Anyone else got problems with ebay international shipping service from US lately?

[DrmZ]

This used to work great but now I have an issue with two deliveries in a row.
In the past they used Pitney & Bowes to ship from the US to Germany.
It appears they have now switched to DHL e-commerce.

First problem was a jersey I bought fron ebay US in december via ebay international shipping service.
It went to the shipping center in the US and then to Switzerland (which was already strange), then it took almost a month to clear customs and forward to Germany.
But for some reason it got stuck in some delivery center and was eventually returned to Switzerland two weeks later.
I called DHL several times but they had no clue what went wrong and could not fix it.
The seller never answered my message and I don't know if the item made it back to him.
Had to contact ebay customer service and still waiting to get my money back.

Second problem is a stem from the US. Also via ebay international shipping service.
It went to the shipping center without problem.
Then before it was forwarded to Germany it got flagged for "prohibited contents" and returned to sender.
That makes no sense because there are no restrictions in importing bicycle parts from the US into the EU.
This time the ebay seller is helpfull and I hope he can find out what happend.
DHL Germany is no help at all.

In between I bought a headset from the UK via ebay international shipping service and that went great.
No issues with cusoms and delivered within a week.
And I bought items from the US a lot in the past and never had any issues.

Did anyone else have problems with this?
Or am I just unlucky?

 

[gtturbo]

I had a problem with a hub I ordered before Christmas. It sat in the US distribution centre for over 2 weeks. When I chased it then finally got forwarded on to me. Talking on live chat to ebay support, because you don't seem to be able to talk to someone on the phone, they admitted they were having problems. I tried to get them to refund the shipping costs because of their delay but after numerous attempts, and at times being told outright lies by customer support, I gave up. Ebay customer service is non existent in my experience.

 

[ishaw]

I've had so many issues with the eBay gsp I won't use it, in fact. I've pretty much stopped selling on eBay due to costs, fraudsters and delivery issues.

I can't speak about DHL via eBay, but Pitney Howes were terrible on any number of occasions. On one occasion after months of getting nowhere I did manage to get a contact address for pitney bowes and had to threaten legal action before they took notice and finally refunded me the £300 value of the lost item. I was out of pocket for ages as I refunded the buyer to avoid negative feedback, plus it wasn't their fault they paid for an item that went missing.

I've bought items that were also declared prohibitive when not, in one case I was advised it had been destroyed rather than returned to seller.

Other cases things just went missing and it takes months of faceless, couldn't care less communications back and fourth, I think they try to wear you down.

As for DHL, we use them at work for retail deliveries, they really aren't very good. We trialled ups with a view to replacing DHL but they were even worse. We had issues from the start just setting up an account with them. Apparently our email addresses were too long for their CRM. We were sent a screenshot of it and I kid you not, it is a DOS based system from the 80s. I couldn't believe it. A global organisation still using a system from 40 years ago to manage customer records. An asset well sweated for sure. The science museum would make a great home for it.

 

[DrmZ]

Ok that sounds not good.
At this point I avoid ebay US items. It's just not worth the trouble.
This hobby is supposed to be fun but when you have to write endless messages with sellers, eBay support and shipping companies just to get the money back you had to pay upfront because they failed to deliver your purchase: it stops to be fun.
I will stick to local purchases and the forums for now.