It will cost eBay sellers in Canada more to ship some of their packages as of July 1, 2018 because Canada Post is no longer providing discount prices to eBay.
But eBay’s initial announcement to sellers on Wednesday wasn’t clear about who was responsible for the loss of the shipping discount:
“As of July 1st, 2018, the shipping rates you access through Shippo for Canada Post shipping services will change to reflect Canada Post’s standard rates. You don’t need to take any action as a result of this change, and the new rates will be calculated automatically when you use Shippo to print a label on or after July 1st. Please note that Shippo was not involved in this change.”
eBay Canada responded to EcommerceBytes inquiry with the following statement: “For years, Canada Post has extended exclusive pricing to Canadian eBay sellers. While Canada Post will be discontinuing these special prices on July 1st, Canadian eBay sellers will be able to access Solutions for Small Business rates on the Shippo platform.”
eBay began using third-party shipping solution Shippo to power its shipping-label platform in Canada last summer. Prior to that, it had used PayPal.
We asked Shippo if it knew more about the change in rates for Canadian eBay sellers. Shippo’s Helen Phung told EcommerceBytes that eBay’s contract with Canada Post expired.
While Shippo is a technology integration partner for eBay, it had never been the source of the discounts. “Our role is to provide the technology to print labels while eBay provided discounted Canada Post shipping rates for all eBay sellers by uploading the rates they have negotiated into Shippo,” Phung explained.
eBay published the discounts Canada Post had provided eBay sellers in May 2017 on this page, which included discounts on Expedited Parcel and Xpresspost for domestic Canada shipments, as well as discounts for certain US and International shipments, including a 14% discount on Tracked Packet parcels going to the US.
I’m sure that Ebay will claim they sat behind closed doors for 3 days hammering out this great deal they got for their sellers. They will rave that at least the sellers prices are not higher than everybody else’s price so they will consider their negotiations highly successful.
Way to go Ebay – can’t even keep any type of special rates for your customers in Canada, whats next for us?
Ina,
Does PayPal Canada still have discounted rates? If they do then that is the source for Canadian sellers to use.
Of course if they do eBay does not want it’s sellers to use PayPal since they do not get a cut.
eBay = Dead Man Walking