eBay are expanding their global shipping program in the UK. Currently countries in Europe (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden) have been able to buy from the UK using the program. This will be expanded to include the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Brazil & Russia.
The is designed for sellers who haven’t yet decided to embrace cross border trade. There may be many reason for this, for example private sellers may not wish to figure out international postage rates or small business sellers may not have the volume required to negotiate reasonable international courier contracts. It may simply be that you don’t want to list on overseas sites as you don’t have the translation skills.
The Global shipping program won’t give you the same exposure as actively listing on overseas eBay sites, but is similar to passively adding international shipping to your eBay UK listings. It will make it easy for customers overseas to still purchase your products without you having to do a thing.
Once in the program you can still opt out if you wish, either entirely or you can exclude certain countries (for instance if the products you sell are banned in certain territories you’ll want to block them from buying). When something sells you merely ship to eBay’s UK shipping centre and they then forward on the parcel to the international destination.
So long as you ship same day or next day, mark the item as despatched, upload a tracking number if you have one and the item arrives at the shipping centre within three days you’re covered. You’ll get five stars for despatch time, five stars if you offered free postage for shipping costs and it’s not your problem if the parcel gets lost or damaged on the International leg of it’s journey. You’re also protected from Negative or Neutral feedback for any shipping delays or damage in transit.
You can opt in and offer the Global Shipping Programme on all your active eligible listings, or you can opt in an apply to specific listings on an individual basis. Either way, if it gets you more sales in the run up to Christmas it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t want to try it.
22 Responses
Have you got any comparison’s of costs to the customer compared to using RM.
is it cheaper for customer or more expensive?
We have opted into this service and its fantastic however our channel management company knew nothing off it and it is bringing orders through with the customers address and not the uk routing address and also bringing order through at a completely different price. Its so far causing us a huge headache but this is not the fault of eBay.
Sounds interesting. What happens if a parcel goes missing between the UK shipping centre and the foreign buyer, will the seller be out of pocket?
click and collect will be fun in brazil lol
Another thing you have to be careful of with this service even if you don’t use channel management software is the ebay invoices if you print them to go with the package. The invoice will show the full value of the order the customer has paid. However that will not be what you have received into your business paypal account as they will have paid the delivery charge direct to ebay. Be careful about this regarding your accounts.
In almost every case this will add cost to the order and may increase delivery time (as there will be a delay at the processing centre before it is handed over to the couriers).
When I bought something using this service (from the US) the item was delivered by myHermes so they must import a bulk load of goods and then hand them over to local couriers.
Looking through the conditions it seems that a combined postage discount for the international leg is available. If this applies to orders from multiple sellers (in the same foreign country) it could add a lot of value to the service.
It would be nice if they offer different levels of service such as an economy sea freight option or a priority express service.
hi do i opt in to this Global Shipping Programme ?
Had my first sale to an italian customer, normally i’d have never touched it with a barge pole.
Hello, I am the daft one, who has many daft questions to ask.
here they are….
I pay to send my package to the UK distribution address, yes? who pays for the bit after that? The buyer?
eBays fees are based on what? The total the buyer pays? As I have no way of knowing what the delivery cost is going to be to the buyer, how can I work out if I will end up making a loss on the whole deal, I cannot work it out as there is no way of knowing.
If I offer free worldwide delivery, who pays what and when? I think we should be told.