One eBay UK success of recent years must be the launch of the Global Selling Programme (GSP). That’s the scheme where you opt in for overseas sales, the shopper pays additional shipping, and you just need to send the goods to a UK based depot. And it seems that the location of the GSP forwarding centre has changed.
It looks like it’s going swimmingly, with strong demand, and the change or address reflects the need for expansion. As eBay UK says in a recent announcement: “Building on the success of the Global Shipping Programme, the UK Shipping Centre is being relocated to larger premises to ensure that we can continue to deliver a great service to our sellers and buyers. From 26 June, you’ll start seeing the new address on orders which are being sent via the Global Shipping Programme. You may continue to receive requests to post items to the previous address.”
The former GSP address was in Derbyshire, as far as we can recall, and the new one is in Lichfield in Staffordshire.
It seems certain that eBay will have a forwarding and redirection service in place for those sending to the old address over the coming months. But a discussion on a Facebook forum demonstrates that some sellers are having trouble sending their consignments to the new address over the past few days.
As one seller noted: “Has anyone posted to eBay’s GSP depot in Lichfield? Both my courier companies do not recognise the postcode. I Googled it and it doesn’t seem to exist. Went on eBay Live Chat and was told to send it to WS13 8SU which, when Googled, comes up as a DHL depot. So phoned eBay and was told that the one on the invoice is correct.”
Another seller noted they had been told to send the parcel to Lichfield WS13 8UR.
Those post codes are suitably close to each other that it should hopefully be apparent where the parcel is destined for to couriers and Royal Mail. But we cannot advise on which is undisputedly correct. So what’s the best current approach?
Sending your parcels, where it’s allowed, to the invoice address eBay provides is the likely best policy. But hopefully eBay will fix this one sharpish to avoid any confusion. In the first instance, tipping off couriers of the post code would be a start. What has been your experience with regards to the GSP address in recent days?
6 Responses
Same problem. Except I can’t use ipost because of this issue. ebay needs to sort this out soon…,
Probably not ebay’s fault in this case. I would imagine that the royal mail has created a new postcode for the location which goes into the postcode address file (paf) system which the courier companies pick up and use to populate their systems at regular intervals. The couriers probably haven’t picked up the latest file as yet.
Not sure I see the problem – WS13 8SU – is a post code that exists, a search of Google shows a few different addresses, including Caterpillar & DHL.
My postcode covers several addresses so you need an actual address to go with it.
I have not looked at the “Global Selling Programme”, but it could be worth a look
@Alex
And your point is?
You can not just send a parcel to a post code, it has to have a real street address, which I do not know nor was it included in the post, so, as I said I do not see the problem unless you mean that courier companies do not update their postcode databases?
Unfortunately it would seem that you were “lost for words”.
Just an idea…….if the postcodes are very similar it could be the size of the building. Our last unit was in a communal complex the size of a shopping mall. There was a different postcode for the front and rear of the building because it covered so much square feet. The building and yard was just so big. Just an idea and possible explanation why different but very similar postcodes. The depot might be huge.
As Rich says above, the Royal Mail PAF database will eventually update with the GSP name.