Pitney bowes global shipping scam

[Pherdinand]

They call it a service, i say its a scam.
I payed 48$ shipping and customs to them, to ship stg that i bought for 30$ and that would cost 20$ with a regular shipping from US to Holland (a few beseler film holders)
After it went through 6!! states to arrive to their distribution center and it stayed in transit for 2 wks, today i got it soaked, dirty and generally looking as the mail truck went over it.
Obviously theres not a single option on ebay to complain about this. Or at least i couldnt find it.
I cleaned the holders and hope they dry before they rust... took me an hour
The dutch mail put a sticker on it that they received it open and damaged.

Do you have any nice experience with ebays global shipping bullsht?
I m really pissed off...

 

[lynnb]

That's terrible.. my sympathy. I've not used the service, hoping not to use it in future after seeing this.

 

[Peter Jennings]

I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with them, but nothing that bad. Now, if I see an interesting item on eBay that ships through GSP, I skip it.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

I generally avoid Ebay GSP sellers like the plague. The only time it only makes sense to use it is for big and heavy stuff (and only because I've heard them claim it's cheaper).

GSP really is Lada service for BMW prices

 

[splitimageview]

You should be able to file a claim thru ebay.

 

[peterm1]

I have had both very good and very bad service. The bad service has usually been associated with USA and both good and bad were associated with eBay Global Shipping. Almost universally sellers in the USA demand ridiculous postage and handling prices in any event - often substantially more than the item being shipped costs to buy. I am never sure if this is due to USPS rates or the seller's policies as some sellers do have reasonable shipping options.

Two examples, first the good (well sort of good- it was still costly as hell). I bid on in a somewhat half hearted way, and surprisingly, won a Barbour jacket from a village in the midlands of England. The only option was eBay global shipping which was expensive but I figured that was OK - and they were offering express delivery. It was an expensive jacket though I got it quite cheaply, simply because I was the only bidder as it happened. Long story short it came via DHL and arrived with full tracking - in fact I got daily, sometimes twice daily, SMS updates from them and arrived in perfect condition in Australia on my door-step in not much over one week. Superb service though expensive (I think it cost about 50 UK pounds).In this case due to the value of the item purchased, its size and the speed of delivery I would class this successful service. Those efficient Germans!

Second recent example was from USA where I purchased an item from the mid-west. It was a camera lens - not expensive itself but it also was to be delivered by eBay global shipping (express shipping) at a typically quite high price for P and H - almost as much as the lens. Long story short it seemed to visit just about every state in the Union including Hawaii (in that state alone it sat for about 10 days) eventually arriving in my home state in Oz after about 3 weeks. In general this tallies exactly with the experience of the person who started this thread. Not terribly "express" given what I paid for delivery, especially by comparison with my earlier experience where an item arrived from twice the distance in one third of a time also using eBay Global Shipping. It arrived in good condition fortunately but it left me with my impressions of the USPS confirmed - hopeless by comparison with private courier companies. My annoyance was the uncertainty as much as anything else, especially given that tracking data was incomplete and vague though it was apparent when the item sat in a shipping centre for 10 days without moving. (The DHL shipping data was prompt and precise - I knew exactly where the item was and where it was going next. Whereas the shipping data for the second item was mostly very imprecise and in fact, almost derisory - such as "Awaiting shipment to next location" or "Inbound to handling centre" (no location given).

I suspect this is not wholly eBay's fault at least not directly. If their courier is good they can provide excellent service. If bad then it can be hugely expensive, slow, somewhat risky and very, very tiresome. It is also risky to them (eBay) and they should be managing it properly. Problem is they seem not to be all that interested. I should add that I find Japan and even China to be pretty good in this respect - shipping cost is more reasonable (indeed in China it's trivial or treated as a cost of the sale) and fast to Australia. Least that is my recent experience.

The result for me is that some times I avoid buying so both I and the seller and eBay miss out. And if I do buy I try to buy from locations I trust - where I have had good experience in the past. And poor old USA misses out usually as when cost of shipping is added in (and delay, and risk) it is sometimes not worth my while.

 

[Steve M.]

If it makes you feel better, you're not the only one. When I saw the prices that they wanted to ship something through their global shipping program I steered clear. They are way, way overpriced, and everyone complains about how long the service takes to get things to the buyers. It used to be worse, as their seller template would automatically enable this when I ran ads to sell stuff and you had to jump through a lot of hoops to uncheck the thing. Now it doesn't do that, and there are a LOT of people who have complained about it. But, complaining to eBay is like p***ing in the wind.

 

[benlees]

It is basically a scam- the introduction of an unnecessary middleman by a corporate partnership to "increase service". Just adds fees and delivery time to the purchaser, and the (American) seller assumes they have to use it- which they don't. I avoid any seller that uses GSP. Sadly, more and more are.

 

[tunalegs]

It's a scam to me because I can say I won't ship internationally, but then end up having somebody from overseas buy. I had an absolute nightmare with a buyer in China (wouldn't be the first time, but it's definitely the last) because of how slow the service is and the communication barrier. They tried to file a claim of item not received and ebay and paypal just gave me the run around for a couple of weeks until the item finally arrived and I had to email the buyer repeatedly for several days to close the case.

 

[shimokita]

Ouch... My only international shipping experience is with multiple packages from B&H New York to Tokyo... they use DHL and I have had zero problems. When I first started ordering from B&H the package was handed over to a local Japanese delivery service at Narita... no problems but I lost the ability to track the package. Now the Japanese leg of DHL deliveries is done by DHL or at least drivers with DHL uniforms ; ) Usually (non-expedited) delivery from NY to Tokyo is less than a week depending on what day / time of day I order.

OTOH if I send a letter via airmail using the postal system it takes over two weeks from Tokyo to New Mexico, USA... go figure.

 

[johannielscom]

GSP? Pfáh!

I've paid import charges through GSP and subsequently got hit up again by customs. Both eBay and customs pointed at the other. Happened only once, but still.

Parcels from the UK take up to 15 days to arrive in the Netherlands, where regular Royal Mail shipping gets it across in 3-5 days.

 

[icebear]

They call it a service, i say its a scam.
I payed 48$ shipping and customs to them, to ship stg that i bought for 30$ and that would cost 20$ with a regular shipping from US to Holland (a few beseler film holders)...

Obviously an annoying experience but you should have never paid that fee ($48) for something that cost $20 in the first place. 😉
Or did I get something wrong?

I hope you can use the holders after the effort you had to put in and next time you choose your seller more carefully.
Happy Holidays anyway.

 

[steveyork]

If offers simplicity, efficiency and degree of protection for the seller, but it has effectively cut down on the pool of international buyers for someone who lists on ebay. I'm told it really adds to the cost of purchase, and therefore many just say "no."

Ebay has really become an "arm's length" transaction with many poor buyers and sellers. More then a few of my sold or returned packages have magically disappeared when going overseas. Or arrive mysteriously broken. Some countries more then others.

Now, if I sell something on that platform, it's not international. Too much of a hassle. Buying too. Mostly. Stick with the home country, or continent. At least it cuts down on GAS.

But at one time, many years ago, it was an excellent platform.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Many a horror story about Ebay GSP are but a google search away.

When it was introduced in 2013 many sellers were suddenly automatically enrolled into the GSP, finding suddenly they're selling overseas and/or their buyers complaining about massive inflated shipping cost.

 

[jsrockit]

It is basically a scam- the introduction of an unnecessary middleman by a corporate partnership to "increase service". Just adds fees and delivery time to the purchaser, and the (American) seller assumes they have to use it- which they don't. I avoid any seller that uses GSP. Sadly, more and more are.

I just don't like to ship outside of the USA because I just don't want to deal with international shipping (and people ALWAYS think it is cheaper than it really is to ship something insured with tracking internationally), but I feel the GSP allows me to offer something to someone who normally wouldn't be able to bid on my item. It sucks for the buyer, but maybe in some cases it'll still be worth it. Now I live in Chile, so I no longer sell on eBay.

 

[Larry Cloetta]

eBay’s income occurs with every completed sale, not with listings. The faster sales occur, the better, as it cuts down on wasted (from their perspective) bandwidth for items that sit unsold on their site forever. The more completed transactions the better, for them. The wider the exposure of your item, the better for them, as it increases sales and speeds up turnover. Thus, the introduction of the global shipping program.
I’ve got well over a thousand transactions on eBay. When they first introduced the GSP, the “use the Global shipping Program to allow overseas buyers...etc” box was checked by default. If you failed to notice that, your item would be advertised and available worldwide, whether you wanted it to be or not. I spent some time trying to decipher exactly what the program would mean, in practice, by wading through several pages of obscurantist legalese that eBay offers by way of explanation. Yes, it appears to offer some amount of seller protection insofar as the seller is off the hook for verifiable shipping damage, but still not off the hook for unsupported or fictitious claims of pretty much anything else the buyer wants to claim. And, the seller has no idea in advance what the shipping charges will be, as those are out of the seller’s control. But, as is well known, they are strangely high, and the shipping method for any given sale is variable.
I have shipped overseas occasionally, but never use the GSP, for those reasons.

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

I've bought via the GSP just twice, and certainly from US to UK it's SLOW and not cheap. However, one was a Topcor lens advertised as in good condition with no haze, fungus or separation, but it arrived so full of all three it was unusable. At least I was refunded all the customs and shipping charges by Ebay within hours of raising a case, so I didn't end up a penny out of pocket.

 

[benlees]

I just don't like to ship outside of the USA because I just don't want to deal with international shipping (and people ALWAYS think it is cheaper than it really is to ship something insured with tracking internationally), but I feel the GSP allows me to offer something to someone who normally wouldn't be able to bid on my item. It sucks for the buyer, but maybe in some cases it'll still be worth it. Now I live in Chile, so I no longer sell on eBay.

I'm not sure I understand this. USPS, like all postal services ship internationally. Is this not true? I've received many parcels from the USPS with zero problems. If you accurately show the price of shipping then the buyer can decide if it's worth it. With GPS the buyer pays twice: USPS Int rates AND GPS. It is clearly a corporate snugglefest between ebay and Pitney Bowes.

 

[Pherdinand]

Yeah i was watching ebay for these beseler holders for a while. As beseler is a US producer (was?) theres practically no other place to buy old holders. So after six months or so, i pulled the trigger on this lot as it had both 6x6 and 6x9 which i was looking for, and some more, for a decent price (not as the usual 100$+ per piece NOS holders ).
My only option would be to file a complaint against the seller and/or return the items which s not the point, and it is not his fault so i wont do that.
The seller repiled saying he will file a complaint. Not sure if that is possible tho.
Anyway.
Glad to see i m not the only one hating gsp🙂)

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Oh I hate it!
With a passion!
And a vengeance!