A few weeks ago I sold six packages through ebays Global shipping program. Of course I didn't know the bidders were located internationally, it just worked out that six of my my auctions were won by people in other countries. All of the packages got shipped to that Erlanger KY address ebay uses with the name of the person who won and the reference number ebay provided me. All six packages were mailed on the same day. Now when it comes to mailing stuff out, I'm old school. I don't print ebay shipping labels and I don't have a scale. I box all my packages up and take them to the Post Office myself and have them weigh them. I take my receipt home and then type all the tracking info in on each auction. This has worked fine for me for years. Until last month. You see, when I get a receipt of twenty or so packages I sent out the only thing I have to go on is the address. So when I have six sporadic packages on the list all with the same address but different tracking numbers there's no way to differentiate between what was in one box from the other. So I typed the tracking in to each global auction. Abut a week later I get an email from a guy in Brazil telling me he got the wrong item. Followed by a guy in Canada telling me he got what the guy in Brazil is supposed to get. That's followed up by a guy in Germany telling me he got the wrong item quickly followed by another guy in South Africa telling me he got what the guy in Germany was supposed to get. Disaster. The value of these items ranged from $15 to $250. Initially I thought it was my fault for switching the Reference Numbers on the package or putting the wrong items in the wrong box. I informed all four members of the problem and offered to pay for the shipping back to me from each location and send the packages out to the correct location. Once the items came back to me I would ship the items to them or give them a full refund. The guy in Germany did this and wanted his original packages. The guy in South Africa sent me the items back but asked for a refund and the guys in Canada and Brazil told me it wasn't worth the effort to do this and I had to give them a full refund without getting my items back.
While this is going on another two of my items ended up in the wrong hands again. This time both packages were supposed to go to Canada but the guy in Ontario got the guy in Toronto's package and vice-versa. Luckily both parties were willing to mail the packages to each other instead of back to me and disaster was averted. At this point I called ebay to find out why and how this kept happening and after the run around here's what happened....When the guys at the third party global shipping site get a box, typing in that huge 0000000seventeen other digit reference number ebay provides is too much of an effort for them, so they scan the tracking number from the USPS. If a tracking number is loaded onto ebay's site BEFORE the item gets to the Global shipping facility in Kentucky they just go off of that. So if you did what I did and not know which Eralnger, KY box is destined for which country and incorrectly enter the wrong tracking number, your package ends up in the wrong country. Apparently this happens all the time too because Ebay is totally aware of the problem and is working to fix it with the third party shipping company that handles the global shipping. But as far as I'm concerned it should never have happened. If they're going to use the USPS tracking number as an indication of where the package is supposed to be sent, just do away with the reference number since they're only using it as a secondary source anyway and just go off the USPS tracking. It would eliminate the mistakes I made. Now I should have been more diligent in keeping track of which box headed to Kentucky was what but it never occurred to me they would screw this up so bad. The kicker is the one guy in Germany who wanted his packages (he of course won two auctions from me) left me negative feedback (twice) because they took too long to arrive. Thankfully when I contacted ebay about the negatives I received, they took responsibility (which may be the first time in history that's happened) and reversed siting that my previous conversation with them pertaining to what I explained above showed that as a seller I was not at fault for the error caused by global shipping. A small win for sure but the headache this all caused was epic.
While this is going on another two of my items ended up in the wrong hands again. This time both packages were supposed to go to Canada but the guy in Ontario got the guy in Toronto's package and vice-versa. Luckily both parties were willing to mail the packages to each other instead of back to me and disaster was averted. At this point I called ebay to find out why and how this kept happening and after the run around here's what happened....When the guys at the third party global shipping site get a box, typing in that huge 0000000seventeen other digit reference number ebay provides is too much of an effort for them, so they scan the tracking number from the USPS. If a tracking number is loaded onto ebay's site BEFORE the item gets to the Global shipping facility in Kentucky they just go off of that. So if you did what I did and not know which Eralnger, KY box is destined for which country and incorrectly enter the wrong tracking number, your package ends up in the wrong country. Apparently this happens all the time too because Ebay is totally aware of the problem and is working to fix it with the third party shipping company that handles the global shipping. But as far as I'm concerned it should never have happened. If they're going to use the USPS tracking number as an indication of where the package is supposed to be sent, just do away with the reference number since they're only using it as a secondary source anyway and just go off the USPS tracking. It would eliminate the mistakes I made. Now I should have been more diligent in keeping track of which box headed to Kentucky was what but it never occurred to me they would screw this up so bad. The kicker is the one guy in Germany who wanted his packages (he of course won two auctions from me) left me negative feedback (twice) because they took too long to arrive. Thankfully when I contacted ebay about the negatives I received, they took responsibility (which may be the first time in history that's happened) and reversed siting that my previous conversation with them pertaining to what I explained above showed that as a seller I was not at fault for the error caused by global shipping. A small win for sure but the headache this all caused was epic.
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