TOPIC:

Jonny wrote:

nodtec wrote:

...What I do know is the last lot of bits would have cost $39 to send via Global ripping, the seller also agreed with me and just posted them.......$6.

That price differential makes sense when you think about what goes in to it - unpacking, repacking, onward shipping, paying import duties up front, charging a fee to do that ... the question is whether that is fair or reasonable ...

I've no proof of that last one (handling fee) BTW, but all things being equal, you've got to assume eBay had a profit motive - and all those import duty processing fees going towards someone else's bottom line smells like one to me.

In order to promote discussion here, I would like to play devil's advocate. I am not supporting the GSP or ebay's implementation of it (enrolling people without asking them seems particularly underhand), but I would like to try to put their side of the argument.

The primary function of any business is to make a profit, so ebay certainly would have had a profit motive (either directly or indirectly) for promoting the GSP. I also believe they are trying to facilitate international trade (thereby increasing potential customer base for an item, so allowing it to sell more quickly and/or for more, so increasing turnover, so increasing fees and profit).
As JR said, there is a cost associated with each one of those stages of the shipment and the business must cover those costs in order to stay in business.
That said, one would hope that an organisation such as ebay should be able negotiate very significant volume discounts on shipping costs, so should be able to pass a saving on to its customers while still making a profit. However, as Nodtec's post suggests, the actual postage part of the total cost might not be very significant, so any reduction here would not make much difference to the overall cost. Ebay would not be able to do anything about the VAT and duty elements of the total, so must be careful to charge those up front in full in order to avoid making a loss.
So, you are not comparing like for like: the $39 includes all possible duties and taxes, whereas the $6 is just the postage cost and you risk having to pay extra on import.
I wonder what the total cost of Nodtec's import would have been if Customs had stopped it and applied the correct VAT and duty charges.

As a side note, I import goods from Taiwan (among other places) for my business. When I first started the supplier used to send them by EMS (Chinese equivalent of Parcel Force I think) and most of the time, the goods would be delivered without being stopped by Customs. If a parcel was stopped, I would have to go to the Parcel Force depot and pay the charges before they would release the parcel. Paying the VAT was not too much of a problem as my company is VAT registered and I can claim it back.
After a while I found that more and more parcels were being stopped which was becoming inconvenient and delayed deliveries, so I decided to open an account with UPS and use them instead.
UPS pay the VAT and duties and invoice me along with the shipping costs. The shipping charges are quite a lot more expensive and I have to pay duty and an admin fee every time, but deliveries are quicker and I am now complying fully with the law.
I have a theory that HMRC monitor imports and a look more carefully at regular importers. This would explain why the "hit rate" went up with time.

Why do they unpack it, the post office don't. What if stuff goes missing, who do you blame, the sender or the monkeys in the shipping company?

I don't know why they unpack it. This would seem to leave them open to all sorts of problems.

Edit: Reading a couple of threads about experiences of the US GSP, I think we would be wise to avoid it, especially on low value items that are not likely to attract import VAT and duties. If nothing else, it adds unnecessary complication to the shipping process and added complication will usually mean added cost.
The threads reckon that the freight handlers' (Pitney Bowes in the US) charge is $5, which compares favourably with the £8 RM charge.

It also seems that if an item arrives damaged or does not arrive at all, you MUST go through the Resolution Centre procedure as it is the only way to get the GSP charges refunded. The seller never received these charges, so cannot refund them.
Furthermore, so long as the item arrives safely at the GSP sorting hub, the seller is protected from claims for damage or missing items.
Let's just hope that everyone claims through the correct channels and ebay or their carrier has to foot the bill, so that this programme becomes economically unviable.

edit 2: Another, more cynical point to note is that if ebay can persuade/force the buyer to pay import VAT via Paypal rather than direct to the Royal Mail, they will receive Paypal fees on that part of the transaction (Paypal being owned by ebay).

Edit 3: From one of the eBay forum threads:

From pages.ebay.com/...#protected

How sellers are protected
...
You aren't responsible for item loss or damage that occurs after the item is forwarded by the US shipping center. Once an item has been forwarded by the US shipping center, you won't be responsible for refunding the buyer if an eBay Money Back Guarantee or PayPal Purchase Protection case is filed against you for one of the following reasons:

• A buyer claims an item isn't received or
• A package is damaged in transit

As one poster observed:

You can be quids in with a slightly damaged item as you will get a full refund with no need to return the damaged item.

Every buyer who gets an item damaged in transit should start a Paypal claim for item not as described. THe seller will not suffer a loss, the refund comes from the GSP.

I would not be surprised if the claims rate for damage steadily mounts as people realise that damage, real or imaginary, is the way to a free item.

I'm just an old fossil so a lot of this goes right over my head, but the main thing I don't understand is why are they charging tax's and duties on mail? Over the last 30 years I've bought what would amount to tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff from nearly every corner of the world and except for one order of parts from minispares UK, I've never paid one cent in duties or taxes on an item. I paid import duties on the MS UK order because the value was over the $1000. As far as I know, if I keep the value of the item below $999.99, I pay nothing, so why am I paying extra on a $5 second hand part?
I realise each country has different rules and regulations but surely there's some sort of sanity involved. If I buy a bit from Japan on ebay, the seller wacks it in an envelope and posts it to me, costs me,say $5 post. If I Want to buy buy the same part from US, it's $35 post through the Global Ripping Co. If I'm lucky enough to be dealing with a seller with half a brain, they send it via US postal service, which by the way is still dearer at about double.
While I'm ranting on, someone might be able to explain why if I post an item to say the UK, the post cost is say $20 for that item, then the buyer says it's wrong and is sending it back, the cost from UK to Aus is $40. Doesn't make sense to me, it involves the exact same logistics. (I think thats what they call it)

nodtec wrote:

I'm just an old fossil so a lot of this goes right over my head, but the main thing I don't understand is why are they charging tax's and duties on mail? Over the last 30 years I've bought what would amount to tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff from nearly every corner of the world and except for one order of parts from minispares UK, I've never paid one cent in duties or taxes on an item. I paid import duties on the MS UK order because the value was over the $1000. As far as I know, if I keep the value of the item below $999.99, I pay nothing, so why am I paying extra on a $5 second hand part?
I realise each country has different rules and regulations but surely there's some sort of sanity involved. If I buy a bit from Japan on ebay, the seller wacks it in an envelope and posts it to me, costs me,say $5 post. If I Want to buy buy the same part from US, it's $35 post through the Global Ripping Co. If I'm lucky enough to be dealing with a seller with half a brain, they send it via US postal service, which by the way is still dearer at about double.
While I'm ranting on, someone might be able to explain why if I post an item to say the UK, the post cost is say $20 for that item, then the buyer says it's wrong and is sending it back, the cost from UK to Aus is $40. Doesn't make sense to me, it involves the exact same logistics. (I think thats what they call it)

Ten, five or even three years ago, it always seemed to me that getting stuff sent from the US of A to the UK was horrifically expensive, and at least twice would it would be to send the same thing from the UK to the US.

While the cost of sending small stuff (letters) and big stuff (whole kits) has I'm sure increased by an inflation-busting amount, it's the in between stuff (jiffy bags to shoe boxes) where the biggest increase has been seen - I'd left something in the A5 jiffy bag it arrived in a couple of ago before digging it out the other day, the cost of posting within the UK with a signature was 1.20 GBP, it'd be three times that now, Royal Mail seemingly to me at least to be making up (and then some) for decades of mismanagement off the back of the increase in eBay use.

What I'm trying to say is it may very well be that the price of sending something from the UK to Australia may well be "reasonable" (especially with tracking & signature), and it might be that the Japanese and Aus post (and HK, and others) are overdue an "adjustment" (i.e. doubling or more) of prices soon



Re UK imports, it seems to have gone from it being very rare for anything to get intercepted, to anything in a box being charged 20% ("Value Added Tax") of the declared value (or a figure plucked out of the air if they don't believe it or it's not declared), 20% of the cost of shipping it (again, often seemingly plucked out of the air), then if the the resulting figure is over 3 GBP, the recipient is charged that plus a handling fee of 8 or 13 GBP.

Again it may be that the 1K AUD threshold could be considered unduly lenient & is ripe for exploitation, sorry, overdue an adjustment


Surely eBay's GSP takes account of local import taxation rules, I don't believe anyone would have signed off on charging for nonexistent taxes, it's just too blatant. No, I think your hypothetical 35 bucks are getting spend on unpacking, repacking, handling fees and shipping costs through their "preferred partners". And if you hear "volume discounts not being passed on to consumers" or even "kickbacks" in that last point, well, I won't be the one to argue with you.



I seem to have gone from anger to fatalism here

[quote="Martin Bell" post=31603...

Edit 3: From one of the eBay forum threads:

From pages.ebay.com/...#protected

How sellers are protected
...
You aren't responsible for item loss or damage that occurs after the item is forwarded by the US shipping center. Once an item has been forwarded by the US shipping center, you won't be responsible for refunding the buyer if an eBay Money Back Guarantee or PayPal Purchase Protection case is filed against you for one of the following reasons:

• A buyer claims an item isn't received or
• A package is damaged in transit

... [/quote]


I see a "weasel out" clause there - if the _package_ is damaged it's their fault, but if an _item_ is damaged, it's _not_ their fault?

So, if I'm reading it right, if they unpack it, loose something then pack it up again nicely, it's not their fault?
I still can't see why , with all today's technology, they have to unpack it.

nodtec wrote:

So, if I'm reading it right, if they unpack it, loose something then pack it up again nicely, it's not their fault? ...

I don't know if that's policy, but it's certainly what's being reported

So when you win then pay for an item it us my understanding that the seller receives the amount for the item and part of the postage fee for them to ship the item to the freight forwarder in their country, of course the remainder of the postage is given directly to the freight company? With that then how does the seller know where to post the item to? (as in the freight company) do they receive an email from ebay or the freight company?

andyaus wrote:

So when you win then pay for an item it us my understanding that the seller receives the amount for the item and part of the postage fee for them to ship the item to the freight forwarder in their country, of course the remainder of the postage is given directly to the freight company? With that then how does the seller know where to post the item to? (as in the freight company) do they receive an email from ebay or the freight company?

When you pay for the item, postage and import tax. Paypal send the item price and the postage to the seller and then send the tax to Pitney bowes, who send a cut of the profits to the tax men around the world to allow the parcel into the country. Paypal send out the normal invoice/delivery addresses to the seller who sticks it in the post. I think