Ebay No Longer Supports Calculated Shipping For 1st Class Letter Rates Domestic Or International

Hey All,
Last month I had an auction on ebay and on the last 48 hours or so of the auction I started to get a deluge of messages from potential ebay buyers about shipping. Domestic buyers said that their zip code was not recognized by ebay's shipping calculator. Sure enough I tried and nothing worked. Buyers from other countries also messaged me to see if I shipped to their country as no shipping rates were listed for them. I couldn't fix anything then and I did leave a message on the ebay technical forum. No real answers were to be had, but some others had the same problem.

That brings things to today. Since I received a special ebay store subscription rate for a few months I figured to use it to the fullest and add 1,000 BIN store listings to move some stock. I tried one item as a test and sure enough the same problem - no way to get a shipping amount using ebay shipping calculator method. I called ebay and after a little run around I got the truth.

ebay no longer supports First Class Shipping Rates for Domestic or International shipping if you are shipping items via the Letter Rates. Large Flats and Packages are supported, but not letters. It's a choice under TurboLister, but not if you try to revise an item. If you try - no shipping rates will appear for standard shipping at first class rates. Only those for parcels, media mail and priority/express rates. ebay tried to blame the USPS, but that's garbage. The vast majority of what I ship can be sent via first class letters at 1 oz. to 3 oz. Calculated shipping no longer works.

The work around to this problem - set your listings to flat or free shipping. A lot of sellers already do this, but for sellers who ship at exact USPS rates the calculated shipping was so much easier. I wish there was some notification of this change before it was implemented in middle of my last auction and caused a lot of confusion. I was able to edit the current BIN listings before listing them and they should be all fine, but it as just more unnecessary work.

As to why ebay did this I don't know.

As someone once told me way back when, don't fix it if it ain't broke. Too bad ebay never learned that.

I'm not sure this is helpful because I've never used ebay's shipping calculator unless I'm going to print a pre-paid label, which I use sometimes for mailing books. For stamps, covers, postcards and other such flat items, I use free shipping within the US and usually $1.50 for outside the US. Then simply use a scale and USPS.com as needed. This is the most efficient method I've found on my own.

Unfortunately, ebay has no clue about shipping light weight items. Their entire focus is on tracked shipping which may explain not supporting domestic First Class Mail. The option has been missing for a long time, probably more than five years. It is hard for me to imagine using a shipping calculator for stamps. Top-rated sellers must use tracked shipping which means using First Class Package rates. Generally, top-rated sellers gravitate to more expensive items. Sellers of inexpensive stamp won't be Top Rated and can use First Class Mail with impunity.

In either case, why not build shipping into the price and not worry about the ebay Shipping Calculator, which never worked, even on the best of days? In any case, the cost of shipping includes more than postage, something buyers and some sellers seem to forget.

It was working as of March 2017 and it's still an option under Turbo Lister (which of course is no longer supported per se, but still works and better than that thing called the Seller Hub). It just causes the shipping calculator to go haywired if you try to use the 1st class letter rates. It was nice to use calculated shipping for international rates as it figured out shipping for those buyers automatically. I didn't have to set up different flat rates for different areas of the world. I've always used exact shipping rates as charged by the USPS and the buyers really appreciated it. It's also fair to both buyer and seller. It was also nice to have calculated shipping when it came to rate changes - I didn't have to do a thing.

I did solve the issue but switching over to using flat rates that match the current postal rates and it seems to be working. So far no questions about shipping. I still have to do manual combined shipping invoice, but that's how it goes. That really would only be feasible if every item was exactly the same size, weight and volume.

As for Top Rated status - I'm never going to chase that dragon.

I don't like that idea of placing the cost of shipping into the item as that just penalizes buyers of large numbers of items. I'm not trying to make money off of shipping.

Battlestamps is right - a stamp seller will not be a Top Rated simply because the buyers prefer stamps on their envelopes. I have FB over 25,000 but and 99.6% FB, but not Top Rated, which is a shame because TR comes with discounted fees. Well, ebay really does not care about the collectible categories IMHO.
Dan

ebay really seems to be trying to force out collectables and, used unique items, or anything low cost; basically what made it popular and great in the first place. Look at how many of the auctions now are just dropped shipped Chinese junk with many, many duplicate listings. Also see their recent commercials focusing on new clothing.

When the current CEO took over, he was publicly quoted as saying that ebay didn't want to be the world's flea market anymore. What a fool for not recognizing what made ebay so cool in the first place. Its fee structure has changed also to favor sellers with higher priced items and large quantity listers. When I first started in '98 there was a listing fee that varied depending on the starting price, ten cents to 25 cents I believe, and the final value fees were 5% for the first $25, 2.5% for the amount $25.01-$1000 and I think 1.25% over $1000. Compare that to the straight 9% now. Also, you weren't forced to use Paypal or have a merchant credit card account, allowing you to take checks and money orders.

I really wish someone could come up with a competitor to them, but their traffic being so huge makes that hard. Both Yahoo and Amazon had auctions at one point I thought had a chance, but are now gone.

ebay shareholders (and Wall Street) disagree that he is a fool or that the company has mis-stepped. And it is the ebay shareholders who matter to ebay (just like any other public company), not buyers, sellers, or stamp hobbyists.

There are no good competitors because it makes no sense to invest in building what it takes to support huge amounts of low value transactions. The business plan (required to get investors and raise money to build a world-wide transaction processing company) would look like what? 'We want to spend millions to setup a company which will support hundreds of thousands of stamp collectors who want to sell 10 cent stamps'? The 'cost per transaction' is the same whether they process a 10 cent transaction or a $100 transaction.

ebay, like every company, makes decisions based upon numbers. If something saves them money, or makes them more profitable, then that is what they do. Just because the rest of us do not have access to these numbers doesn't mean they are clueless; it means that we don't have enough information.
Don

I doubt ebay is trying to force out collectibles -- they simply are paying little or no attention to our segment of the market. Case in point: the numerous sellers who deal in altered, regummed, and forged overprint and perfin stamps.

Some of the things that ebay does are inexplicable in income-generating terms. I collect cigarette cards. I don't buy on ebay, but I sell there. Cigarette cards were always grouped together with trade cards (similar things, but non-tobacco issues). ebay has now separated the two. Cigarette cards now fall under "Tobacciana". I understand that people with an interest in pipes, jars, cases etc would look under "Tobacciana". I doubt if there's a single card collector who collects because of the tobacco spin-off (and I say this as a smoker). Just random ebay oddness, which is more likely to depress sales and income than increase them.

What I was aiming for was that if ebay tries to turn itself into some kind of Amazon, I doubt they will succeed. They don't have the reputation or the customer service and support. It will take a while to play out in any case.