eBay Community Chat May 2023 - International Shipping
UPDATE 5-10-23
eBay's international shipping team was on hand to answer questions about the new International Shipping program in today's chat, fielding questions about returns, chargebacks, and features as well as taking feedback on suggestions for future updates.
One seller asked about limitations on shipping to Singapore.
A couple of sellers have had issues with sales to Singapore. Some of their EIS listings include Singapore and some of their listings not not. Within those specific listings, Singapore is not on the blocked list of countries, nor is on the "ships to" list either. Are there some limitations on Singapore (for instance, the same type of item but different values)?
The shipping team answered:
There are several filters in place that limit items based on price, category, and restrictions. This is to assist Sellers that may not completely understand shipping limitations. Because of this, some items from the same seller can be shipped to a specific country, while others listings from the same Seller may be restricted. Example - Calvin Klein perfume is restricted from UK imports, but not restricted to CA, AU or FR.
Another seller asked about chargebacks, and sellers will be happy to hear the answer.
How does EIS handle a Chargeback? Does Ebay still cover them, meaning the seller isn't involve nor is their money at risk?
eBay covers Chargebacks and does not seek reimbursement from a seller in the event of a Chargeback.
Sellers who want to opt out of EIS on the listing level are still being told the only way to do so is to exclude countries, but the shipping team says they are still working on a better solution for the future.
currently EIS is all listings or none. will we eventually be able to specify on an individual listing that I do not want to ship it internationally as I was able to with GSP?
To remove a single active listing from eBay International Shipping, you can exclude all countries except the US in your shipping preferences.
- Go to the My eBay dropdown menu and select “Selling.”
- Within your Active listings, click on the listing you'd like to update.
- Click “Revise listing” and scroll down to the Shipping section.
- If you already have exclusions set, navigate to your Preferences and to Excluded locations. Then select all the locations under the International
OR
- If you don’t have any exclusions set, within the Shipping section click “See shipping options” and select the toggle to the right of Excluded locations. Navigate to your Preferences and to Excluded locations. Then select all the locations under the international section. Select “Done” in the top-right corner of ‘Excluded locations’ window. If the excluded locations box shows “Algeria (+169)”, your listing will be excluded from eBay International Shipping.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Revise it.”
We are currently working on making this process easier, but it will most likely be based on country exclusions. However, the seller experience is going to be much smoother.
There was also a question about providing sellers with data about sales trends and hot items by country to assist with sourcing for international markets.
ebay is obviously collecting a lot of data about which items sell well internationally. Many of my items, for example, are probably not particularly hot overseas, but a few things I have, I know they have (at least in the past) had a pretty good market in Japan.
Does ebay have any plans to share any of this data with us, so we can try to source items (especially used and vintage items) that are currently popular overseas?
The shipping team responded:
We currently do not have plans to share this type of data, but it is a great suggestion and we can bring it to our Product Analytics team to review the possibility of adding recommendations to the listing flow as Terapeak does with pricing attributes.
But that didn't really answer the seller's question - they were looking for information that could be helpful when sourcing, not as part of the listing flow.
Thanks. While that would be somewhat helpful, it would not be helpful for SOURCING...If I'm in the listing flow, I've ALREADY sourced it. I'm talking about providing information that would be helpful BEFORE I source/buy inventory.
Terpeak does provide some info similar to this, but of course, none of it is set up to gauge international interest.
For example, at least in the past, I'm not sure about today, Japan was a strong market for vintage milk glass coffee mugs. ebay could parse the data to see if that is still true.
There are items I would buy for resale if I knew a strong market existed overseas (even if the market is weak here)...and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. This sort of information would be valuable and would help us increase cross border trade.
So, that's what I'm talking about....give us data we can consult before we buy inventory....does that help clarify this?
The answer from the shipping team doesn't make much sense as the data being requested wouldn't be seller specific, but more general sitewide search and trend data like is already shown in Terapeak, so presumably there would be no legal implications to worry about.
Understood and thank you for the clarity. This would need to be reviewed internally to ensure there are no legal implications to sharing data from other Sellers. We will take your suggestion back to our internal teams to review. Thank you!
And finally, a couple questions about returns:
When an EIS buyer opens a return, does the return message go to straight to the Shipping program or does the seller receive notification as well?
If the seller has a "no returns" policy, does EIS honor a buyer remorse return and purchase the item from the buyer?
Does EIS liquidate returns in the buyer's marketplace, are do they return to the US?
When a return is opened the seller is notified but an email is generated letting the sellers know they do not need to handle the return, we will take care of it.
All items sold through eIS will have a 30 day return policy, regardless of the seller return policy. Since the sellers are not receiving the returns nor financially responsible for the refunds on return requests.
All returned items are sent to a shipping hub where they are liquidated. The items are sold to 3rd party liquidators.
I asked for details on how returns are handled, since a recent eBay for Business podcast episode seemed to indicate eBay themselves would be reselling returned items on the platform - raising concerns about whether they would be competing with sellers.
Question about returns in the new international program:
In a recent episode of the eBay for Business podcast, Director of Exports Chad Stewart indicated returns would be resold on eBay, but he wasn't specific about who would be selling them.
Chad: …Just to give you some context of how this works, when a buyer opens up a return request and that information comes to us, we'll accept a return. We offer 30 days global returns. Those items come back to our hub in Chicago, at which point we are then preparing those items to be sold again on the site. So those items will not be destroyed unless obviously they're somehow come back to us destroyed. But the vast majority of these items end up just finding another home with a buyer within the United States as we try to list those items on the site as well.
Griff: So when you say the site, you mean eBay?
Chad: eBay.
Are these returns being sold directly by eBay or is eBay working with a 3rd party or liquidator to sell these returns?
If a 3rd party, who is it and how can we visit their store to see what they have for sale?
If eBay is selling them directly, how does that match up with eBay's long-standing claims (echoed recently in media interviews by eBay VP Seller Experience Xiaodi Zhang) that eBay doesn't compete against its sellers?
Liquidated items are transferred to a 3rd party approved vendor, who sells items in their brick and mortar establishment or on eBay through their approved Seller account.
Once the item is sold, eBay takes ownership of the item and packages that cannot be shipped forward, returned for issues or are considered restricted are transferred to this vendor. This is not considered direct competition as eBay is not directly reselling the item.
I was a bit surprised by the part about the items being sold at brick and mortar locations instead, because further in the podcast Chad had specifically said the items would be resold on eBay and he and Griff discussed that sellers could purchase the items back if they wanted to (for sentimental reasons, etc.).
Chad specifically said "we" are then selling those items on eBay in the future - so if eBay isn't doing the selling, was "we" just a mistake here?
You're saying the items would go to an approve 3rd party vendor - will there be more than one and if so, how would a seller know which one it went to if they wanted to purchase the item back?
Also, if that 3rd party vendor has the option to sell it in the brick and mortar store instead of on eBay, again how would a seller know and be able to purchase it back if they wanted to?
Or is what Chad and Griff were discussing not really how it works?
A seller will not be informed which vendor the item goes to or if it was sold as an individual, bulk or brick and mortar. Chad and Griff are correct, that a Seller can buy the item back, but only if they find it on the site if it is posted by the liquidation vendor.
eBay will not inform Sellers of its location for sale as many of these items will be liquidated overseas and will not be returning to the US. Items posted on eBay by the liquidation vendor will be lower value items and will be DDU transactions. DDP and high value items will be liquidated overseas in bulk and Sellers will not see these on eBay as they are sold to licensed resellers by the liquidator.
Keep in mind the Seller keeps their original transaction and liquidated items will not be charged against their account (refunds), these are handled by eBay.
That was it for the community chat - do you still have questions about eBay International Shipping? Let us know in the comments below!
It's time once again for eBay to reveal the topic of the monthly community chat and...once again, it's all about the "new" eBay International Shipping program.
Join eBay staff on Wednesday, May 10 at 1:00 pm PT to chat about the new eBay International Shipping program. Don’t forget to prepare your questions beforehand, as the shipping team will be available to answer them all.
Please get your questions in before 2:00 pm PT on May 10 when submissions close. eBay staff will then work on addressing any unanswered queries that remain.
While I understand eBay is moving quickly to include more sellers in the program, they literally just had a monthly chat on this topic in March - are they just running out of ideas at this point?
Stay tuned for coverage of the chat and if you can't make it in real time, let us know in the comments below what questions you have about eBay International Shipping!
