Ebay To Put The Squeeze On Paypal

floortrader, since NYstamps is located in the U.S., how is he benefiting? The special rates are only for parcels coming FROM China to the U.S., not within the U.S. or U.S. to China.

I'm not sure the "USPS is subsidizing China" argument is accurate. The USPS wants to generate new lines of revenue from high volume parcel transportation. China generates vast numbers of these small parcels due to the size of its manufacturing operations and worldwide demand. Hundreds of thousands of e-Packets can be packed into a single shipping container and brought over by container ship (e-Packet is not a fast service), and such ships leave every day. The US doesn't come close to generating that sort of traffic volume in reverse. In other words, USPS execs believe they are making money in this arrangement with the massive volume translating into enough revenue. They must absolutely salivate at that volume and the opportunity to move those pieces around the US.

I don't see some subversive motive to prop up China. It is seeking to capitalize on an opportunity. What am I missing here?

Chris - Perhaps this link will clarify that because of UPU agreements the USPS does lose money on the China-US shipping. They are not alone. Other developed countries are getting killed financially as well.

http://fortune.com/2015/03/11/unite...se-shipping/

I prefer to support American companies.
Ayden is European. I trust less. Took me years to gain trust in PayPal with my personal info.
Not sure I trust right away, especially a non American company.
Didn't ebay initially create PayPal, then spin it off and sell it? Did the insiders at ebay sell all their equity stakes in PayPal and move on to a smaller startup so they can start the cycle over again. Then they try to spin it in press that it's going to make the ebay platform better? In my opinion, it's just a money grab for executives

If you are using of Airbnb, Spotify, Uber or Netflix, you are already using Adyen, you just didn't know it. Does that change your trust judgment?

Battle - from what I read on the USPS site, it starts at $10. They are nuts.

Rog, the link you gave is to an outdated article. Anyone have anything more current?

NYstamps has been buying large numbers of lots (and more than you are guessing) for at least 10 years, it is not something that started recently, although the houses they buy from has changed more recently that 10 years ago. He has a small army working for him selling on ebay. Why do you doubt he sells it all on ebay?

eyeonwall: Yes, I saw that later on after I posted. $10 to mail a 1 to 8oz. parcel to Canada. $14 to places like the UK. It is nuts.

Until a few months ago I sold Internationally. I clearly stated that shipping would be $12 for the 1st item and free for everything else. I asked people that didn't like my shipping policy to please not bid. In spite of this every week I would receive complaints from overseas buyers that had purchased items. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and I removed all International shipping except Canada and Australia. I expected a hit to sales but it never happened. Since then about 50 overseas bidders have contacted me and asked to bid. I explain the shipping policy and about 1/2 agree to my terms and the others don't and don't bid. Now I don't have any shipping complaints.

Ken

Ken it all depends on what level of stuff you sell. If you are selling $50 items, $12 shipping might fly, if you are selling $5 items it won't. Selllers of lowers priced items will get slaughtered.

eyeonwall absolutely true. I don't know how people selling low price stuff survive.

They have to be doing this because of customs. Isn't thee usually a minimum amount before something becomes dutiable? (which no doubt varies by country) It doesn't make sense to charge duty on a $10 shipment because it would cost them more to collect than what they collect.

Some Issues that come to mind:

1. As a buyer or seller I would not want credit card or other personally identifiable information stored off shore. Servers should be located in the United States and not be accessible to software development teams or support persons located outside the United States. Specifically, no PII should be located in or accessible in China. Obviously, this means that ebay would have to partition their data by country and store and protect it appropriately. One reason that ebay may be using a third party is that they do not have the ability to maintain secure financial data. As evidenced from reports in ecommercebytes.com

2. Currently it is necessary to use a third-party desktop database application to track ebay sales and keep track of client and sales data. In the past, ebay has rolled off (deleted) data more than a few months old. On the other hand, it is possible to retrieve PayPal financial data from the date the account was opened. While their reporting leaves something to be desired, it is possible, with some effort, to extract a clean list of transactions that balance, assuring that PayPal is not losing transactions or skimming funds from accounts. Has anyone carefully checked their ebay account lately?

3. ebay has repeatedly shown that they don't trust sellers. Sometimes even small or obscure transgressions will cause ebay to arbitrarily suspend or shut down small seller accounts. Large sellers usually have account reps who can make almost any problem go away even if complaints are justified. Several high-volume stamp sellers on ebay seem to make most of their profit from selling frequently faked stamps without certificates. Why should I trust ebay?

4. While it may be more convenient in the long run to have ebay handle payments, getting there is likely to have major glitches and create unforeseen problems and perhaps even opportunities for circumventing the system. Why would this rollout be different from any past ebay rollouts?

5. ebay set a bad precedent, corrected only this week, by requiring use of ebay labels to opt into the Guaranteed Delivery Program. When ebay fully deploys the payment system, will sellers still be able to use postage stamps or send items to foreign countries without having to use the expensive Global Shipping Program?