eBay

geoff-jazz · ‎07-13-2013

Hi all,

I have an enquiry about shipping to the Baltic State of Estonia. My usual shipping method is Canada Post. I am just a little worried about having the customer pay with paypal with the 21 day hold on funds. If you sold to a country that is not on your prefered list what would be the safeguards that you'd want to put so that you don't get ripped off as a seller? My first thing would be full insurance and an premimum shipping method. Any other tips?

Geoff

marnotom! · ‎07-13-2013

Is this for one of the items you've sold recently or for an item you've yet to sell?

Checking your recently sold items at $15 and $23, I think any sort of additional safeguards would be a waste of time and money.

pjcdn2005 · ‎07-13-2013

I am just a little worried about having the customer pay with paypal with the 21 day hold on funds.

If the buyer claimed an item not received paypal would require you to refund the buyer even if there was not a 21 day hold so that hold shouldn't factor in your decision in this situation.

As suggested, if the item is not expensive, there shouldn't be a need for 'premium' shipping or insurance. Estonia can be insured by some/most 3rd party insurance companies so if you absolutely want insurance, you could send the item by small packet air (if under 2kgs) and then insure with a company such as u-pic or shipsurance. Make sure you read their policies so that you know what they cover and whether or not you have to provide proof of shipping. (a receipt from the p.o or a stamp on the bottom half of your paypal receipt should serve as proof of shipping)

pjcdn2005 · ‎07-13-2013

You mentioned 'preferred' countries. If you do not want to ship to a country then you should set up your preferences so that they are blocked. If you are willing to ship there, you should already have a hipping price set up in the shipping area.You really neec to have a lot at the shipping costs on your listings. Many of your listings are missing shipping even for Canada and the U.S

You are asking $110 for shipping a $20 item to some European which is way too high.

Those sticks do look like they could be quite long though so make sure that the measurements are under the maximum for shipping service chosen

geoff-jazz · ‎07-13-2013

Thanks, it is an expensive item that hasn't sold yet. I've tried to set up the auto calculate on all my listings but am not sure what I am doing wrong.

So it would be safe to ship with a trackign # and have the item fully insured then?

marnotom! · ‎07-13-2013

@geoff-jazz wrote:

So it would be safe to ship with a trackign # and have the item fully insured then?

Depends on against what you feel you need "protection".

For what it's worth, I hang out on the .com site's International Trading Board a lot, and I don't recall Estonia being mentioned at all as being problematic for fraud or for poor handling by customs or the postal service.

What's your potential buyer's buying history like? Have they a history of purchasing similar items or items of a similar value from overseas?

femmefan1946 · ‎07-13-2013

You might look into shipping by courier, rather than by post for a large item (I'm assuming it is the dog cage). While couriers (UPS, FedEx and the like) have a bad reputation because they won't hand over the parcel until they have collected brokerage, duty and sales tax on the recipients doorstep, all their parcels are fully tracked and insured.

And if they won't ship somewhere, it's because they don't feel comfortable dealing with that nation. Post Offices have to deal with each other. There's a treaty. (The Universal Postal Union, google it.)

marnotom! · ‎07-14-2013

@femmefan1946 wrote:
You might look into shipping by courier, rather than by post for a large item (I'm assuming it is the dog cage). While couriers (UPS, FedEx and the like) have a bad reputation because they won't hand over the parcel until they have collected brokerage, duty and sales tax on the recipients doorstep, all their parcels are fully tracked and insured.

I could be wrong, Femmefan, but I thought one of the reasons commercial carriers (I prefer that term to "couriers"; I've probably been hanging out on the U.S. boards for too long) were so darned expensive to use for international shipments was because all the customs clearance related charges were folded into the carrier's charge. It's only ground services to Canada (and perhaps Mexico) where the recipient gets slugged with those charges on receipt. Air services are different.

tobyshitzu · ‎07-14-2013

"So it would be safe to ship with a trackign # and have the item fully insured then?"

You could get answers that make more sense if you'd provided the relevant information. eg if its the $500 33 lb dog cage the answer is it doesn't make any sense to ship it overseas,so forget it and move on

odds are pretty high the buyer isn't a scammer, but there are lots of possiblel ways to lose money here. You need to read the paypal page on seller protection. For instance, send it tracked and the buyer manages to get it redirected to a different adress (which is quite possible to do with CP here)), you lose the paypal protection and you could lose insurance coverage claim too. At $500 you need a signature to be covered by paypal seller protection, without one you could lose the paypal claim and the inusurer seeing it was delivered wont pay either. If the buyer just doens't like the large tax bill they are going to get on delivery and rejects it you'll be out the shipping and probably out it again when it comes back.

Don't list things you don't already know how they will be shipped, and its asking for trouble to have expensive to ship items listed without a cost