Cookie jar insurance fund takes one for the team...

[ricarmic]

Had a sale yesterday to "Spain", decent sized order.

Looked at the shipping location and it is actually the Canary Islands (Spain is still the "country name" though)

I've had very very bad luck trying to get stuff to the Canary Islands in the past, although it has been many years though*, but anyway pulled some funds from the cookie jar to put tracking on the package.

*Upon reviewing my losses, it was at least 2011 or earlier the last time I had a loss from the Canary Islands, although I don't remember the last time I shipped there, could have been the last lost time. I guess I should have looked at the losses history before I upgraded the shipping outta the cookie jar. I probably should have run the risk to see if it was a problem now.... got overparanoid probably.....

[rose-dee]

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@ricarmic wrote:

I probably should have run the risk to see if it was a problem now.... got overparanoid probably.....

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I think we're all feeling the same way.  I now upgrade to tracking (out of my own pocket, mind) for certain locations or certain buyers even though I would never have considered it 2 or 3 years ago.  

EBay has very effectively put the fear of defects uppermost in our minds, I'd venture to say it's become our first thought in a transaction.  Those cookie-jar contents won't last long these days.

[femmefan1946]

In another thread tonight,  honeybed1950, usually a very conservative seller wrote:

I am a Canadian seller in Manitoba and it is one of many reasons I switched from cheaper mail service with no tracking number to mail service with tracking number 2 years ago.  And of course I may losing the potential buyers when they see the shipping costs with tracking number especially to International countries. 

But to my surprise I did sold lots of items to International countries which I shipped with tracking numbers even the shipping costs are way too high but they were willing to pay.

I really think we can be too afraid of charging our real costs on some transactions. Our customers wouldn't be shopping here if they could buy locally.

This is particularly true, in my opinion, when the customer is overseas.

USPS shipping costs are pretty high too, even overlooking the GSP, and many US sellers simply will not ship overseas (or to Alaska for that matter).