Hi everyone,
I just listed my first ever card on eBay, and I am having trouble with the shipping to the US. I used the “charge actual cost” option, entered in the weight and dimensions, and selected the service as “Canada Post Light Packet USA”. But my listing is only showing “Shipping:Calculate” and not showing an actual amount. I tried a few different service options and none of them works. I called eBay and they tried their best to help me, but weren’t able to troubleshoot the problem. Even on their end, they tried putting in their zip code to calculate, and it just told them “Shipping cannot be calculated. Please enter valid postal/zip code”. Nothing is working. Are there any Canadians here who have experience selling single cards? I would send it as a letter but I need to include tracking. What shipping options/services do you use in eBay??
Thank-you!
Update: Apparently there might be minimum dimensions requirements depending on the service type chosen. Apparently the error message “Shipping cannot be calculated. Please enter valid postal/zip code” is just a generic error message that shows up even if the postal code has nothing to do with the actual error. But I tried those dimensions and it still didn’t work. What dimensions do you use and with which service type??
You might just take a bubble mailer with a packed card to the post office and get a quote. Then put in that actual amount. That’s the safest way in my opinion, assuming you aren’t printing the label yourself. If you are, just put in a random US address and calculate the amount through PayPal to see what a label would cost.
Thanks for the suggestion! After reading your comment I was thinking of doing that tomorrow, but then I changed the dimensions slightly and changed the shipping to Expedited instead of Standard and it worked! I have no idea what the problem was but all I know it’s fixed now.
It usually costs me a could dollars ($2-3) to ship a single bubble mailer to the US without tracking. I think that’s the best service. I think the Light Packet is somewhere in the neighborhood of $8-10 for a single card but it comes with tracking and can be printed through PayPal.
You just want to be careful with calculated shipping as if you choose expedited the buyer will probably see something like $15-20 to ship the card which is not ideal of course.
When I’m shipping from Canada I usually manually enter a shipping amount of $3 to ship to the US.
Actually, sorry I just have another question! The reason I used Expedited shipping to US, and Xpresspost to Canada, is because they both include tracking and liability up to $1000. When you use the standard shipping fixed amount of $3, do you add any extra features yourself like tracking, signature upon delivery, liability and/or insurance for more expensive cards?
As long as you fill out the customs form, with the correct values inside, you should be fine. Technically speaking because you are shipping merchandise and it is in a plastic case you should be declaring it every time (as you technically should be just sending paper for just a stamp no fuss). Whenever I ship to people I let them know that tracking or all that other stuff is an option but Canada Post charges a lot more for it. However, the more I thought about it now because our dollar is no longer at par with USA, there are a lot more people that are interested in acquiring the tracking.
Expensive shipping can be a deterrent to buyers. I regularly pass by cards from Europe because $16 shipping on a $4 card is not economical. And many sellers don’t discount for multiple purchases.
Hopefully I can figure out a way to not charge too much on the shipping… I am just scared of dishonest buyers and from what I’ve read, including tracking and signature upon delivery seems to be the best protection. Maybe I should eat up those costs myself? I don’t really know. Thanks for your help!
I think that since this is my first ever sale, I am going to offer free shipping and add the tracking and signature confirmation myself. I don’t like the idea of charging so much for shipping… And I have 0% feedback as a seller. Even I wouldn’t buy from myself if I were in the US lol. I think I just need real life experience and see how it goes!
My suggestion, especially if they charge you with listing costs (which they typically don’t), is to simply check the completed listings (that sold recently) + lowest buy it now prices to determine the price of the card and sell it around that ballpark with free shipping.
The benefits of doing that is:
Typically if you sell to Canada and the U.S., regardless of which city it is, it will cost the same anyways so doing the calculate shipping costs is a bad idea as ebay tends to overestimate or underestimate actual shipping costs.
Unless you have a lot of cards to sell in which you can provide incentive buyers to buy more cards to combine shipping, sometimes buyers mess up and do not look at shipping costs when buying an item (like on mobile), and then asks you to cancel the transaction.
They can’t give you poor feedback on the shipping portion of the feedback, because free shipping = auto 5 stars.
You get deducted fees in the shipping portion also, so there’s practically no difference.
Be careful of scammers when shipping expensive cards; always use tracking because otherwise, people may say they never received a card and you will 100% lose the money form that transaction. If it’s really cheap cards that is not worth the shipping of having tracking, you can simply ship it through regular mail. Tracking is really expensive in Canada!
If you want to gain the most out of selling your cards, you can also try and wait for bonuses given by ebay in which they give you a portion of the final fees back. Those come rarely, however. They typically give free listing bonuses often, so watch for those!
After reading your comment I was thinking of doing that tomorrow, but then I changed the dimensions slightly and changed the shipping to Expedited instead of Standard and it worked! I have no idea what the problem was but all I know it’s fixed now.