Pitney Bowes will continue to operate but it spun off its global ecommerce unit into bankruptcy, and sellers are wondering if it will impact eBay International Shipping, a program for sellers known as EIS.
“Does this news shut down eBay’s International Shipping program,” a reader asked EcommerceBytes. He pointed to an article in Supply Chain Dive, which reported that many parcel delivery and returns services of the Pitney Bowes’ Global Ecommerce unit will cease operations in the coming weeks.
Sellers were asking the same question on Reddit. “I see that Pitney Bowes is not only going bankrupt but also ceasing all eCommerce operations. I think eBay contract is with Pitney Bowes for several reasons but with USPS as the carrier. Does anyone have insight into the potential impact on sellers?”
Note that Pitney Bowes itself has not filed for bankruptcy. According to its press release on August 8, “the GEC segment had been struggling to achieve profitability over the past several years in the face of macroeconomic and industry headwinds.” Activist investor Hestia Capital has been pressuring the company to divest GEC since 2022.
For years, eBay relied on Pitney Bowes to power its Global Shipping Program (GSP), but last year officially replaced GSP with the new EIS program, which as of the end of 2023 encompassed 400 million listings, according to eBay’s Chief Financial Officer Steve Priest. He also said last year that the change to EIS meant eBay went from being an agent to being the principal with shippers.
In the EIS terms of use, eBay says it uses third parties but doesn’t mention specific vendors:
“After your Buyer has paid you for the EIS Item, you will ship the EIS Item to a parcel processing facility located in the United States (“US Shipping Hub”), which is managed by third party service providers. Third party service providers will oversee the processing of the EIS Item at the US Shipping Hub in preparation for shipping to your Buyer. eBay or its third party service providers may open and inspect the EIS item without notice and may repackage improperly packaged EIS items. The EIS item will then be routed through the carrier’s networks to the Buyer’s delivery address provided by the Buyer (or to a collection center near your Buyer designated by the postal carrier).”
The closest hint that eBay has continued to utilize Pitney Bowes at least in part for its EIS program came from a 2022 press release where the latter stated it would continue to provide a range of cross-border ecommerce logistics services to eBay in the US and UK and writing in the November 2, 2022 release: “Pitney Bowes will continue to be a partner, offering a range of ecommerce logistics services to support eBay International Shipping going forward.”
This week’s developments should have come as no surprise to eBay. On December 12, 2022, we reported that Pitney Bowes was under pressure to divest itself of the unit that powered eBay’s international shipping programs in, “Wall Street Pressure on Pitney Bowes Could Impact eBay Sellers.”
