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@contessa35 wrote:

Hello, I've raised this before, but the problem is still ongoing, so I thought I'd ask in another way. I apologise for the length and complexity, but it's a long-lasting, frustrating issue which is hard to find an explanation for and very difficult to deal with.

 

I'm a buyer, and I am always running up against a problem regarding items listed using eBay International Shipping by sellers in the US in my category of interest - Dolls & Bears (some other categories are affected too, but by no means all). Although the affected sellers (by now, it's pretty much all of them, and all their listings in affected categories) have always sold to the UK using the Global Shipping Program and continued to do so with eBay International Shipping (which replaced GSP in the US). Howver, about 3 months ago, without the sellers changing anything, the United Kingdom totally disappeared from the country listings in the shipping details of their EIS items - it's not in the shipped-to countries, nor in the list of countries they wouldn't ship to. The effect of this is that eBay International Shipping (EIS) disappears from their affected listings, with no other international shipping offered. The 30-day return facility provided by EIS, along with all the estimates of shipping cost to the UK and VAT disappear, and warnings appear that the seller has not provided details for shipping to the UK and may not ship here, suggesting the buyer contacts them. Contact usually doesn't work when I try though with this issue - eBay blocks it. Very often, but not always, eBay also immediately blocks attempts to bid, buy or make offers too. Once aware, the sellers try to add the UK back in, but can find no way of doing so.

 

Plenty of US sellers are complaining about this on their community chat, including a 90+ message thread. Every UK buyer I've asked to look sees it too, so it's not some error of my setup. It appears that eBay representatives do not see this issue if they check from inside eBay's systems, but it definitely exists for sellers in the US and buyers in the UK (it appeared gradually initially, on just a few items which corrected themselves an hour or two after listing, but soon escalated to a problem affecting nearly all EIS Dolls & Bears category listings that should ship to the UK, and is permanent). I have watched an unaffected listing change to showing the problem in seconds, whilst the seller had no interaction with it and had made no changes at all, as soon as it auto-renewed for another term, having not yet sold.

 

Many sellers and buyers remain unaware of this issue until it's pointed out, with buyers assuming it's just the seller's decision not to send to the UK, and sellers assuming all is fine, unless a UK buyer contacts them, or they discover it themselves when they start noticing a lack of UK bidders and buyers. Obviously this is having a very bad effect both on sellers' sales and buyers' attempts to purchase.

 

Some eBay reps have suggested that US sellers put UK buyers in an exemption list to bypass the problem, but it also bypasses EIS, and many would strongly prefer to use EIS. Another suggested workaround which does seem to work is for the seller to place an affected listing for a UK seller who has agreed to buy it, in an unaffected category instead as a Buy It Now special listing. Is this OK to do in eBay's opinion? The seller may have to cancel the original purchase if the UK bidder was able to bid and win it or complete a buy it now originally (sometimes we are able to, though mostly we're not, where this issue applies, and we're never allowed by eBay to pay for an item affected by the issue anyway without the seller resorting to some kind of workaround!). So sellers typically have to cancel the original purchase in those rare cases that a UK buyer get that far, by stating "something wrong with the buyer's address" as the reason for cancellation. Is there any negative aspect to doing this, for the seller or buyer?

 

Finally, does anyone at eBay know if there is any possible reason for this actually disappearance of eBay International Shipping from the US to the UK in Dolls & Bears not being a glitch or bug, but by design? That is, is there any reason that eBay has decided it is not suitable for US sellers to offer collectible dolls (vintage ones, and for collectors over 15) to the UK? I can see no statement of such a thing, they don't seem to be restricted items (why would they be? They've never been before) and as far as I know, the incoming UKCA safety regulations are now going to run alongside CE now, instead of replacing them, and CE has never been an issue in this respect. I believe UKCA is pretty much the same standard, just made UK-specific. So I don't think it could be a reason for all this, but one US seller wondered so I thought I'd ask!

 

Thanks very much for any help or ideas.

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Hi @contessa35, thanks for your post.

Could you please create a thread on one of the boards and tag me, please also share some item numbers as examples and I will look into this for you.

Thanks,

Anita