Hi. This is Sarah Brubacher from eBay's Global Policy team in Trust & Safety. At eBay Live! Bill Cobb announced that, as of June 19th, eBay is taking a much stronger stand against excessive Shipping & Handling charges. (Read Bill's original AB post from the event.)
In addition to stepping up enforcement against egregious violations, we have made some clarifications to our Excessive Shipping & Handling policy. The changes outline the types of charges sellers may pass on to the buyer in the form of shipping and handling. They also provide guidelines that sellers can use to make sure their listings are in compliance with the policy. Simply stated, sellers can feel confident they are in compliance by charging actual shipping fees plus actual costs for packaging materials.
As Bill mentioned, our Community has told us and our research confirms -- excessive shipping prices drive buyers from our site. This hurts the entire marketplace. These unfair charges also un-level the playing field, allowing some sellers to hide their costs in the shipping charges to manipulate their priority in search. In the coming months, we will be proactively looking for listings that are in violation of our policy, and we'll be following up on member reports. Please know that it will take some time to clean up the marketplace, but your help and cooperation, we can regain buyer trust and re-level the playing field for the vast majority of honest sellers.
Thank you to those of you who have been reporting examples of excessive shipping that you see on our site. It is only through working together that we will make an impact on this issue.
If you would like to read further about this policy, please visit the Excessive Shipping Charges Policy page.
Sincerely,
Sarah Brubacher
Global Trust & Safety Policy Team
Hello,
I am concerned about the quality of sellers eBay has allowed to harm their reputation to the level it has gotten to. I am currently serving my country in Afghanistan which has allowed me to speak with others whose families have suffered eBay's excessive shipping cost.
EBay has reported that only 1% of there sellers have practiced in excessive shipping, but the reality of these numbers is much higher, especially if the customer lives in a non-continental US residence.
My wife is currently in Puerto Rico and has suffered excessive shipping charges at a rate higher than 1%. She has purchased 136 items over the last 3 months and has been charged excessive shipping charges on 7 occasions, mostly from sellers in California. That is a rate of 5.147% of excessive shipping charges. Sellers will also charge shipping insurance as options but never apply the insurance when the item is shipped.
Other soldiers with families in similar residences as my own have suffered the similar percentage of excessive shipping charges among their purchases. Sellers justify these charges as "necessary by USPS standards". These statements are totally false as USPS shipping rates do not change for PR, Hawaii, Alaska, Samoa, Guam, or the US Virgin Islands.
So how can eBay assure it will clean up the sellers effectively when you have not realized the true amount of frauds among your sellers?
Also more than half of the buyers whom I have contacted who live in the US territories I have mentioned have switched to buying on Amazon.com since eBay’s automated response system for customer claims made them feel unwelcome. I would appreciate a response from any employee of eBay to this post that give more assurance to eBay’s customer service.
Posted by: Jonuel Negron | July 27, 2006 3:42 AM | Permalink to Comment