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Experience with eBay GSP (Global Shipping Program)?

jackrubin

jackrubin

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 12, 2004
Messages
879
Location
Chicago, IL and Buchanan, MI
I've been thinning my collection with a lot of eBay sales over the last few months. Thanks to all who have helped me re-home my "treasures".

A surprising (to me) number of my sales have been to international buyers. I've generally avoided using the GSP because it seemed to cost my customers both more time and more money than direct shipments but I've had a recent purchaser inform me that he saved money through the GSP due to punitive import duty in his country (Lithuania).

I'd be interested in hearing from other buyers and sellers who have used the program. What have your experiences been?

Thanks.
 
It depends on the item. I have bought things and it has been reasonable, and for others it has been stupidly expensive. So I thought $17 to ship a Microchannel card to the UK was fine. Some one is selling the same card and wants $40 for shipping but not through GSP.
 
Dave, thanks for the input. Did the GSP charge include all duty and taxes, or was that shipping only? From the seller's end, I ship to a US warehouse where eBay does something(?) and then they ship to you. I don't know if they inspect, repack, process through customs or what. It seems like the buyer is paying for shipping twice.

If I had sold that board to you, I probably would have charged about $25 to send it using US Postal Service International First Class. My cost to ship a single S100 board to Germany a few weeks ago was $22.80. I add a $3 handling fee to cover additional costs such as card board box, bubble wrap, antistatic bag and printed label. There is no way I could have shipped a board overseas for $17.

It will be interesting to see feedback from others - maybe I should rejoin the program?
 
The E-Bay help says it includes all the import taxes in the UK and from what I remember it did which makes it a good option. Small items sent by other means can escape these in the UK if the item cost + shipping cost is less than $30 BUT if you need to pay them the UK Royal Mail charge £8.00 (about $10.00) just for collecting the VAT and Import duty which is a total rip off. In addition the items can get held at the customs centers.

A long time ago I bought a VAX memory board for $25.00 and the real cost was about $40. Rubbish....
 
As a seller, it's the only way to sell items of any real value internationally. eBay will not help you at all if you get caught in one of those customs scams (the one where they say it never arrived, when really it's sitting in the post office with customs due...they make eBay issue a refund and then go pay the import duty and get the item). I have personally had to deal with several of those scams, in them, the scammer gets the full refund including all shipping. That's what forced me to switch over to the GSP.

You also don't end up with buyers trying to get you to falsify customs forms (apparently this is common practice in some countries, but it's a serious crime in the USA), or buyers ending up with a huge customs surcharge and getting mad about it. And as g4ugm said, if it's going to the UK and it's a smallish value item, the buyer will end up paying nearly as much in fees and surcharges as they did for the item.

I've had one case in which the GSP lost an item, delivering it to a city on the other side of the buyer's country, and refused to refund the buyer. This was a buyer who has been purchasing things from me for years, and I was confident the buyer wasn't lying (plus I knew they didn't live in the city where tracking showed the item delivered!). I ended up sending them another outside eBay at my own expense. I had one other case in which eBay decided they couldn't ship a RTC replacement module (I've sent dozens through the GSP) and destroyed the item, refunding the buyer at their expense, so beware that there's a chance truly rare items can be deemed unshippable by the GSP reshippers and destroyed.
 
As a buyer in Europe buying from US based sellers I only had positive experiences with the GSP.
 
Jack,

I recently bought the SSM boards from you and you kindly combined the shipping cost. Unfortunately, this is something you still can't do via the GSP. If you buy a number of items from the same seller, you have to pay the full shipping on each item.

Personally, I prefer the GSP for single items, both as a buyer and a seller. As a seller, all I have to do is ship to the UK address and once it is there, I'm covered. I've only had one buyer claim an item was damaged (Sinclair ZX80 that had a slight chip in the case). The buyer got a full refund from Ebay without any impact to me.

As a buyer, it allows me to see the full costs upfront. Sometimes it will work out a little more expensive on certain items but overall I think it has been cheaper than shipping via other means. I have had a couple of items that were damaged in transit (2 items were poorly packaged by the seller) but I've received a full refund each time.

Cheers,
Dave

PS. The only recommendation I have is to please list at a higher price so not as to tempt me to buy more kit :)
 
Hi Jack,

I bought your New Micros NMIX-0011 R65F11 FORTH Board.

I appreciated your careful packing and I was recently able to bring up the board and communicate with it over RS-232 although this took months of trial and error as the manual for the NMIX-0011 does not appear to be available anywhere.

The board was USD 50
The postage to Oz USD 29
The import charges USD 12.36

So the postage and mysterious "import charge" for sending this fairly small 10cm by 20cm board was almost as much as the item itself.

I have always found USPS to be fast, reliable and inexpensive and would have taken that option over DHL/Fedex or the GSP if it was available.

Users here in Australia who buy from international sellers are not happy about this move by ebay and feel that it is exploitative.
 
Just be warned that if the item is deemed to be impossible or uneconomical to ship internationally, instead of returning the item to the seller, Pitney Bowes (who runs eBay's GSP) reserves the right to refund the buyer without returning the item to the seller, and then "liquidate" the item by either destroying it or reselling it on eBay. This fact was discovered last year when an IBM 5150 PC got caught up in that situation:

https://trixter.oldskool.org/2018/0...-do-not-use-the-ebay-global-shipping-program/
 
vwestlife said:
Just be warned that if the item is deemed to be impossible or uneconomical to ship internationally, instead of returning the item to the seller, Pitney Bowes (who runs eBay's GSP) reserves the right to refund the buyer without returning the item to the seller, and then "liquidate" the item by either destroying it or reselling it on eBay. This fact was discovered last year when an IBM 5150 PC got caught up in that situation:

https://trixter.oldskool.org/2018/0...-do-not-use-the-ebay-global-shipping-program/
Click to expand...

I remember reading about that a while back. Absolutely insane. We need to spread this article around as much as possible IMO.
 
I'll echo what exidyboy said. I realise it's convenient for US sellers to use the GSP to reduce the fuss of international shipping but it really does add a very large shipping cost. Generally if I buy say a DEC board for say $85 US I figure it will be around $200 AUD locally by the time it lands. The GSP also varies quite considerably between sellers, one complete DD-11 sized module may be around $40 USD to ship from one person but a single board might be $60 or so from another. And Pitney Bowes don't have to do anything with repacking or taking any extra care, it's just money for jam for them... what a lark to be in.
If I can get an item from someone here on the forum and they use good old USPS then for me that's the best of all price-wise.
 
Thanks to GSP, a 20 $ item bought on Ebay hast cost me nearly 100$. For small items, GSP is a major PITA.
I also see wildly different GSP prices for similar items. Looks I will be doing much less buying on Ebay in future...

That said, if you still have a S100 floppy controller board available....

Jos
 
jdreesen said:
Thanks to GSP, a 20 $ item bought on Ebay hast cost me nearly 100$. For small items, GSP is a major PITA.
I also see wildly different GSP prices for similar items.
Click to expand...

Yes, prices can vary a lot. I'm assuming that you thought the item was worth spending $100 on though as you would have seen the price upfront? I've seen a few items that have worked out more expensive using the GSP. In some cases, I've emailed the seller and asked if they could ship via other means. Some say yes, some have said no. If it's been too expensive, I've passed on that and waited for a cheaper listing.

Cheers,
Dave
 
As a buyer, in almost all cases the GSP results in a much higher shipping cost, so I usually avoid it.
But in one case (an ISA card that I got from the US) it saved me money, because the shipping wasn't that much and as VAT was taken care of (and included in the cost) I saved money because the subcharge for VAT handling was way lower when that was handled in the US instead of here (over here the charge would have been much higher than the VAT itself for that item).
 
I recommend against using the ebay GSP for anything of sufficient rarity or value, or reasons outlined here: https://trixter.oldskool.org/2018/0...-do-not-use-the-ebay-global-shipping-program/

If you sell rare, unique, or otherwise irreplaceable items on ebay, do not use eBay’s Global Shipping Program. Doing so grants eBay’s partners the right to effectively take your item and resell it without your knowledge.
 
Depending on the buyers country this might be the most reliable and cheapest method. There is no general rule. I have bought many items on ebay from US using GSP and have only had good experience, especially if the item is valuable. Swiss Post is a vary nasty and nagging company if it comes to customs and tax handling and asks for a lot of surcharges and hidden costs if the item is not sent form a registered company and they are even allowed to silently destroy and dispose the item if they think it is illegal. I had my share of experience. With GSP all the import and tax is taken care of ebay and Swiss Post then only distributes it locally as it should be.
 
I've done some purchases from US based sellers using the GSP program. It's not cheap for small items, larger items are somewhat reasonable.
About the repacking, these larger items came in the box the seller used, merely because the item was already tightly packed anyway.

When I sell somthing on eBay, I just go to our post office website, fill in the form, pay and print the label.
The I only have to let it scan at a post office and off it goes.
Sending a packet withinh the EU or worldwide is hardly a difference in time or process, the latter requires only my signature on the printed form.
 
I think a U.S. mail forwarder is a better option especially if they consolidate a few packages. I can write whatever value in the customs form because the gov't officials are totally clueless when it comes to old computer hardware. Maybe it's a kind of smuggling, but who cares.
 
ph4nt0m said:
I think a U.S. mail forwarder is a better option especially if they consolidate a few packages. I can write whatever value in the customs form because the gov't officials are totally clueless when it comes to old computer hardware. Maybe it's a kind of smuggling, but who cares.
Click to expand...

I the UK that adds at least a week onto delivery schedules as it gets held at customs, they post you the invoice, you ring up and pay and then the send you package on to a local pickup point....
... and charge $10 for the privilege.
 
@G4UGM - is that the case for both USPS and GSP shipments?

It doesn't seem that there is a way to offer GSP as an "option" - either it's the only service available or it's not available at all. Most of my sales are in the $50 to $200 range, so I guess I'll just stay "independent" for now, relying on USPS and FedEx.

Large, heavy or high-value items (over $2500) are not acceptable to GSP anyway, so no real loss there.

If shipping becomes an issue, always feel free to contact me directly before payment and we can figure out an alternative.

Thanks for all the input (and purchases!)
 
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