This is more me venting than anything else but I think it might actually be a problem for more people.
Everytime I order something from abroad via eBay or other platforms it is held by the post office until I pay the required 30% tax. They only give me a notice that they have an item via a letter, and the value I have to pay, but that’s it, there’s no way of telling which item it is.
As such, nowadays I simply can’t know if the seller actually shipped the item or time, or if it’s the post office holding it, and thus I cannot adequately assess the performance of the seller, and how I should rate the transaction in terms of if the seller shipped the item in time to arrive in the agreed time window.
This might be an unique problem to me since I regularly purchase many cards per week, but I still think like I’m getting screwed on both ends unless I try to convince the seller to mark the item as a low-value gift in the first place so I can receive it directly, in which case I am comitting tax evasion.
Is there something I’m missing? Does someone have any advice on this? Is someone else experiencing the same sort of issues or is it just me?
Sounds like a main concern is knowing how to rate the seller.
If there is tracking, you should be able to check the date and time of the first scan. That way you’ll know the seller fulfilled their side of the agreement to ship on time.
I agree with teraz though, there’s usually tracking. Even with no tracking, if it’s a reputable seller and they mark it as shipped I give them the benefit of the doubt. Unless you’re waiting over a month for a package, you should not give a seller a bad rep for things that are beyond their control.
Why do you need to assess the performance of the seller? Are you an eBay sales critic? Would you leave negative feedback if an item arrived a few days late?
Whether or not an item arrives within a given time frame is not within the seller’s control most of the time. The only concern regarding sellers and shipping is whether or not an item is marked as shipped on eBay within a reasonable amount of time. After that, the post is responsible for getting the item to you.
Outside of the customs charges and lack of info from your post office, which are predetermined, I really don’t see how you’re getting ‘screwed’.
Since sellers cannot control the time of shipment, they tend to overestimate to be on the safe side. At least that’s my understanding since sometimes it is marked that I get the item in one month time shipping from within the EU, and then it arrives in one week.
Even though it’s outside the seller’s control after they ship it they still attach certain time frames and costs to their items. And this is also why eBay let’s buyers rate 1-5 the shipping time.
By your logic, if it were always completely outside the seller’s control, why would eBay even have the option to rate the time it arrived and attach that information as seller feedback?
And what if it’s been 2-3 months after the expected item delivery time and still no sign of the item? Does the responsibility just vanish from all parties performing the transaction in the platform (buyer, seller, eBay)?
I’m not sure, but it seems like you don’t understand how the tracking can be verified as shipped by the seller. All you do is type in the tracking number on a google search, and select the correct postal service, often times you’ll be given multiple options, click on the one that would be from the sellers country. Click on whatever option is available to view tracking history, and the first scan entered should be the date that the seller shipped. If you’re using your local postal tracking it doesn’t always transfer the scan history of other countries, some do, but most don’t.
It’s not 100% as some postal workers aren’t great, so if the seller has them pick it up and the worker doesn’t scan it and the sort facitly messes up scanning it too there could be anywhere from 2-5 days off. The chances of both the worker and sort facility both missing the scan is extreemly low though.
Either way you know exactly when the seller shipped. Anything beyond that is postal carriers.
I think if the seller marks the item as shipped on ebay, you should trust it’s been shipped. And if there’s tracking you’ll know for sure. As a seller this is discouraging to hear because obviously once we’ve shipped it’s mostly out of our control whether it takes a little longer from the post office or whether you have to pay extra taxes on the item and thus that should not affect our buyer rating at all. Ebay is just always about taking the buyers side 99% of the time and looking at things from their side and not the sellers. “Shipping time” ratings should be more geared towards how long the seller takes the ship the item and not based on something a seller can’t really control. Any item should not take 3 months to arrive after it’s been shipped, if that’s the case, contact the seller and work something out and get them to open an investigation with the post. I recently had a transaction where I shipped an item with tracking and the tracking didn’t update for 3 weeks. The seller didn’t even message me but I noticed obviously there was a problem so I went to the post and told them.
It turns out the item never even left their warehouse yet and was just sitting there not scanned or nothing… I let the buyer know and he was very understanding and it arrived at his house about 2 weeks later (international order). There are so many other options besides leaving a bad feedback to a seller for things that can be completely out of their control.
You are right, and I have never left bad feedback even when it arrived later than expected because I understand it’s out of the sellers hands. If anything this means we need a better system than the current one.
Okay that’s good to hear. And better system in regards to ebay or the post system you have to deal with? I think it’s just your post office that seems to be problematic and I would agree a better system would be nice lol