A message I received from a buyer today. :P

[kimbooley89]

So yesterday a buyer messaged me and asked if a price on a bag I was selling was negotioable or not. I said yes, and then checked his profile and noticed he is from Cairo, Egypt. I sent another message to him saying that unfortunately I don't post internationally (which is mentioned in my listings that postage is only to Australia) due to costs being expensive and it seems harder to keep track of a package.

Today he responds with, "No, dear - I have a relative living in Australia and he will take the bag. Don't worry yourself with this."

I don't know whether to be offended or just laugh at his condescending attitude. Like, sit down little lady. These matters don't concern you.

[twyngwyn]

....I have sold to o'seas buyers before....and their 'friend' receives it in Australia....buyer just temporarily changes their delivery address....not saying this is your case, but could be

[kimbooley89]

Yeah, for that reason I'm a little wary of this after receiving the message as to whether or not I should even go along with this when he does offer a price.

Also, the buyer apparently joined eBay a few months ago and they have 0 feedback so I was also a little suspicious. I didn't know if it was legit or not.

[phorum_junkie* · Accepted solution]

If you have no international postage selected and have your buyer blocks set to block members with a primary delivery address you do not post to then they can only bid/buy if they change their primary delivery address to an Australian one. When they go to pay if you have those settings in place it should not allow them to change to an international address.  They could be as condescending as they wanted for me as long as they bought the thing.

[kopenhagen5 · Accepted solution]

Probably not condescending, I think it more a direct translation from their language in trying to be polite.

If they pay with PayPal make sure you send to the address in the PayPal notification via trackable means, providing it's an aussie address.

[kimbooley89]

Hm, I didn't think about it that way. I doubt I'll go with this person though, now that I've got a second buyer who is willing to pay full price.

Thanks anyway, guys.

[springyzone]

You would have been mad to go with them anyway.

What if he had bought then asked you to post to an address that was not the one attached to his paypal account?

Wouldn't leave you in a very happy place.

Personally, I think you need to do what a previous person mentioned and go make further tweaks to your account so overseas people cannot bid at all on your items.

Congrats on the proper full price sale-far better!

[kimbooley89]

Thanks for all the advice, guys. I've just checked my Seller Preferences and realised that I didn't have any countries ticked as postage exclusions - so I've gone ahead and done that now to (hopefully) avoid this happening again in the future. 🙂