I am offering worldwide postage for my items on Ebay, which are mainly small items like cd's and dvd's but after a few trips to the post office, I am finding the postage costs absolutely outrageous! At the moment I have it set up as a flat rate, and that is very hit and miss depending on who serves you at the post office. If I set up calculated, the cost is enormous and then I run the risk of no sales at all from Overseas. Just wondering how others are doing this and whether it is actually worth sending worldwide because of the costs involved.
Selling internationally is becoming increasingly fraught with costly issues.
I have already stopped sales to France and Germany, my largest European markets, due to their charges for disposal or recycling of packaging. Apparently these charges will eventually include all of the EU and UK.
I am now about to suspend sales to the US, my largest market outside Australia. The system for the collection of tariffs is not in place, although the charge is effective from August 29th.
Where once 40% of my turnover was from international sales, iI doubt it will ever be that way again. I have a large number of US made items. However, eBay seems to take a one size fits all approach and will likely charge them as well. That belief is based on their charging GST on used items I have purchased OS.
Your experience is a perfect match for mine. I used to send globally and have sold items to a North Pole research station and countries I have never heard of such as Krygyzstan. OS sales where around a third of my total sales. I have stopped sending to South America, France & Germany and the United States. China is also off the list except for a few select items which almost always sell to buyers from this country, as it takes too long to fill in the customs forms. Its getting to the stage where NZ might be all that's left soon.
As a result of the recently introduced changes to the import tariff requirements set out in US Executive Order 14324, Australia Post has joined a number of international postal operators to temporarily suspend partial postal services to the United States (US) and Puerto Rico, effective immediately until further notice.
This decision has been made to ensure compliance with the new US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) requirements. Specifically, the requirement for duties and taxes to be prepaid on all shipments prior to their arrival in the US. The key changes are as follows:
1.
Suspension of the de minimis USD$800 threshold exemption.
2.
New mandatory customs declaration requirements.
3.
Duties for imported goods to be collected prior to goods entering the US.
I don't ship overseas. Even if you have the buyer cover the cost there is also the matter of time. Filling in a customs declaration form is not quick. I can't imagine rolling up to the post office with 20 of those to fill in. No thanks
I agree. AP fills in most of it for you when you import eBay orders; it probably takes me about 2 minutes max to fill in the rest. I have a small number of tariff codes I use which seem to cover most of what I sell.
I normally sell 1-2 items per week to USA so it is not a game-breaker for me (like it is to so many others.) But it is a shame in that often the items are things that bring more interest (ie higher auction prices) in USA; sometimes they are things that really are only of interest in USA.
The sad thing is that this tariff regime may only be a thought bubble to Mr Trump, but once the process has been put in place, it will be very hard to roll back I imagine.
Although it wasn't necessary because I received the same communication, thanks for sharing the information which was released AFTER the previous posts were made.
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