Too risky to sell to overseas clients.

[chameleon54]

I have just cancelled my first overseas order today. The $12 BIN was listed for sale in Australia only but was purchased by a buyer in Portugal. The postage cost would be around $20 untracked.

Its got to the point where ebays buyer protection  policies make it too risky to sell a $12 item and mail it untracked to overseas clients.

I have recently increased my risk premium ( the extra charge I place on mail to cover the cost of problems ) by $1.00 for international large letters as I am receiving slightly more claims lately.

This is all resulting in reduced international sales for ebay. It also reduces the choice of products available on ebay worldwide. Many of the items I sell are "one off", rare vintage car parts not available anywhere else.

Has ebays buyer protection policies swung too far in favour of buyers ???? Has this resulted in a reduced variety of goods being offered globally and reduced international sales for ebay ???

[vproshop]

I am drastically reducing my offers to international customers aswell... Not that there's anything wrong with them, I just do not trust either Australia Post of the local countires local postal system to deliver correctly.

The chance of theft is very high.

Infact, I have 1 out of 5 parcels internationally go missing on average.

I increased the cost of postage and far less international sales occur for me now.

Which is fine, as the ones who do buy and are paying an absolute premium for the postage is making up

for any losses on the way. But ofcourse, this results in far fewer sales.

I also don't like the defect system of ebay's... When sending very small under 50g and under 250g items (2cm thickness letter rate) internationally that goes with postage stamps, The seller can be defected if the buyer tells Ebay that the postage was slow.

As a seller, ofcourse we posted it asap, but guess what, Australia is bloody far from everyone else in the world. It takes longer from Oz to rest of the world, so buyers pls.... be patient.... Nope.... thats not how it works, you get defected. 

Hence I am now minimising the sales by charging even more premium on the postage now.

[*tippy*toes* · Accepted solution]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

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@heihachi_73 wrote:
Sounds like "No international postage" was ticked but the international buyer blocks were left off...

Assuming the regular old listing interface, there should be an option at the bottom of the page to...

Block buyers who:

* Have a primary postage address in countries that I don't post to

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Thanks heihachi_73, I dont seem to have the option you mentioned.

In the postage section I have the option of " No international postage", "Flat rate to all countries" or "calculated international post". I selected no international post. There is a section lower down that creates an ecluded list, but I would need to check all of the boxes for each region.

 If the item is worth a few dollars I am happy to mail O/S and do sell a lot to international clients. It is just getting to the stage where the risk is too high for cheaper items.

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If you want to exclude a whole region you only need to tick the top box and the rest fill in. If you want to allow one country, e.g New Zuland, tick the top box, then untick NZ. Saves a lot of ticking!