(Thought you’d like the Town Crier tag – ringing the bell 24 hours a day with the news, and keeping everyone awake )

Unfortunately, several others and myself did test listings using the “Seller’s Standard” and the “Seller’s Other” options and got slapped for full fees (on our invoices). When we tried things like RM 1st or 2nd, we got the discounts, when we used Seller’s Standard we got hit for full fees.

Like I said in the original post … well, I’m not going to repeat it when it’s up there ^ already.

Here, we’re all still too p’d off at the UK operation to bother kicking up with UK support, and have swallowed the overcharges – they were just a couple of test listings after all – rather than waste hours trying to recover them. Of course, our experiences may be different to the experiences of others – we fully expect Sue at TameBay did not have these issues.

Given what UK staff did to expats over the new-BIN fees … waiting until after they were introduced before copying the BuildaSkill questions list into the on-eBay revised Q&A page and banning overseas shop subscriptions from fees parity … we’re all on a zero-tolerance policy with the UK site right now. (Of course, not every Far East seller is in our “gang”, but those who are have all moved any accounts off the UK, and have not listed on there (beyond tests like those above) since September 26th.)

I agree that whichever site you list on, other than your country of residence, prevents you using accurate postal and delivery service names – that’s a long standing bugbear not just with eBay, but with most sites (including eBid). And that makes it all the more critical that all (eBay and non-eBay) sites address that particular issue. It is encouraging and facilitative of actions that constitute cross-border mail fraud – as particularly demonstrated in this specific, fee-promotion related, case.

In eBay’s position, with 39 (?) sites currently, there is no reason why in at least those countries, sellers are not offered the correct postal services based on the item location, rather than the marketplace being listed into. To not provide that facility shows eBay’s distinct lack of regard for their paying customers, as well as for their customers’ customers. Given the massive staffing they have (13,500 after the redundancies) surely there is one programmer somewhere who can be tasked with this?

Implementing such correction could only improve the “buyer experience”, but the fact it would also improve the “seller experience” and be a genuine step towards improved customer trust in the sites, is likely why they refuse to do it. That, and the fact they still haven’t fully fixed combined shipping since they broke it in January 2007.

Ed

Tis a bit of a pain I have to admit but it’s most certainly not a problem caused by UK xenophobia. It’s exactly the same for everyone listing on non-domestic sites.