posted on August 30, 2006 02:05:01 PM new
Is there a way that I can setup Fixed Rate shipping for Canada and another set of rates for the rest of the non-domestic world?
I can ship an item under 4 lbs to Canada for a third of what it cost to send to say the UK, France, Spain... without shipping by the way of the slow boat.
We can ship under 4lbs to Canada Air Letter Post USPS for 2, 3, or $4.00 depending on the weight. The same item going to the UK Air Letter Post will cost the same or more than Global Priority large flat shipping envelope $9.50.
Please tell me I'm wrong, but what i see in the international shipping setup is all shipping means i setup will be available to all international buyers at check out. Which means I can't offer Canada $4.00 shipping because a buyer in the UK will be able to check out at that same rate and I can not ship to the UK for that rate.
Now on this same note the $9.50 shipping rate to Canada is excessive. And eBay is cracking down hard on this these days, so they say.
Right now we have to complete all international sales through eBay because we can not make Vendio available to them. If we fill in international shipping preferences we will over charge Canada. If we do not fill the preferences in and allow internal buyers through Vendio they can check out at domestic rates.
We use Fixed Rates and I do not want to get into all the problems with the different shipping rates that Vendio and eBay come up with in calculated shipping on several items. We have one item we use calculated shipping on Vendio and USPS are right on but eBay as of around March is $2.90 more 100% of the time. I would hate to deal with this on a lot of items.<P>
If you do decide to ship your international items with a calculated rate, just let us know and we can help you troubleshoot any issues where the rates aren't matching between the Vendio and eBay calculators. Its usually something simple like mismatched account types for UPS, or a case where eBay has automatically added the insurance to the order prior to the auction closing.
As for the best way to manage fixed shipping to both Canada and other international locations, most of the Powersellers I speak to use the custom sections at the bottom of the shipping section to indicate the specific locations those costs are for.
posted on August 31, 2006 09:19:40 AM new
Christopher,
Thank you for the tips on international shipping. I will work on those now.
Since I will working in this area, could you please help me with the gremlin I have with the one calculated shipping item we do list. Here is an item # listed on eBay.
140020078941
The problem we are having is with domestic shipping. We ship USPS not UPS, it is cheaper and safer. The way we have this item set up for shipping through Vendio has Vendio right on with usps.com but eBay as of around March is $2.90 more 100% of the time. This shows up in the eBay shipping calculator and on search pages this way also. So, for the comparison shopper on eBay our shipping for this item is showing $2.90 more than it should.
This item is a little bulky and weighs more than 5 lbs and we sell it all the time. The cost of shipping to extreme north coast to coast and states in between from the mid-south varies greatly. We can ship this item to Louisiana and Texas for less than half the cost to ship to Washington State or Main. Since we sell this item all the time and it does sell, we want to use calculated shipping.
We have not been able to figure out where this $2.90 difference is coming from on eBay. We did not have this problem before March and it has not gone away. I definitely want to take advantage of offering cheaper shipping rates to our surrounding states. We have had several sales because we can ship this item cheaper to the states closer to us. And because we are centrally located we can ship to either coast cheaper than someone shipping coast to coast.
This $2.90 difference in shipping on eBay is in the way in more ways than one. It would be nice to figure out where it came from, and how we can fix.
posted on August 31, 2006 02:03:52 PM new
Nope thats not it
I have checked this page a hundred times looking for this problem. That space is 0.00. I'm looking at that page right now and the only figure filled in on it is shipping discount:
Charge my highest shipping cost for the first item and US $_.__ for each additional item.
I use a shipping mark-up on this item, but it is all filled in at Vendio $1.50 to cover all the shipping supplies needed to ship this item. Insurance is optional $1.35
If the calculator in the listing is used the mark-up is in the total but the shipping total is still $2.90 more than it should be.
You can see this for your self look at one of the listings on eBay. The vendio calculator is in the listing and the eBay calculator is in the listing. Both come up with different figures between 2.30 and 2.90 off from each other.
Item # 140020078941 in eBay store
If a buyer uses eBay check out they are charged $2.90 to much and if they use Vendio the shipping is right on. Not everyone trusts leaving eBay to make payments.
This baffles me, I can't figure out where the extra cost is coming from. The boards on eBay have had several threads about others noticing extra costs tagged onto calculated shipping, but from where?
I was hoping you might be able to help me find it. You said you could help me trouble shoot international shipping if i wanted to use calculated shipping. But I need to iron out this problem with domestic shipping first, before looking at international calculated shipping.
[ edited by oddsend03 on Aug 31, 2006 02:52 PM ]
The difference is the option for 'Irregular/unusual packaging.'
You do not appear to have this enabled in Vendio, but eBay does have this box checked for your item/s currently.
I did a little testing and it looks like when you enter your dimenions into the form, eBay is automatically deciding that the item is Irregular/unusual and adding that cost to the shipping amount.
Since USPS doesn't require the dimensions for the eBay checkout, simply leave those fields blank when listing your items so they do not mark your items as being "unusual" in their package type.
(however there is obviously some sort of error either here or at eBay that is causing them to enable this option when using dimensions for USPS packaging, and we'll check into that further.)
