Channel Islands are not part of the UK, that's a common misunderstanding by mainlanders and as such, another reason the Islanders feel they can try it on. All couriers apart from Royal Mail have either higher shipping rates for the Channel Islands or their network simply doesn't cover the Islands because the increased cost to them doesn't fit their business model. The problem is the Channel Islands share the UK's postcode system which is great for Royal Mail but a nightmare for other third party services who have to find a way to filter these locations by postcode in all their shipping, payment gateway and check out integrations. The same problem goes for Nothern Island and the Scottish Highlands. I used to manage a global eCom site and configuring table rates to play nicely with warehousing and shipping integrations to guard against massively inflated shipping prices to these 'UK' postcodes was a big problem. For large volume parcels the rate could literally be 10-15 times the UK mainland rate. Anyway, Hermes for example, simply do not ship to the Channel Islands meaning a seller is stick between a rock and a hard place when a Channel Islander has 'accidentally' listed their country as UK. All Islanders are very aware of this postcode/country loophole in shipping systems and they are all very aware there are specific country options such as "Channel Islands" or "Jersey" in the eBay address settings but they choose not to use them to try and dodge shipping fees. For reasons mentioned above, this is also why eBay provide the option to exclude shipping to Highlands, Islands and NI on the seller settings but it seems this only filters buyers by their Country not their postcode. If eBay would stop validating non-UK postcodes as UK addresses this wouldn't be a problem. For anybody reading who is having a similar problem, the solution if your system allows, is to create special table rates for the specific poscodes in these locations that override any table rates based on the country address field. The list of postcodes can be found easily with a quick Google 'postcodes for Highlands and Islands'. Of course, eBay doesn't have this ability, it relies on the country field being set correctly by the buyer. Hence the fustration as a seller who is paying fees to PayPal/eBay for eBay's mistaken validation.
