International Sales and Refunds - I quit.

[lupercal]

I really tried to find a solution to this.

These days I mostly sell CDs, and a lot of them go overseas. They go at large letter rate for about $9, and there is no tracking available with that service: you have to use parcel rates. And too often they apparently don't arrive, and the buyer opens a case against me, and I just refund everything and try to be philosophical and  put it down to 'breakage'.

But I had a $85 CD allegedly not arrive recently, which I shrugged and refunded. So I started putting a line in all my auctions pointing out that tracking would cost extra, and to ask me for a quote if it were desired.  Ebay thought this was a good idea, and encouraged me to do it.  And a guy in Sweden bought a CD, and I sent him this message:

    "As I mentioned in the description, there is no tracking available on international CDs at this postage rate. I'm ok with that, provided you agree I'm not responsible if it goes missing after posting. I can arrange tracking, but it adds about $15 to the postage - I'd need to check. You probably won't want it, but I make a point of offering."

And he said "it's ok", with a smiley emoticon - go ahead without the tracking.

And now he's opened a case against me, and I've had to refund it all anyway.

Meanwhile I have a $75 CD sitting here waiting to go to Colorado, and I just made the same offer to the buyer, and he declined the tracking and said to go ahead without it. And  to hell with it - I'm going to pay the extra money for parcel rate and tracking myself, because I'm not eating another $85 on this one. 

Most of my CD's I only make a few bucks on. This happens, and I have to sell a dozen more to recoup the 'breakage'.   I'll have to sell another few cheap ones to cover the out of pocket tracking on this one.

I could make tracking mandatory, but from memory that ends up being about $23 depending on destination - add another $2 to cover the commission on the extra postage - and nobody is going to buy a $8 CD with $25 postage.

I've established that  making it optional is futile.

So I'm not actually asking for advice. I'm just registering the fact that I quit. To hell with it. No more overseas sales on CDs without tracking. Which means no more overseas sales, since nobody would be willing to pay that much.  I've tried to be as up-front with people about this as I can, but clearly a written agreement not to hold me responsible ends up counting for nothing, even when Ebay told me it was a great idea.

I don't need you to say anything; I'm just writing this as an alternative to banging my head against the wall

[brerrabbit585]

Even if you sent with tracking, if there's no tracking event when they receive it you'll still be down the drain.

I wouldn't post overseas no matter what. It's just not worth the risk for some things. Lose one item and you may as well have not sold it in the first place - or a dozen other items because their profit goes to make up for the lost one.

[brerrabbit585]

The only time I think it's worth selling overseas is when your items are extremely unlikely to sell in Australia. I've thought about selling overseas but always come to the conclusion that there's no point selling overseas and paying higher ebay fees on postage and higher paypal fees when the same item will sell in Australia.

[lupercal]

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:
Even if you sent with tracking, if there's no tracking event when they receive it you'll still be down the drain.

I wouldn't post overseas no matter what. It's just not worth the risk for some things. Lose one item and you may as well have not sold it in the first place - or a dozen other items because their profit goes to make up for the lost one.

---

I'm coming to that conclusion, too.  Which is a shame. when I first started out, back in 1999, for the first couple of years nearly ALL my sales were overseas, and this was before Paypal. And I only remember having one major problem with a customer, even though they were literally mailing me cash from overseas.

But for whatever reason, these days this hapens too often, and it's to the point that  I cringe whenever I see an item has gone to an overseas buyer.  Unfortunately some of my items can be very specialised, and for some of those items there might be just a handful of prospective buyers, most of them overseas. But  what do you do. I'm just fed up.

[brerrabbit585]

If you've got a few items that there are only limited buyers for, try them as Australia only for a while (a looong while) and then you can think about posting overseas, but only with appropriate safeguards.  If they're that specialised (rare) the buyers should be willing to pay the extra for proper protection (for you). 

If they're rare items overseas buyers will probably look on several ebay sites as they can always get them sent to a mail forwarding address in Australia.

[lupercal]

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:

If you've got a few items that there are only limited buyers for, try them as Australia only for a while (a looong while) and then you can think about posting overseas, but only with appropriate safeguards.  If they're that specialised (rare) the buyers should be willing to pay the extra for proper protection (for you). 

If they're rare items overseas buyers will probably look on several ebay sites as they can always get them sent to a mail forwarding address in Australia.

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My hunch is that probably doesn't happen with my customers, but no way of proving it really.

I had meant to ask you about your previous comment, though:

"Even if you sent with tracking, if there's no tracking event when they receive it you'll still be down the drain."

...because I had wondered about this myself. If it's true, then what would actually constitute an appropriate safeguard?  For items up to $100 (unles this has changed recently) I think OzPost cover insurance, which presumably includes  loss.  This would cover or at least make a big difference for most of my items. I don't mind refunding the buyer if OP refunds me.

However I don't think I've ever had to make a claim against OZPost and have no idea how they determine if an item is actually missing.  I asked my local PO about this once, and they clearly didn't know either. They assumed that a tracked item would be regarded as lost after a certain time, though they couldn't tell me for sure, or tell me how much time hey were talking about.

[porcelain_dolls_by_me]

I wonder if eBay keep a log of the buyers that open INR cases?

If they do then they should be able to set flags that if it happens too often they can (should) offer greater support to sellers to protect them from such scammers.

[i-once-was-bump]

I don't understand your problem.

No one is going to give a seller money they don't have to so asking buyers if they want to pay more after they have bought something is no going to work.

If the item is rare or hard to come by then put  the cost of tracking in the price of the cd and offer free postage.

You will have insurance with AP if the item get lost.

If anyone claims they have not received their item tell them you need a signed affidavit for Auspost and that it is a legal document and signing a false affidavit is a crime.

[i-once-was-bump]

BTW when did Auspost become Ozpost?

And AP become OP?

[lupercal]

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@i-once-was-bump wrote:

I don't understand your problem.

[...]

If anyone claims they have not received their item tell them you need a signed affidavit for Auspost and that it is a legal document and signing a false affidavit is a crime.

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I don't really know what to say to this, other than nobody would buy it.

[lupercal]

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@i-once-was-bump wrote:

BTW when did Auspost become Ozpost?

And AP become OP?

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This is why I don't post here often.

But anyway,

'When did Auspost become Ozpost?'  I dunno. When did Australia Post become Auspost?   Does it matter?

'And AP become OP?'  Because I was acronyming OzPost not AusPost.    Again, does it matter?