Shipping internacionaly

[Taffeta]

No problem. He says that he needs to pay medical bills.

That may be true, but I don't see why it justifies trying to add extra costs onto a buyer's tab. More importantly, I don't see why he's picking on people who are outside his country just because they're overseas. If he has GSP activated then he has zero justification for even mentioning higher shipping costs.

I am afraid after 20 years of dealing with idiots who think that it's ok to treat international bidders like scum, I have zero tolerance for this kind of thing. He has the GSP activated so he shouldn't be mentioning extra costs. There are none for him and there would have been more for you already. $25 is also an arbitrary amount and shows no signs of actual calculation of the cost, so it really sounds like he's just trying to make extra funds from an international person.

I won't pretend I am a huge fan of own country only auctions or of the GSP. But US only sellers are up front about what they will do, and if you bid on that as an international you probably expect resistance, cancellation, etc. If you don't want to ship internationally yourself, don't know how or can't for whatever reason (ie disability, busy job, etc), then if you have the GSP you're not actually shipping internationally. Ebay is. So that resolves the problem, even if it creates extra costs for the bidder.

It might suggest the seller doesn't understand how the GSP works, but I don't think that this is a viable answer in this case because he mentioned ebay processing it. That implies he does know, and also doesn't really explain why any PM was sent. I genuinely read this as an attempt to extract extra funds from an international bidder just because they live overseas. Using GSP means you have none of the hassles of international shipping, nor the cost, and so to me there seems like no reason any message was sent at all. All he had to do was follow Ebay's instructions and ship...sending a demand for more money seems fishy to me and I think it's definitely better that you didn't have to do this deal.

[kitkatvintage]

Sometimes eBay does sign up sellers for the GSP without telling them, so that's also a possibility.

Yes, eBay defaults to including Global Shipping Program on sellers listings unless you specifically change your selling settings not to include it. If the seller is new or inexperienced, they may not even realize that GSP was included on their listing. The seller may not know that eBay calculates an additional cost for the buyer that gets added to the domestic shipping amount he sees on his end. It may have been a case of the seller having no idea how GSP works, rather than purposely trying to scam you.

At least it sounds like the transaction was canceled, and you can move on to purchase things with clearer shipping terms.

[Galactica]

Sometimes eBay does sign up sellers for the GSP without telling them, so that's also a possibility.

Yes, eBay defaults to including Global Shipping Program on sellers listings unless you specifically change your selling settings not to include it. If the seller is new or inexperienced, they may not even realize that GSP was included on their listing. The seller may not know that eBay calculates an additional cost for the buyer that gets added to the domestic shipping amount he sees on his end. It may have been a case of the seller having no idea how GSP works, rather than purposely trying to scam you.

At least it sounds like the transaction was canceled, and you can move on to purchase things with clearer shipping terms.

Annoyingly- even when you are using one of your other auctions as a base to make a new listing-
Ebay RECHECKS the "global shipping" thing even though it will leave EVERYTHIGN ELSE the same. They really are sneaky greedy fiends.

I might have believed that of this seller-  but then the seller says that they want an extra $25 for International sales?  That sounds pretty shady to me.

[Taffeta]

I might have believed that of this seller-  but then the seller says that they want an extra $25 for International sales?  That sounds pretty shady to me.

That was my point as well.

The seller isn't ignorant of GSP though. He mentions ebay processing the transaction so he knows what it is.

I might believe he didn't know what exactly it entailed had he not mentioned it, but he did.

The other thing is that if he didn't understand the GSP and wanted extra to ship the item, then why $25? That's not a calculated amount from a postal site, it's a random and very suspiciously rounded up amount. He might be in need of money, but that doesn't stop him going to a postal website and finding out what it would cost to ship internationally.

Basically this is bad seller etiquette. It is your responsibility as a seller to understand the rules by which you are selling. Not doing so and punishing a customer for that ignorance is not okay. Even if GSP does auto-select, this seller's behaviour is fishy from start to finish.

What makes it worse is that most often this kind of treatment is experienced by a buyer trying to buy an item from another country. The biggest offenders in offensive seller behaviour are sellers in the US and here in the UK. Unfortunately if we sit and say it's just ignorance,it's no big deal, and we don't report these people, these situations do not improve. Choosing where to sell or send is a seller's right, but if you have GSP, and you know what it is, you don't add conditions to the sale which involve extra money and you don't refund and relist an item because you can't be bothered to deal with what you signed up to.

I feel pretty strongly about stuff like this and have done for years. I've basically had my fill of this kind of seller who thinks an international target is an easy target, so I still say this kind of seller should be reported and it should be for ebay to decide whether or not they acted inappropriately. The terms of the auction are what they are and it seems to me like sellers are too easily able to cancel/refund these days just because they can't be bothered, as opposed to the old days when you had to be much more stringent as it was a lot harder to do.