No International shipping!?!

[Kennedy]

Can some one tell me WHY?

80% eBay people that has something that i'd like to buy lives in USA and they accept paypal.

What is the Problem to ship international? :
you still have to walk to post office.

If i send money and pay all the postage and packing etc. why people doesn't want to ship?

Does it requires 1min more work or what?

!DOUH! :shock:

[Raedon]

actually it takes more then 1 minute extra work.. lots of forms and hidden costs.

[Kennedy]

actually it takes more then 1 minute extra work.. lots of forms and hidden costs.

want to tell more?

i have few times offered 5-10$ more to ship stuff to me..

[geelw]

it's odd to me, as i've bought and shipped for quite a few countries. i've ONLY had problems with france- some clown ripped me off about 2 years ago, ebay wouldn't help at all, and the postal service here couldn't do a thing...

some sellers don't like to deal with int'l shipping because they'll have to make two trips to the post office, one to weigh the item, and another once they've gotten back to you and they have to send off the package for real, lol...
(solution, sellers need to buy a scale and think globally!)

some countries have awful mail service! for example, you can't send a global priority mail anything to italy! mail has to go regular air or express mail, and ems to italia is ridiculously EXPENSIVE.

also, there's the insurance factor. if an expensive item disappears in an air mail shipment, it's hell tracking it down even with EMS- forms have to be filled out, a few weeks or months go by and then if the item wasn't declared as its full value (a common request of some int'l bidders), the seller is out of luck in trying to prove that $250 box of games wasn't a $30 "gift"...

paypal makes things worse, as they give sellers the option of discriminating against international bidders or folks who have paypal accounts and no credit card without letting the bidders know until it's too late!... :twisted:

[geelw]

there aren't any HIDDEN costs at all, lol! if you KNOW how much an item weighs, you can log onto www.usps.com, and get any and ALL shipping options for sending stuff anywhere (again- buy a scale!) it's usually more than $5 or $10 extra for some countries, depending on the method chosen. personally, i prefer EMS, damn the cost- it takes 3-5 days, and you get to track your stuff!

the japanese sellers i deal with crack me up- they ship ANYWHERE in the world, as long as the person is willing to pay for shipping (EMS is the most secure)...

[Ascending Wordsmith]

There's three seperate forms to fill out, plus an international card that must be completed.

-shipper's name,
-shipper's address,
-recipient's name,
-recipient's address,
-what the item is,
-what's it worth,
-the number of pounds it weighs,
-and a signature.

Now do this four times in row on three forms that are 4x6 inches, and on a card that's 3x3.

I shipped international once... I'll never do it again. It's too much like writing a thesis paper.

[jaybird]

I'll give you a perfect example.

I had an auction for 23 common Atari games that stated "Will ship to United States only" clearly in the listing. It sold for $10.05.

The first message I get from the buyer is: "i did not see your information : USA only ... on your auction".

So now I'm stuck with an ended auction & a buyer from Germany. I can either refuse to sell & risk negative feedback or go through the pains to make the buyer happy.

So I decide to sell it to her. I go to USPS & figure the shipping and the site says $15.00. So I tell the buyer & after 3 or 4 days of no response they send payment through PayPal.

I then go to the post office & mail it. Much to my chagrin, the shipping is a mind boggling $21.80. I decide to go ahead & pay the extra amount and hope the buyer is good enough to give me the difference.

She didn't.

So now, after eBay fees, PayPal fees & the extra shipping, I made $1.14 off of 23 Atari games just because someone didn't read.

I'm not saying this is always the case, but there's definitely an unknown factor among most sellers about shipping costs. I know what it would cost in the US, but I had to use the USPS website to guesstimate at it because I never ship internationally.

To me, it's just not worth the hassle.

[geelw]

did you ask for the $15 rate you saw? the only way the system screws up is if you use it improperly. personally, i don't see anything confusing about filling out forms or checking rates if you DO IT AT HOME. again, if you have a postal scale and get the forms, it's less hassle and pressure. the forms aren't tough to complete at all- it's not rocket science, you're shipping out games. period.

i laugh my ass off when i see people fumbling around at post offices and complaining about the service when THEY themselves have no packing tape, no filled out forms, no WRITTEN LIST of money orders they want (much easier than "no, i said three HUNDRED thirty SEVEN sixty-three), and then they get to a window and spend 20 minutes more than they should (no wonder postal employees get heated all the time, lol)...=^P

[Sylentwulf]

Shipping internationally IS a pain in the ass, and any sellers that don't want to do it, don't have to.

I DO ship internationally, but you can expect to pay a little more and wait a little longer. Perfectly reasonable.

[Mayhem]

I'm beginning to wonder if the postal service over there in the US DOESN'T want you to ship outside of its borders after these stories!

Here in the UK we can complain about some aspects of our service... but international is pretty painless to say the least. I have scales and the rates in a booklet (which you can ask the Post Office for), so I only ever need to travel once to the office to ship an item.

If the item is small enough, you can get away with just a green customs label to fill out and then send. If it's over 1kg, then you'll fill out an international form which is attached to the parcel. But as its all carbon copy setup, you only ever write the information once.

And as I take Paypal or US$ cash, payment is no problem either...

[jaybird]

"Shipping internationally IS a pain in the ass, and any sellers that don't want to do it, don't have to."

Unfortunately, I didn't have that choice.

After this incident, I wish there was a way I could block international bidders.

[ashbourn]

It is just because they are lazy it takes just a min more and i do it on everything i put up.

[NESCollector75]

Im in Canada and selling on ebay I have to sell to the US since 80% is the US, and it really only takes me an extra min to fill out the custom form. Although I have been having trouble with one seller down in the states who I bought a SNES game off of for $10.00, the shipping was 3.50+1.50 for insurance, I sent him that. A week later after I pay (paid the same night I won via. Paypal) He sends me a message saying that to cost to canada it is going to cost him $22.50 to ship it! (shipping was a game in a bubble envelop via surface mail) Some how I dont think im guna see that parcel, its been about 20 days since I paid

[geelw]

unless he's shipping that game UPS, it doesn't cost that much to canada- a snes game, boxed via regular airmail to canada should cost about 6 or 7 bucks, tops...=^P

[chocobokick]

there are actually quite a few reasons not to ship internationally, many of which have already been discussed.
One reason that I have recently had to deal with is that a lot of the "sellers chargeback protection" offered by ebay payments, etc don't appy for payments not made on a US card. Add this to trouble proving items were recieved (no delivery confirmation, etc) and it can be a very expensive risk.
We do ship some internationally if the bidder asks. You can usually tell if they are competant with how they ask you. When we do ship international it's global priority only.

[Kennedy]

I DO ship internationally, but you can expect to pay a little more and wait a little longer. Perfectly reasonable.

This i know.. i have buy few games from you

Anyone remember that international buyers might pay more?
many games/systems that are "rare" in here might be really cheap in US.

[Sniderman]

My reason for not shipping internationally is very, very simple. I ship - exclusively - USPS Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation. No other methods. That's it, that's all, finito. Since this service is only available within the US, that's the extent I ship. I am not comfortable with any other shipping method and I refuse to change.

Call me narrow-minded, but with this shipment method, I've never had a parcel go missing, I've never had a parcel damaged, and it's in the buyer's hands within days rather than weeks. If USPS can offer an International shipping method that's this secure and painless (and inexpensive) I'll go for it. Until then, yell at them, not me.

[Mayhem]

That Quadrun package I won from eBay was sent USPS International with Delivery Confirmation (return receipt). Seller trusted me enough that I sorted it all out for him. No package I've ever been sent from the US has gone missing or been damaged in transit...

[allretrogames]

First let me state that I do ship internationally but I completely understand why many sellers don't. I find the number of and severity of problems go up by a factor of 10 if you are shipping out of country.
First - about 80% of my international customers request surface shipping (because it's cheap) and then most of them expect it (in spite of my warnings) to arrive in a week or two. I have had to discontinue surface shipping because it is far too unreliable.
Second - I have never had a US payment arrive drawn on a foreign bank (my bank charges $15 for out-of-country checks), I've never had a US check state that payment is in Canadian dollars, and I've never had foreign cash arrive for a US payment. All of these have happened to me more than once with international buyers
Third - a small number of international buyers (<5%) try to just pay me for domestic shipping with an international address and hope I don't catch it (I always clearly state shipping listed is for US shipping only). Unfortunately this small number jumps to almost 33% when you just consider Canada. PLEASE NOTE: Canada is not a US possession. I cannot ship Media Mail to Canada, etc.
Fourth - about a fourth of international buyers ask me to mark the package gift or to undervalue by a factor of 10. I completely sympathize with the egregious duties and customs charges but I'm not lying to my post office which bends over backwards to help me on a daily basis.
Fifth - many sellers I know have switched to UPS shipping only due to the recent rate hikes (and the free insurance). This would necessitate extra trips and in my case, living in the mountains as I do) the two are 10 miles apart.
I could go on and on but it's actually time for me to go to the post office :wink:

[Tritoch]

My reasoning is much the same as Sniderman's. I offer buyers a choice of either first-class or priority mail with delivery confirmation, and that's all I want to offer. I've never had a problem with mailing things this way, and there's very little risk involved.

I don't actually mind shipping internationally at all - a few times international bidders have ignored my instructions and bid anyway, and all of those transactions went flawlessly. When that happens though I repeatedly stress that it'll take much longer to get there, and I make sure they clearly understand exactly how much they need to pay extra for shipping. I just state that to keep the hassle to a minimum.