overseas postage is a killer

 even a lot from the U.S is high due to the fact a lot of sellers use the global shipping program.

 and that puts a lot of people off from purchasing.

I have heard from the sellers

Thread that sellers in US are

Locked into Global Shipping

Unaware, but if you contact them

Previous to a sale, they are able to

Give you a cheaper alternative. 

On the other hand, some of them

Wont even bother sending overseas.

There was an item I wanted  that

Was starting at $75 and the 

Rrp is $650.i contacted seller

About shipping to aus. Seller

Quoted $500. Thats bs.he just

Couldnt  be bothered.and the

Item sold at the starting price. 

I was fuming. 

Sadly, I've stopped buying my lovely specialty fabrics (that can't be found in Australia) from the USA ....    It used to be splendid, fast, and so reasonably priced that it was like shopping in the city here.

Thankfully, I have a friend in Michigan that has a quilting fabric business so that is really the only way to go for me now, she's not locked into the crazy global postage thing, but even so, it still limits what I can get, very sad.

This global postage thing must be really wrecking the international shopping, and I think sooner or later, hopefully, it will fail and things will go back to more or less an intelligent rate, it's a wait and see .. the sellers must be finding it frustrating as it slows down.

How i look at it is, they can't want to sell their goods to badly then.

I'm not sure how it works Latina.  I wonder if they would have signed up to the global shipping if they knew just what would happen with their customers at the other end?  

Global Shipping.    Ebay automatically puts it in seller's listings.

They can manually opt out of the programme if they want,  but.....

Americans pay final value fees on o'seas shipping.

They do not pay fvf for domestic shipping.

With the GSP they post their items to Pitney Bowes (domestic shipping)

Pitney Bowes gets all that postage fee that you have paid, to repack

your item (very badly, don't buy china) and forward it to you.

There are other horrible things about the GSP, but that will do for now

If that's not right,  I'm sure someone else will tell me      

Thanks for that information Stawks, it really shines a light on what is going on.  I think the global shipping situation is a bad idea.

Pitney Bowes also decides on what items would be

'prohibited' items and so not pass Customs in your country.

It would be laughable if it wasn't criminal.

Knives are a prohibited import to Australia.

So if you buy a kitchen knife, they will confiscate it.

A while ago, someone had a guitar 'confiscated'

Pitney Bowes has it's own Ebay store.

That's where these goods end up

They don't even get sent back to the seller!             

I don't think I'll be buying internationally any more Stawks, other than from people who I know will send the parcel the 'normal' way without the hassle and cost of that appalling other system.

I gave up ages ago.   It's just too hard