Help needed to offer free postage on listing

[hars54]

I have a single product and wish to list it for sale in Australia with both free local postage and also free international postage. Problem is that the product is located in China and shipped from China. The eBay "robot" will not accept the listing unless an Australian Postage method is first selected. Anyone out there that can tell me how I can get the item listed on ebay.com.au  simply as free domestic postage and free international postage? (as the item cannot be delivered by an Australian delivery method)

[ozstockman · Accepted solution]

Sorry I cannot help you with your question but as a buyer I would not recomend it.

Sometimes buyers want to buy from a local seller for many reasons which include faster delivery.  If you as a seller put an item location as Australia and all timeframes as for local delivery and I as a buyer buy it based on this information and wait much longer for delivery from China instead you will get a a big negative feedback from me for lying on the item location and delivery time.

If you are not going to set location to Australia and going to be honest then you do not need Australia Post methods showing at all.

[imastawka]

Is it multiples of the same item?

Why not purchase it from China - usually it's free postage by Chinese sellers -

and list the item once you have it in hand.

Dropshipping from China and relying on their postal system for your buyers is fraught

with danger and can get you defects in no time.

[hars54]

Hi thanks for your help.

The item is a fine carved jade statue valued at $2600 per unit - sent by express courier DHL - transit time 3 to 5 days and admitted by Australian Customs as an original work of art - thanks anyway.

[chameleon54]

It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. As stawka said, why not buy the item in first and resell it ?

If you havnt got the money to cover the initial purchase, you havnt got the money to cover the buyer when the inevitable happens and a statue gets lost / stolen in transit or broken / damaged en route. When that happens ( and it will happen ) its not ebay or the buyers problem, its yours and you need to able to afford to cover the $2600 loss from your own pocket...

[rocket2retro]

Due to the value of the item, the recipient will be up for GST & import tax (apllicable to items of greater than AU$1000 and determined at customs). Buyer won't be happy if they are left to pay these fees.

[lyndal1838]

Anyone buying items as expensive as this from overseas would be aware of the Customs charges and would have factored them into the purchase.

As long as the OP makes it very clear where the item is coming from there should not be a problem.

However, it may be a factor in why the OP is shipping direct from China.....the item would be VERY expensive if he imported it himself and then listed it at a price to cover the Customs charges as well as the original cost.

[ozstockman]

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@rocket2retro wrote:

Due to the value of the item, the recipient will be up for GST & import tax (apllicable to items of greater than AU$1000 and determined at customs). Buyer won't be happy if they are left to pay these fees.

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You are right on spot. Only GST and custom fees for $2600 product will be up to $350 plus there may be additional charge if this type of a product is not duty free, And that's what a customer will be asked to pay if it goes from China directly to the customer.

[chameleon54]

While the OP may be perfectly legit and have $6000 sitting in their paypal account for when two of the statues get stuck on the ports due to a union strike, the whole thing looks pretty suss.

The horror scenarios include seller collecting $2600 from buyer for a statue that gets damaged in transit. It is up to the seller to cover this cost if a case is opened. Minimum $2600 down the drain. The seller has sold a few things ( mainly empty luxury watch boxes ) so may not be under the 21 day paypal money hold. NOTE - The OP clearly declared the empty boxes, so not part of the empty box scam.

 As just mentioned if two statues get stuck in a container at the ports due to a union strike ( and yes there is one on right now ) and dont get delivered by ebays estimated delivery time, the buyers can put in item not recieved cases. In this scenario, the seller would have to cough up perhaps $6000 and the staues could still get delivered to the buyers three weeks later.

As rocket mentioned the customs charges open another can of worms, particularly if the buyers think the seller is based in Australia and dont read the fine print ( if it is even included in the listing ) stating the statues are being sent direct from China and additional fees will be charged by customs..

While the whole thing could be completely legit, the OP seller would need to be highly experienced, credible, honest and cashed up to have any chance of making it work. If they dont meet all of these criteria, there will be tears before bedtime as my old granny used to say.  RED FLAGS WAVING EVERYWHERE !!!