A little help please on an international sale

[bottomoftheharbour]

I had an international sale to the Ukraine two nights ago.  I don't sell international and rather thought I had my blocks in place.  Had planned on just ignoring them for 4 days and going thru with an unpaid item.  They have contacted me for an invoice.  Normally I would not worry but this item is considered to maybe on a Customs Restricted Item list and they may not get it at all.  I have not replied to them yet.  Just want to know the best way to deal with them so that they don't get annoyed and give me a neg or I get a slap from ebay. The item is a very small price $10.00 and it is a special Chrome Cassette.  Question, why buy this from an Australian seller?  Can they neg me for going unpaid?

[clarry100]

I would go the unpaid item dispute route if they do not pay.

They can of course leave you a neg but if the case closes with no payment you will be able to have it removed anyway.

If they do pay well then you will be obliged to send it out to them as you would any other paid item.

But on such a cheap item it would hardly be worth the cost of tracking.

So be fully prepared to lose it, but you may not, it may work out well.

You could also raise a cancellation request citing the reason as there is a problem with the buyer's address.

Doing this should not earn you a defect.

However, in doing this, if the buyer should choose to reject the request you will lose your FVF.

If they accept then you will be credited your FVF.

If they do nothing then after 10-days it will auto-close and you will be credited your FVF.

To block international sales fully its not enough to just say you don't ship internationally.

You also need to have specifically excluded the countries you don't shipt to by ticking them in the exclusions list.

For us we have everything ticked except AU.

[bottomoftheharbour]

Thanks Clarry,

I have not sent them an invoice as I don't wish to proceed with this sale.  As I read it, this is a Restricted Item and needs paperwork etc for Customs and I have no desire to go fill out pages of paperwork or a $10.00 item. I do have blocks in place, maybe this one slipped through.  Anyway, it is not going to happen.  Just wanted to check out the best way to protect myself.  This purchase should not have happened, but it did so, I guess I will just have to tell the buyer that I can't post.   (just realised I am on my other ID)

Can I just avoid them for 4 days?

[clarry100]

To the very second at the end of the 4th day open the unpiad item case.

Then, if they still don't pay, to the very second at the end of the 4th day after that close it.

If, in there somewhere, they should choose to pay you might try calling ebay (request a call-back is the besy way to go), if they have somehow passed your international sales blocks. Just explain that to them and that you believe the item to be a prohibited item in their country, and that for this reason you cannot send it as it will never be delivered. They may allow you to cancel and refund without penalty.

[unique_pre-driven]

Thanks, I will see how it goes.  They seem to be demanding buyers.  Think I am going to have to be very diplomatic on this one.  Anyway it is what it is I guess.  If they insist I post then I shall do so and use any communication from them in case of failure.  Standard International Post is what they will get.

[*tippy*toes*]

If you haven't sent an invoice yet, send one and put some ridiculous amount for postage, like $2,000. No-one is going to pay that, which will then ensure you get to open and close the non payer dispute. When you open the invoice to send it, put the amount in the postage box but DO NOT hit recalculate. Just put the amount in and submit it.

If they do get upset and leave bad feedback, it should automatically be removed when the dispute closes. If not, you just need to give eBay a call and tell them it was the result of a non payer and they will remove it. The other option is to turn on the unpaid assistant for this transaction and let it open the dispute automatically after 4 days. By using that, the option to leave feedback is immediately blocked from the buyer (and is opened back up if they pay). I don't use the unpaid assistant because I have buyers buying multiple things, sometimes spanning 2 weeks, so I don't want any disputes automatically opened against them. It is useful for blocking feedback though.

[englishrosegardens]

I would cancel the sale.  If they don't agree to the cancellation you're only out of pocket 99c.  They may not be able to refuse to agree to a cancellation if you select the reason as there being a problem with the buyer's address.  

If you put a ridiculous amount for postage there's still a chance they may pay it, which means you'd be up for ridiculously high fees on postage.  They could then do a claim it didn't arrive and get their money back, but depending on when/how they did the claim you may not get those fees back, and you'd be out of pocket for whatever postage cost you.  Better to cut your losses and only risk losing selling fees of 99c on a $10 item.  I had to cancel a sale from a Chinese person once and they never agreed or disagreed, nor did they leave feedback, so it's worth doing a cancellation.

I'm not sure a buyer can refuse a cancellation for any reason now, but I'm mainly going on comments from other posters.  I have myself cancelled two sales after they've paid, and either received the item and returned it, or because it wasn't received, and both times buyer has been immediately refunded - ebay hasn't asked them do they agree to it as it's IMMEDIATE.  Both of these were done through personal messages, not by opening a dispute, so if ebay cancel without asking the buyer for them, do they still give the buyer a chance to disagree if they haven't paid yet?

Make sure if you have business policies that you've ticked all the excluded countries in them, and also in the postage part of your site preferences.  I found they'd mysteriously been unticked in my business policies recently so yours may have been too.

[unique_pre-driven]

Thanks Tippy, I am not going to send them an invoice just yet but I have asked the Unpaid Item Assistant to handle the sale in 4 days as you have suggested.  Just trying to bide my time now.

[unique_pre-driven]

Hi Engish Rose,  that's interesting what you have said.  I thought that if I cancelled I would get an instant defect.  I got a negative for a scam return, (had shirt for 6 weeks and discovered a stain) last Christmas and it was just as I had to close down, had to work in the USA for a while and have just started back up.  My feedback is around high 96% to 97.1%  as obviously I have not had the sales to get past that one and even now can't get feedback from anyone to help with that problem.  Hopefully Christmas this year I will go back to 100%.  Anyway, I obviously can't afford any further defects or negatives so I really need to protect myself.  Will hang on until tomorrow and see if the buyer has anything else to say to me.  What a pain.

All offerings of ideas are welcome.

[justcruising48]

Hi, had one recently from China, but this particular item was heavy and valuable so I did not allow international post on it. Politely told the seller, did a cancel sale via ebay but later they paid on paypal using a warehouse address in Australia that forwards items on. I googled the address and found this out and was not prpared to go this way so refunded the money after letting ebay know (if that does any good but as least they had record of it and said even if they did not reply to the cancelling I would still get my fees back) The buyer had left 15 negative feedbacks before for items not arriving, then even tho he was getting feedback still he stopped leaving it near 6 months ago so think he was continuing this way but did not want others to know, as I did by his history.

 Then came back with a friend in Australia to post to, but politely said was too much trouble now, and item was not being sold

 Well he did not accept the cancelled sale, but after 10 days it did go thru automatically and I got all my fees returned, so ebay was right this time

 The buyer does not now need to accept the cancellation for sellers to get the ebay fees back so that is 1 move in the right direction for sellers.