So I am being forced into international delivery?

marking_bad

For what reason... because ebay sales are down? So ignoring the fact I am not equipped to deal with international orders, I have zero knowledge of taxes, customs or other applicable laws for each country. I don't speak any other language and have enough trouble dealing with problems in the UK, without turning things into an international incident!

Ok, a bit dramatic, but I don't offer international delivery for these reasons, and I am comfortable running my little shop this way, my sales are good and all problems are dealt with quickly and easily. Now, a month later I could be getting emails from god only knows where telling me my electrical goods exploded on their power supply, or the item of clothing got eaten by a crocodile, refund pls.

Ebay are annoyed they only have a revenue of $13bn. Bless 'em.

Edit - ok, it turns out you can opt out of it, rant over (but for how long?)

heuchera

I was about to start a thread asking how people are getting on with the Global Shipping Programme :rotfl:

I received an email today saying that I would soon be enrolled onto it unless I opt out.

Normally I would only ever post to the UK, as I am only a small seller and I don't want the hassle of dealing with overseas buyers or trying to trace parcels which have a habit of going missing in some countries postal services!

I am unsure now whether to give the Global Shipping Programme a try or whether to opt out.

Bigun28

I thought I got caught out by this a few weeks back when a guy from France bid on one of my items. However, what happens is that eBay automatically calculate a postage charge (with taxes etc) for his location. So whilst I was charging £3.00 for postage in the UK, he was seeing the postage charge to France as £12.50.

When the Paypal reciept came through, I was only paid the £3.00 UK postage charge, and the remaining £9.50 automatically went to a third party who took charge of the postage from the UK to France on eBay's behalf.

This was backed up because the address it gave me to post to was in the UK with a reference number in it and not France. So I post to there and eBay then do the rest to France.

So for me, I'm hitting a wider international eBay market with my items for no extra cost to myself.

bxboards

Randal wrote: »

So for me, I'm hitting a wider international market with my items for no extra cost to myself.

You are missing some basic economics here - if the buyer was willing to pay all this extra postage, then this shows you could be selling this yourself at a higher price. So there is a cost to yourself, and the buyer. You could add another 5 pounds or so to the item price, and post to France yourself. without Ebay creaming it off.

soolin

bxboards wrote: »

You are missing some basic economics here - if the buyer was willing to pay all this extra postage, then this shows you could be selling this yourself at a higher price. So there is a cost to yourself, and the buyer. You could add another 5 pounds or so to the item price, and post to France yourself. without Ebay creaming it off.

I'm with you on this, I'll handle my postage myself. It really isn't rocket science but I will darned if I let ebay control one more thing about my account.

In some weeks a third of my items go abroad, many at hardly more than they cost to post in the UK

densol_2

I agree the Global shipping is very expensive. I've started selling Disney pins and the main market is USA. Global want to add on $14-$16 ... Yet it's only £3.80 to post a small parcel standard to USA. The pins on the whole are not valuable ( under £20) so I definitely won't be using Global unless I'm missing something ?

lovinituk

densol wrote: »

I agree the Global shipping is very expensive. I've started selling Disney pins and the main market is USA. Global want to add on $14-$16 ... Yet it's only £3.80 to post a small parcel standard to USA. The pins on the whole are not valuable ( under £20) so I definitely won't be using Global unless I'm missing something ?

They are sent via a fully tracked service to the overseas buyers and you are only responsible for getting it to the 3rd party (Pitney Bowes I believe) so there is less hassle, but it comes at a premium for the buyer.

For people that just want to increase their sales with very little extra hassle, the GSP is a good idea. If you can handle the international shipping yourself then you are likely to see even more sales because your overall prices will not be inflated by the GSP shipping costs.

We have a very decent overseas customer base now and to be honest we get far less problems from overseas buyers than we do from our UK customers!

Bigun28

bxboards wrote: »

You are missing some basic economics here - if the buyer was willing to pay all this extra postage, then this shows you could be selling this yourself at a higher price. So there is a cost to yourself, and the buyer. You could add another 5 pounds or so to the item price, and post to France yourself. without Ebay creaming it off.

Not quite. I did my research of eBay completed sales for the item and was pricing and selling mine at about the going for the item. Increase the cost anymore and I potentially could loose the UK market. For me, if someone from another country particulalrly wants the item and is happy to pay the postage, then so be it.

I know I've been in a similar situation with spares for electronic items. They stopped making them in the UK years ago, but I noted that the items I needed were sometimes still available on eBay in the USA. Ok, the postage was quite a bit, but overall the cost was still cheaper than trying to purchase a brand new electronic item in the UK.