Is ebay only for idiots these days?

Purely out of interest, why do so many US Ebayers refuse to ship overseas? Is it because of dodgy payments? Or does the US postal service make it difficult ?

T.

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i hate that too, they say its too much effort, or dont know how to do it...90% of what i have ever bought has been from the US or overseas.

all that and more. one clown broke a turntable and wanted it replaced with me paying postage. he even said he broke it and i was responsible for his doing so. goodbye france and the eu.

I just don't want any more hassles than ebay adds all by itself. If the auction states the sale terms, and someone bids knowing that they can't meet the requirements, then I'm gonna get pissed. Why they don't read it, who knows?

Craig

...not sure that you don't have to obtain an export license if you are going to do that on a regular basis (more than a certain number, certain value, etc.). Not worth the hassle, IMO.

yeah, people used to say americans don't read signs. reality is that people are not obsevant and expect things explained simply. seems universal but the brits are at least polite. sadly, my worst has been with the french. no offense to our excellent frenchman here.

I even stopped selling to Canada. Every time a Canadian bought something & I sent them a postage rate, they wanted to haggle & wanted me to get the lowest rate possible. What is with those guys? Anyway, I just don't ship to Canada or anywhere else outside the USA.

My most frequent problem is people asking for a shipping estimate an hour before the end of the auction. I clearly state that all requests have to be made before 24 hours before the end of the auction. I often check in on my auctions after they end and find requests for shipping estimates. My solution to this is, if the item hasn't sold, to get an estimate, send the estimate along with a polite re-statement of my policy and add when I expect to re-list the item. It worked this week when I sold one item to a fellow who didn't read the policy 2 weeks ago. I send stuff to lots of places, the Isle of Skye being one of the least likely places and Hong Kong being one of the farthest. I once sold a kit to the mayor of Yellowknife, NWT. All those years of seeing it on maps and I end up selling a kit to a guy there. There are some neat features to E-bay. One of the things about E-bay that really gripes me is the level of difficulty involved in just listing things for sale. 5 years ago when I started it wasn't anywhere near this difficult. After all that fussin' about and then they up their fees too. I can see why one of the investment firms lowered their stock listing because of E-bay's loss of their core business.

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

Well with what you're describing, it could be there's a language problem, but yes, lots of people don't read what you say. I know you can reject bids if you want; I wonder if there is any way of filtering bids in the first place. Find out if you can set filters that will not allow any overseas bidding. I bet you can.

I have to laugh when it shows clearly in the item description that shipping for XYZ is $10 within the US and someone always asks how much to Kentucky, how much to California, how much to whatever... sometimes I goof them and say $10 unless your state has seceded recently..

--- Stephen

Mostly it's inertia. It's easier to ship within the US than out. That doesn't explain the why of it ... just the what.

I haven't sold my own stuff for a while, but I thought it was really fun to send to other countries. I'm a kid like that, I guess.

---- Stephen

i couldnt have got my collection of Revell/Lindenberg Caprice/Impalas and Crown Vics, decals, lightbars, books etc anywhere else than US ebay...same goes for CHiPs stuff and a lot of other stuff...

If it says US only, i would ask, half would ship to the UK, it was easy, they was happy, went a bit higher, or i explained it was impossible to get here, and i usually went for more than one item...i once got over 50 car kits from one seller, came surface, no probs.

Had a couple of bad US buyers, one guy won, and thought the UK was in the US, so wangled out of paying up...and the other wanted the 'cheapest' shipping, so i sent it surface and he thought that meant driven to the airport.

I've found the Ebay dispute process works pretty well. My issues have revolved around buyers not paying or as you have experienced, being inelegible to purchase. When a problem occurs, I inform the buyer why I cannot or will not proceed with the transaction. Usually we are able to agree on a mutual retraction which refunds me the listing and final value fees, and does not leave them with an unpaid item strike. The only time I think I levied unpaid item strikes against a buyer was after three weeks of "the check is in the mail" email volleyball he played with me - all the while he's buying from and paying other sellers like a mad bandit. As long as your terms are clear, you've got the higher hand.

Things I've learned on intl transactions that may be of help to some :

1. Specify immediate payment via PayPal for foreign buyers. Specify that foreign buyers have Paypal accounts that are confirmed and verified. I still have buyers that do not read - and conduct transactions with unverified accounts - BUT - I have the option of declining if I want to. To date I've declined only a few out of spec buyers and (knock on laminated desktop) I've had no theft or fraud issues with intl buyers.

1. For USPS shippers - Specify you ship US Priority Mail International (formerly Air Mail Parcel Post) as your minimum level of shipping. If you ship surface and the shipment is undeliverable, YOU have to pay to get it returned. USPS Priority International ships it back for free. Ship surface at your own risk.

2. For USPS shippers - In addition to sticking on the clear enevlope with your multiple copies of the customs paperwork, write YOUR NAME and ADDRESS directly on the box in heavy ink. This advice was given to me by my local USPS clerk on my first intl shipment - and it wasn't long after I found out why. A month later another intl package was returned to me because by the time it got to NJ for export, the customs forms had been removed from the clear envelope. That piece of labelling advice meant the difference in getting an kit back. I produced my copy of the customs papers and had the item shipped out a second time at no cost. That's probably a benefit of having small town post office service, so you're mileage may vary.

1. The process of printing USPS customs forms by hand is a thing of the past. This was the number one pain in the ass thing to deal with that for years soured me on intl sales. Now you can do it thru the USPS site or thru Ebay/Paypal. I hate the fees, but Paypal has its uses.

4a. Shipping USPS Priority Mail via Paypal provides delivery confirmation at NO CHARGE to domestic destinations.

1. Previously, you could not use the free Priority Mail boxes to ship Airmail Parcel Post. That has changed and they can now can be used on the newly branded USPS Priority International. I no longer have to spend the extra minute or two reversing the boxes to the brown side, :-). Yes, I know the USPS started marking the inside of the boxes years ago. Yet to this date, I've never seen one.

2. Familiarize yourself with the international restrictions on your preferred carrier. For instance with USPS, there are girth, weight and content limits that vary by country. In fact, many sellers probably do not familiarize themselves with the girth limits of domestic packages and get the surprise of their lives when the shipping cost they gave to the buyer are half of the actual costs because they misclassed an oversized box as a regular size. Ask me how I know :-(.

6a For just such an occassion, specify that the buyer pays all shipping costs. It's not bulletproof considering the error may be on your part, but it's better than nothing.

1. Be clear when you say shipping to the US only, that you mean the continental US. Shipping to AK, HI, territories and APO/Fleet are all considered "US", but the shipping costs and procedures vary. My experience with Ebay's shipping calculator has been that it underestimates HI and AK. APO and Fleet destinations require additional paperwork that on my last sale was not yet automated. It's not that much of a bother but my preference is to have all my work done so that I can drop off pre-paids or call for a pickup without spending much time at the counter filling out multiple copies of forms that are not all that self-explanatory.

Preaching to the choir to many, news to some. Sorry for the long winded type, but I find myself with ample amounts of time on my hands.

WmB

I didnt thin in UK you could get verified etc if not in US

I used to get 80% of my stuff surface, could take 3 months but nothing ever went missing in 4 years

I used to ask if they would put lower value, cos of the tax...when i used to ship to US, 2nd hand toys didnt get taxed, but here they do.

And now for a word from one of the "screwups" on the other side....

I recently saw an n scale railroad car on eBay that I absolutely had to have. In my excitement, I immediately placed a bid. It was only after I had confirmed said bid that I scrolled down to see that the seller only uses PayPal.

Now I will never use PayPal (again)! It seems that the last time I did, such minor bits of information as my name, email address, and credit card number ended up in the wrong hands. I had to cancel that account; cancel my eBay account; and ultimately even had to change my email address.

With all of that in mind, when I won the item, I sent an immediate email to the seller outlining my problem and asking how he wished to resolve it. I have yet to hear from him, and I have yet to see the item relisted.

I had more than 100 successful purchases under my old account name, and another twenty or so under my new account name - and pointed that out to him.

Yes, I screwed up. But would it be so difficult for the seller to at least return my email, call me a screwup, and hate me for the rest of his days? Or could we simply arrive at some mutually acceptable method of resolving this issue?

Andy

patience, flyswatter. perhaps he's not home from work, yet?

Reminds me of the Post Office employee who told one patron that they don't send mail with US postage to New Mexico as that's a foreign country. I read that one in Ann Landers long ago so we haven't learned anything yet. :(

and the other wanted the 'cheapest'

Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.

I've heard similar things aboutpaypal from so many other people that I would never have anything to do with them.

As I mentioned before, the occasionally hideous winning bids on e-bay are a matter of impatience, seriously warped ideas of resale (read "collector's) value and laziness coupled with far too much spending money.

In over forty years of buying and trading there are only two kits that I have never found. That does not include items which have been simply too expensive. In time it seems that almost everything gets into the collection.

There are things that just are not meant to be, though. It's far too late, for example, to obtain original WWII ID models. Most of them are starting to disintegrate, the remainder still in good condition are far too expensive. Same goes for Frog Penguin kits on both counts. I do have the Merlin copies of three of the Penguin Hawker biplanes and I'm quite satisfied with them.

Skybird kits are so old that I may never see one, much less own one. I have, however, recently obtained an original Skybirds WWI Hanger complete in the original box with a handful of loose Skybirds lead soldiers from the same gentleman. Just for fun I also got a completed Strombecker P-61, the original wood kit, complete with imaginative decals.

Almost anything is possble.

Tom