eBay has partnered with SingPost and the United States Postal Service (USPS) to offer a new shipping service for eBay Singapore sellers.
Dubbed ePAC, the service lets sellers track the delivery of lightweight goods sold to American customers within six to eight working days. This service is part of eBay and SingPost’s ongoing efforts to boost trade from Singapore to the United States.
From today, eBay Singapore sellers can start using ePAC on a fully integrated platform, allowing them take orders, print labels and track the status of shipments. U.S.-based customers can also track the status of their purchased goods through their eBay account.
Oliver Hua, chief operating officer at eBay Marketplaces in the Greater China region, Southeast Asia and Japan, said Singapore sellers are highly regarded for combining good quality products at great value, and command the second highest sales in Southeast Asia, behind Thailand.
“We foresee ePAC playing a vital role in driving Singapore’s online exports to the United States as demonstrated by a similar shipping service launched with China Post and the U.S. Postal Service in September 2010, which is already processing more than 90,000 parcels a day,” he added.
The e-commerce giant has also been offering a similar service for sellers in Thailand and Hong Kong through partnerships with local postal services.
eBay’s export business is largely led by exporters in China and Hong Kong, according to the company’s Asian Exporter Index published last August.
Large exporters with annual turnovers of more than US$100,000 have experienced year-on-year growth of 26 percent across the region, with 200 exporters – predominantly based in China and Hong Kong – recording annual turnovers of over US$1 million.
The top-selling products sold by Asian exporters on eBay include clothing, jewellery, watches, computers, cellphones and auto parts.
As far as SAVING/BUYING $ and eBay goes:
If you send the seller a question about an item, find another of their listings, and send the question from that item page, rather than from the one that you actually want. This will add a little bit of work for the seller, if they want to add your question and their answer to the item description page that you are actually interested in.
If you see an item that you want listed in auction format, send the seller a message asking if they will accept $x to end the auction early and sell the item to you. May be telling them that they would not have to wait as long to get their money (they would probably know that, but it still might help). If that does not work, use a sniping service such as Bidball.com to bid for you. It’ll bid in the last few seconds, helping you to save money and avoid shill bidding.
Use a site like Ebuyersedge.com to set up saved searches. You’d get an e-mail whenever a match is listed. Especially good for “Buy It Now”s that are priced right.
If the item that you are looking for is a long word or a bit difficult to spell, try a misspelling search site like Typojoe.com to hopefully find some deals with items that have main keywords misspelled in the title. Other interested buyers might not ever see them. Then, if the item is listed an auction format, after a few days of no bids (hopefully anyway) send the seller and offer to end the auction early and sell the item to you. After a few days of no bids, they may worry that no one is interested, and take whatever they can get.