Online Sellers: Best advice you can offer someone shipping goods over 50$ overseas to Europe and Australia?
Asked by
pleiades (
6617
)
December 10th, 2013
I want to expand my sales but I’m sort of afraid to ship overseas. What are the best tips you can give? What sort of trouble is normal? Do you ever ship on a budget and just trust the buyer without tracking?
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7 Answers
I have never ever shipped stuff without tracking it’s not that much more. You send them the tracking number afrer you’ve mailed the item. I’ve never had any problems. Oh and make sure you work out the shipping costs carefully, make overseas buyers ask you for a quote. People don’t like nasty surprises with the shipping cost.
Ebay has an international shipping program that handles that for you. I don’t know if the bother of setting up an Ebay account would be more or less of a bother than international shipping but it works out great for me! I get the money for the product and the customer and Ebay work out the international shipping. I send the package with a routing number to an address in the US and Ebay takes care of the rest. They even put a tracking number on it! Which brings up my next thought…
I don’t know if you want to do it that way but what I would insist that you do is always put on a tracking number. Things don’t just get “lost” anymore. You can trust people if you like but I would advise caution and insist you get the product returned before offering any sort of refund.
@DWW25921 I spent last night reading up on the Global Shipping Program through eBay! It seems legitimate. All a seller has to do is ship it safely with tracking to “Kentucky” or wherever the Global Shipping Program is located and they take care of the rest. And a seller isn’t held responsible for “items not arrived” because they provide tracking.
The service that Ebay uses is in Kentucky. That’s where I have sent me packages… Could it be the same company?
Don’t ship to Asia, except for Japan.
Avoid eastern Europe, too, including Russia.
Japan, the UK, and Scandinavia have the most reliable postal systems, in my experience selling fragile goods.
I wouldn’t trust a repackaging service for the stuff I was selling, because frankly few people know how to handle collectibles without damaging them, and I’m responsible for that.
@DWW25921 Yes that is the same one! So just be really careful with fragile items. I ship records so I can’t use them.
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