Any of you guys post overseas?

[justind71]

I've never ticked international postage, but for smaller items, maybe it's worth it, is there anything to look out for? I guess it's hard to determine postage cost and do people try to scam you with PayPal refunds etc? 

[digital*ghost]

It is a very turbulent time to be shipping overseas at the moment, especially on eBay where there are ETAs provided to buyers and if it isn't delivered by that date, the buyer can request a refund for non-delivery. eBay have extended ETAs quite a bit from what they were pre-covid-19, so you may have a little bit more leeway than sellers were getting before, but there remains a risk if a package is delayed or takes a little bit longer than eBay thinks it should, since you will need to provide proof of delivery if the buyer is not willing to wait a bit longer.

Even without these risks arising from the pandemic, selling internationally does have some inherently higher risks since things like postage costs are generally a lot higher and if something goes wrong, it's more expensive to fix it or lose out entirely. Which is not to say it's never worthwhile - it definitely can be - just that in order for it to be worthwhile, it's best to be aware of the kinds of risks there are so that you can account for them if you decide to open the listings for international buyers. 

I have never made my listings available to overseas buyers on eBay for multiple reasons, but I do ship internationally elsewhere, so my experiences may be slightly different than those selling internationally here - I shut down OS shipping in April, and re-opened it again a few weeks ago to see how things went - I would normally offer cheap untracked shipping options, but now I am only sending through tracked services at around 3 x the cost of what my postage was before, so that buyers can keep an eye on the progress and I have a full range of options available if something goies wrong. I'm also providing a transit time of 6-8 weeks, so that buyers can see much more accurate delivery timeframes  (some have been delivered already, after around 2 weeks, but the US packages are taking the longest at the moment). 

If you can manage buyer expectations surrounding delivery times and can afford to lose some of the items to request being opened while packages are still in transit, it may be worth it, but I would personally rethink it if you were looking to send small low value packages untracked (this option isn't currently available through Aus Post for most countries at the moment, but you can still get cheap untracked options through services like DHL ecommerce). 

[jellybirddesigns]

I post internationally, but only to a few select, reliable countries such as the USA, the UK, Germany, and a few others.

I won't post to anywhere in South America, Southern Europe, Canada and some other places.

In all the years I have sold internationally (which accounts for 30-40% of my business), I've only ever had a small handful of issues, even with items that are untracked.

However, with no flights in the air, I have turned off international shipping until things go back to normal.

[love_of_cars]

I've sold a large number of things to people all over the world since about 2013 and have only had a handful of issues (most of them misunderstandings and funds replaced), until this year due to the delivery delays caused by the Covid-19 impact.  For the first time ever I've had to completely stop all inernational sales about two weeks ago.  Too many people asking where their parcels are and "Item Not Received" cases being opened.  But Australia Post is forcing tracking on all parcels so I've been protected from having to give a refunds.

As an example, presently it is taking about 5 to 8 weeks for delivery to buyers in the US, and some items from April are still awaiting departure.  Seems that older parcels got left behind during the peak of it somewhat and more recent parcels got on planes first.  Once in the US and customs is cleared, the parcel is taking about two weeks to be delivered to the buyer.

I had one guy who really badmouthed Australia Post for taking so long and said USPS and FedEx would never be like this.  I didn't know quite what to say, I guess our numbers are smaller, our wages are higher, costs of living higher, not as big an operation, etc, who knows.  I don't see any improvements there for some time with how things are going.