Have you signed up for yet? If you don’t already sell overseas it might be time to consider using it in the run up to Christmas.
The Global Shipping Programme is an easy way for business (and private sellers) to reach millions more buyers with minimal effort and practically no change to your current eBay selling operation. All you do is opt in (either at account level or on a listing by listing basis) and eBay will make your products available to buyers in 32 countries around the world. You may already be opted in if you haven’t manually opted out of the program.
When something sells, all you need do is ship the product to eBay’s UK Shipping Centre and from then on eBay take over responsibility for the onward international delivery. The address is automatically provided as the shipping address with a unique identifier code included in the address so that the UK Shipping Centre can identify your item.
Back in May, eBay UK announced that the Global Shipping Program had shipped their one millionth parcel since it launched in the Autumn of 2014. We’ve just heard that the total now stands at 1.8 million parcels which suggests that usage of the program is accelerating fast with buyers happy to access UK products using eBay’s service.
The Global Shipping Program is about the easiest way on any marketplace that you can get started selling internationally around the world. Of course you may already have your own courier arrangements and list on international eBay sites and that’s definitely the best way to proceed. If however you don’t want to do the heavy lifting yourself, you can simply list on eBay UK and let eBay handle the international side of shipping on your behalf.
12 Responses
All I see on the boards is people moaning about the GSP but I think, from what they moan about, they need to read about how the GSP works.
The non combining of orders etc etc.
The question I would love answered is, is there a company that I would send all packets to the USA or Germany or all packets worldwide and they charge a single fee to distribute worldwide, including some sort of tracking.
We combine but only using tracked, service to France or most other countries, c5 20 gram packet apx £9-10 appears to customers to be extortionate!!
Auto-opt in for GSp is silly though. It has caused more issues than it’s worth due to confused sellers receiving a American / English / German address that does not correspond with the buyers.
While this gets sorted it, it has led to many many confused members.
This is my only complaint for GSP, other than the summer workers messing up so many shipments.
we l. love ebays GSP , we ship worldwide ten times cheaper and 5 times faster, it makes us look wonderful to international buyers
I’ve just been talking to ebay CS about GSP. They seem totally unable to tell me how much it would cost my customer, so therefore I can’t compare the costs my customer will pay to know if it will help or hinder sales. This seems crazy. They must have rate tables? Can anyone advise?
If the cost was reasonable I might well opt for GSP because of the tracking benefit, but can’t make this decision without knowing. I don’t want to make my products uncompetitive.
Simon E – why are your postage prices too high? Royal Mail are actually some of the best in the world if you have OBA. I guess it depends on size and weight of the product you sell. Most of my stuff is under 1kg, and averages around 500g, I ship untracked, and my prices have never damaged international sales. I calculate it based on rate of loss. If loss is a problem I simply don’t sell to that country. For example this year I will be switching off Italy from November to end January so I don’t get involved in the annual catastrophe of Italian Christmas mail.
interesting topic,
i have also been unable to find any prices info.
i sell collectable photographs, so A5 envelope with 1-3 images is under 100g, so im in the £10 tracked price bracket too.
people often order more, so they get put into A4 envelopes, but still never more than 250g. which is around £14.
i would love to know the prices, and if good id GSP like a shot.
FYI, OBA seems closed off to me, i send a reasonable amount for a small business imo, but nowhere enough for business contracts it seems.
i pay stamp prices, and use smartstamp / online postage.
I’m in a bit of a tizz over whether to go ahead with GSP. We send everything ITS/ISF etc, never untracked. Charges can range from £10-15 depending on item. We rarely get a moan about the shipping cost. I have read lots of horror stories about GSP but I’d love to try it, don’t know if I have the stomach to watch it all unravel though, esp at this time of year. Last year we had SO MANY ‘Will it come in time?’ overseas that we switched international off completely.
We use Global Shipping. We send 1 or 2 items a day, mostly to EU. there are a few things to look out for. Continental buyers seem to always go straight to Paypal if there is a hiccup. Once that happens the case can take 6 weeks to sort out. The buyer looks to us to fix it, but we are powerless. You cannot contact the GSP team, you have to pass messages to them through ebay customer service. We have mixed feelings because they can be good and quick, and in most cases where this is trouble they eventually sort it out. However they do also cause headaches with some random decisions like rejecting a parcel but not saying why or even informing us.