eBay Shipping Price/Changing Terms

Selling from here in the US, I merely enter in the weight of the packaged item I'm selling along with the shipping service, and along with the Global Shipping Program, anyone from anywhere in the world can see the cost of shipping the prospective item to their front stoop. Is this not the case when selling from Europe...?

I made a purchase a few days ago from the UK on an item that stated £8 shipping to the US, which works out to $12 or $14. Along with my payment, I sent a cordial 2-sentence message thanking him for offering the item. The next day I got a less-than-friendly response admonishing me for not following the directions of contacting him before completing the purchase, and he advised he would get back to me with an updated shipping charge to the US when he gets around to it.

Harrumph!

In fairness, I did go back and sift through the various distracting color swatches and ad copy in his buy-it-now auction to find "contact me for a shipping quote before making the purchase" buried in the fine print. Why the charade? Is the eBay system in Europe different, whereby shipping costs to each country can't automatically be tallied by virtue of the weight & service? It does clearly say under the shipping/payments tab, "Shipping to the US: £8," with an estimated delivery time of 5-20 business days.

Anyway, the item I intended to buy is available through eBay elsewhere in Europe for about the same price I'd paid this gent (and yes: I checked to confirm no fine print about the shipping costs), so I sent him a kind reply apologizing for the hassle I've caused him, and I told him to just go ahead and kick my money back so we can undo the transaction. I heard nothing back, so yesterday I sent him another apology and another request to cancel the transaction.

Radio silence.

No tracking number has been posted, so what do I do? Wait a month to see if it shows up or not?

Thanks...

 

Contact eBay.

 

The Global Shipping program has caused massive headaches for many. Along with generally higher shipping costs, it also absolutely adds duty fees and an extra couple of extra steps to the shipping process which translate to delays in delivery.

For this reason, some sellers bypass it altogether by asking buyers to contact them first after which a specific shipping charge can be invoiced to the buyer.

 

I used the global shipping thing once for something I sold and it worked fine going to another country

 

It is not mandatory for any seller on eBay to have the G.S.P option enabled, so the seller knew what he was doing I would assume. Otherwise it makes no sense to show it to the "international" buyers. I have purchased and sold many items via the eBay GSP without this kind of experience and I can bet you this seller had no idea he had GSP enabled and when you emailed him it confused him as he is now thinking he has to do extra work and also pay more shipping for international etc. The GSP was created exactly to take care of these headaches for the seller - he just needs to ship it to the local eBay GSP address and they would take care of the rest.

 

The Global Shipping program is an American "innovation", I don't know if UK eBay even has an equivalent.

 

What I'm not understanding is why it specifically states in the shipping & payments tab section that shipping will be £8 to the US, via Royal Mail Economy (I think) with a delivery time of 5-20 days. Why bother explicitly stating that stuff if it doesn't mean anything?

 

It could be that is the most they are allowed to state. In the US, I think the most you can say for standard mail for a media item like books is $4.00, and I have seen Japanese dealers in particular who list postage (from Japan!) at $4.00 so they can get their listing on the US .com site, and then state the actual higher shipping costs in the text. Or it could be that the guy is a flake.

 

I did call into eBay on this, and the phone rep told me the seller has 72 hours from my formal cancel request--which will be tomorrow--to either ship the item at the price I paid, or to refund the money. The rep offered that the seller is in multiple violations of eBay policy, including negotiating a stated shipping price, and writing that potential buyers must contact him first to make sure item hasn't been sold on another platform. For future reference--and as I suspected--the seller cannot ask me to pay anything more for shipping than what has been stated under the shipping/payments tab: none of the superfluous disclaimers listed by the seller about additional charges hold any water.