(this is a commentary about my experience selling to the UK from Canada in the last six months)
If someone would have told me this time last year that I would essentially no longer be selling to UK customers in one years time I would have laughed in their face.
Year after year after year of strong, unrelenting sales from UK customers, my 3rd strongest market in the world, after Canada and the US. Never faltering, never wavering...the sun never setting on business with British customers.
Then hard Brexit hits....most of us outside the UK who kept tabs on their political situation figured this would happen due to Boris the clown's incessant, incompetent dithering about and relentless, careless bungling of the issue.
But I never thought it would affect me personally as bad as it has.
I started hearing feedback from UK customers by mid to late January - wheres my stuff? You know, you got them too. The reports just kept coming in, as did the INR claims, and the refunds....and the reports from the customers contacting me in March to report they finally got the item they ordered in the last week of December.
I shut down to UK sales completely by late January 2021 because by then I was already drowning in red ink. Virtually everything I was sending there was disappearing off the map, only to resurface 8 - 12 weeks after I mailed it. While I re-opened to UK customers in late April, I barely see them anymore. I think I've had 4 or 5 sales to UK customers since then, they are just not coming around. I have spoken with a few folks over there about this and what I have learned is that most are aware Brexit has also changed the online international shopping game for them and they are buying less online due to similar problems they are experiencing domestically after Jan 1.
As other sellers Im sure noticed, not even the onset of COVID last year affected delivery ability to the UK - I even recorded my fastest ever delivery during this time frame, from Edmonton, Alberta to just outside of London UK in 2 - yes, that's right, TWO - days. The delivery network between Canada and the UK was robust and if that couldnt shake it, what could?
Brexit hasnt just shook it....from where I sit, it has completely nuked it.
It appears all the border issues and papers being checked on imported goods and this and that and that issue as created by hard Brexit has tossed globalist economic ideals out the window on top of completely knackering my ability to sell to the UK. It has become that shipping to the UK - I cant believe Im about to say this, but it has become true - is now like shipping to Nigeria, or anywhere in Brazil other than Sao Paulo, or hinterland western China, or giant chunks of Siberia, or most of Latin and South America in that it has become so unreliable I cannot expect my item to be delivered in any reasonable time frame, and sending the item with a tracking number there has become so cost ineffective that it is just not worth selling there anymore.
For what I sell, tracked to the UK via Canada Post is a completely ridiculous $24, and chitchats, which used to charge the "too high" rate according to several prospective UK customers of around $13.50 Canadian / around 8 quid, is now around $23 Canadian...this, for an item that is all of 125 grams in weight. Shipping non tracked via Canada Post small packet air rate is equally pointless, as every one I've sent over this way since January 1 has taken 8 - 12 weeks - I thought there would be an improvement eventually, but so far I'm wrong - including one nice fellow in Scotland, who is not happy but he's being very understanding about it all, who has been waiting patiently for his item since I sent it on April 21.
How is international commerce possible under circumstances like this? For me, its not. I know I'm now essentially priced out of the game selling to the UK, and have to shut sales down there again, this time possibly for good, until there's either a dramatic change in quality of service and / or a dramatic improvement in postal service delivery times.
It just blows my mind that a postal delivery network between the UK and one of the primary nations of the Commonwealth has gone from almost impenetrably robust to, within six months, banana republic unreliable. It has become one of those countries I cant as a seller sell to because I cannot expect the item to arrive in any reasonable time frame and will be, thanks to platform policy, out the money for the product and the shipping if its not delivered in a timely fashion whether it gets ends up getting there or not.
What a nice double, triple, quadruple, quintuple whammy its been...to someone you'd think wouldnt be effected by a political decision made in a country across a giant ocean 7,000 kms from where I'm sitting to write this. Special thanks to Boris Johnson and all the leave voters for harming my ability to do business not just to your country, but to do business period....the lesson being that the UK's decision to leave the EC has created a ripple of (unintended?) destructive economic consequences way beyond the reach of their country's borders.
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