I refuse to buy in most cases where the Global Shipping Program is used. The lack of combined shipping drives me nuts to start with. I've personally used it once (as a buyer) because this one the one odd case where the price with the GSP was actually about the same as it would be to ship untracked. But it actually ended up taking longer to get here and the tracking was super messed up.

[Tulips]

In the most recent case of me being disappointed by being unable to buy something because of the GSP it was actually a UK based seller, it's not just US sellers using it anymore.

My only experiences with the GSP have been poor in one way or another. The first time the cost was great, but they damaged my item when they repackaged it (slashed it open with box cutter, cutting into the item inside). The next time the seller scammed me because they couldn't combine GSP shipping and promised to post combined and refund me the difference -  they combined the postage, then pocketed the extra and never gave me the promised partial refund, which eBay couldn't care less about as long as they got their cut.

The majority of listings I see from the US that use the GSP have insane shipping prices.

Example: If someone can explain to me how it costs $80US/$110AUD to post these (not overnight, though I'd love to see someone try to break the laws of time and space to get something to me same-day from the US)... well, I don't know what I'd do. Are they posting them in a solid gold box encrusted with diamonds, delivered by either an African or European swallow? lol
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(picture from ebay listing)

I don't know anymore. Postage prices across the board are going up, I'll admit that it's not just the GSP but they do appear to be the worst offender. Fair enough, they make it possible for sellers to post internationally without the stress of filling out forms, and give them peace of mind, but I'd rather reasonable postage prices. (Which I can still find from some European countries, Germany to Australia is by far the best I've found. It costs the same to get something posted all the way from Germany as it does from the next suburb over here, crazy!)

edit: Argh, I'm just ranting about something that's not gonna change. I'm going to bed before I get any more wound up. 

[Taffeta]

I don't think the GSP will take over for a while yet, but I think it is the easy option for a lot of sellers who want to make maximum money for minimum fuss. Of course the sellers are not benefitting from skimming postage profits, but it means they don't have to go to the post office or think too hard about custom forms and the like, which I suppose is the appeal.

I won't use it, personally - I am old fashioned and I have been taking my parcels to the PO for twenty years now. I don't imagine I am going to change. I have also seen a rise in the cases of it being used in the UK which makes me sad because in my opinion the going-to-the-PO run is part and parcel of selling abroad. And I also feel like if I can take the trouble to go to the post office, being that all my selling is done from home, where there are nine buses a day, total and I have no other way of getting to a PO because my navigation debars me driving, most of the other UK sellers who use GSP could do their own shipping, but don't bother. Of course, there are some exceptions to that rule, but in general I think the rise in UK sellers using GSP is laziness and self-convenience more than anything else.

With the GSP from the US, I can't speak as a seller but as a buyer I think it has pros and cons. The cons are that the custom charges are always inflated beyond the actual price in the case of an expensive item. I remember seeing an item with an estimated custom fee of $100 or so USD when the import duty at our border would have been about $25 maximum based on the value of the auction. I consider that morally wrong. Those auctions I won't bid on. GSP items also tend to take twice as long to reach me (2 weeks is average for what is normally 1 week post from the US) and there is the repackaging lottery. However on the positive side, sometimes it actually works out cheaper on bigger/heavier items like lots. I have paid $20ish for shipping with no custom fee on an item before that might well have cost me double that with priority shipping. It is occasional but sometimes it does actually bear out.

This is true of UK sellers too, but sometimes it's a case of GSP or the seller won't ship internationally. And while I have my own views of those sellers in both cases, having the possibility of buying the item is maybe better than being denied based on location. I think it's kind of sad that twenty years have passed and yet we still haven't moved on in terms of opening up international selling to a better level, and that is partly the sellers but also partly the hassles involved in international postage. I think a lot of sellers use GSP because they are automatically covered by ebay if something goes wrong - if ebay loses their item, ebay is liable, whereas if it's the post in general, it's harder to get compensation if you have to issue a refund for a lost item.

The sellers that annoy me - and they are entirely in the US, I am afraid - are the ones who put up the shipping price to an unreasonable level and are not using the GSP. For example, $50 to ship a backcard. I realise the US rates have changed recently, but then again I had a MIB pony shipped to me safely for less than that recently, so I know that you can ship a backcard from the US to the UK and almost certainly with tracking for less than $50. Putting that shipping price on the item is either trying to get extra money from shipping or it demonstrates such an extreme mistrust of selling internationally that they have piled every single insurance on it that really isn't needed. Who sends a $5 backcard with a high level of compensation insurance and tracking and so on? I think those sellers really just want to put people like us off. They don't want to ship internationally, so they pump up the shipping price to drive us away. I would actually rather take the GSP seller in those cases, because they can't pump up the shipping price.

I of course don't know the problem to Australia and I have no idea how UK GSP works for a buyer from abroad. Postage has gone up here as well but it is not difficult to ship small items to Australia for much less than $100 AUD, so I am unsure what the problem is there.

It also isn't hard to ship an item through Royal Mail to AUS. It's the same as shipping it to anywhere else outside the EU. The thing is I think that when we leave the EU, it is going to mean more people refusing to ship outside of the UK, because we are highly likely at this point to require custom forms again to ship to those countries, and people don't want to be bothered with them. But I have a supply of custom forms here in my room, and my packages are all labelled and marked up before I take them to the PO, so I literally just have to put them on the scale, get the receipt and pay the cost. I can calculate the amount online and I have scales to weigh the box which are really good, so I can also give my buyer an accurate quote. The issue only becomes major if it exceeds the size/weight limits and has to go Parcelforce, as their prices are insanity, but small items? Providing you can get to the post office and local transport allows, it really isn't that much work if you are prepared and if someone is selling a lot, they ought to be prepared. I dislike this idea that someone should expect maximum profit for minimum work, thus putting an extra burden on the buyer.

If GSP is the long term future they need to make some serious changes, such as not repackaging items because of the risk of damage, and speeding up their delivery. I also want to see the customs fees represent actual border costs, rather than inflated charges. Otherwise, while I hate GSP and won't ever use it as a seller, I think it's not the only abuse that international buyers (by which I mean anyone buying from a country outside of their own) have to suffer in a world that really ought to be more globally friendly.

It's also food for thought that this is an endemic problem with US auctions and becoming one with the UK, but not from other countries. I don't know if other countries have the program rolled out there, but I think it reflects badly on both those countries that there is such a rise in dependency on the GSP to do everything, especially since in most cases the GSP does everything less well than basic normal posting.

[glitterball]

I agree that the GSP is too expensive.

My experience is in buying certain craft items from the USA that are not for sale in the UK - Global Priority mail costs are expensive enough (oh, the happy memories of how cheap postage used to be 15 years ago...) but the added levels of fiddling + diddling that the GSP has makes the experience as an end-user purchaser not so great.

Firstly - the cost, (GSP fee + postage) is often more than the item cost

Secondly - the delay as the item goes through all the levels of postage status,
i.e. being sent to the Pitney Bowes repackaging centre, sitting in a cage somewhere until they get around to processing it, custom fee payment, repackaging, moving through the various airports, arriving in the UK, waiting a couple of days until it gets posted locally.

Thirdly - the painful tracking
So tracking links are sent but they do not actually show much info - then links within links to supposedly show tracking status with third-party delivery teams again show little or not-yet-updated info. Graaaarrrrr!

I sometimes see ponies for sale (in the USA) that I am interested in buying but as soon as I see the GSP and fees for UK delivery, I will lose interest. I have a friend in the USA who I sometimes ask to buy stuff for me; if my husband travels there with work (or if one of his colleagues visits the UK) I get them to bring it over for me, but I cannot expect them to fill their limited cabin bag space with 20 ponies! 

[Stormness_1]

As a fellow Aussie, I feel for you - I find that with big stuff, the GSP is the bomb. But when it comes to small items, it's absolutely LUDICROUS.

$60+AUD is ridiculous to ship a blind-bag sized/weight item, ESPECIALLY via GSP, where it takes up to next to no space in a bulk private import. I call BS on this! We have the most expensive shipping in the world, and it barely costs US that much to send a stand-alone package, tracked, to the most expensive regions... Pitney Bowes are rip-off merchants.

I actually used to buy from the UK a lot, as it often costs less to get a pony internationally via royal mail that it does domestically via AusPost! Now with the GSP though, most sellers go that route, and that packs on an extra $10-40 AUD per order. Not happening for a $5 pony. The UK postal system is super simple too. I shipped most of my Ponycon stuff home from Leeds last year, and it was super easy to do, and cheap as compared to home - the biggest problem was finding a big enough box, I ended up shipping in 3 boxes!

[Taffeta]

The UK postal system is super simple too. I shipped most of my Ponycon stuff home from Leeds last year, and it was super easy to do, and cheap as compared to home - the biggest problem was finding a big enough box, I ended up shipping in 3 boxes!

Unfortunately most of the people too lazy to use it are apparently not smart enough to figure out taking a box, putting it on the scales and paying for it. Sigh.

Well, I am staying old school about it. I figure that if I can post stuff home from Japan in Japanese using their very specific demands for their custom forms then I can definitely get a bus and go to my local post office and make sure a box gets to another country safely. I had no idea that the shipping to Aus was so much worse on GSP than it even is to the UK, mostly. Goodness knows how they justify that. Mind you, when something comes into the country with a charge, most of that amount goes on handling fees, so I suspect maybe the same is true with the GSP. Making people pay extra for a service that ought to come as standard with shipping an item - essentially moving a package from place a to place b.

[alkevin]

I just saw an ebay list for stickers and the seller asks 26 dollars for 6 stickers.

[Ringlets]

I loathe GSP, always have , but now more peeps using it so it's more of an issue . I'm in the UK and I find that its easy to pack, weigh and post parcels myself and prefer to do so knowing that the item is well packed and wont arrive in pieces! shipping to other countries from the Uk is easy thankfully as the customs forms aren't complicated.
 Personally I've only ever bought one or two items from international sellers who use it and I was so.not.happy. with the re-packing and cramming into smaller cheap packaging, hardly any protection for my items, really poor attempt at taping the box together, so it was gaping open when it arrived on one of my items etc.   The customs fees they add are ridiculous too.
So As a buyer I avoid GSP sellers where possible and if I cant find what I want without GSP then I ask a US (or other international)  friend to buy for me instead. As a seller I never use GSP and never will.  I only charge exact postage costs, and I pack very securely - which cant be said for GSP. 

[frizzycat]

I don't buy from sellers who use GSP, because it's so expensive. There's a thread dedicated to the horrors of GSP on another toy forum I'm on. Stories of how dollhouses arrive broken due to Pitney Bowes repackaging everything sloppily makes me extremely reluctant to give it a go, especially for big stuff.

[Duenia]

I don't buy from sellers who use GSP, because it's so expensive. There's a thread dedicated to the horrors of GSP on another toy forum I'm on. Stories of how dollhouses arrive broken due to Pitney Bowes repackaging everything sloppily makes me extremely reluctant to give it a go, especially for big stuff.

I actually feel really thankful of my one GSP experience because of this. But I know I got super lucky with it. My seller made sure that it was packaged very securely but also tight enough that there was no point in repacking it. I think all the bright orange fragile tape also scared them off lol (even though the item totally isn't actually fragile). It was very clearly in the seller's packaging when I opened it.

The repackaging does scare me quite a bit though. If I know something is fragile or I'm doing say MOCs I generally try to find someone local who can help me, or I just don't bid.