Ebay & accepting International Orders?????

[mol3000]

I want to start excepting international orders instead to have a wider variety of people. The only thing is i notice a lot of people that sell on ebay dont like international orders or say email them for questions. Also paypal have this issue where they take payments from overseas but they dont insure it if the credit card is wrong or anything else happens to it. So what the hidden secrets about selling internationally??????

[CaZeek]

After just dealing with this myself, I found that a lot of people don't like international orders, just because they don't want to figure out how to ship their item. There's also the issue of transferring funds (as you mentioned), but I think as long as you wait for the payment to clear, you shouldn't have any trouble. If you're worried about the credit car still being wrong after it clears, just cash out from PayPal as soon as the funds are avialable.

[lordsmurf]

Money orders and willingness to use UPS/USPS websites to calculate shipping when asked. Some auction management sites even have services that let bidders enter there own country/zip, and it gives them the rate (based on the weight/size/etc of package you give at auction setup).

[zzyzzx]

There are some extra steps in dealing with international orders.

1. Customs form
2. Shipping rates
3. Packages lost in the mail if you are sending it to a country with a crappy post office (i.e.- most thirld world countries).

This is how I deal with them:
Only send out stuff via USPS. Other forms of shipping are way too expensive. Don't use Surface Mail, only Air Mail. Just keep customs forms at home and fill them out before you go to the post office. You can get the postage due from the USPS webpage calculator. If sending to a thirld world country than it's at the buyer's risk or theirs to insure. Just take a picture of the package first and email it to them.

[housepig]

I usually prefer BidPay.com payments for international - the bidder pays BidPay, BidPay sends me a physical money order, I send out the item.

works pretty well.

[mol3000]

thanks..... i will try that next time..... i was gonna tell them send it western union or money orders......

also is ups the cheapest ones that ship internationally?????

[lordsmurf]

No. USPS.

[zzyzzx]

thanks..... i will try that next time..... i was gonna tell them send it western union or money orders......

also is ups the cheapest ones that ship internationally?????

No! UPS is way more than USPS internationally. I've only ever sent one item UPS to Canada, and even then it was still hideously expensive.

[housepig]

if you're selling something small (like a dvd or cd), check Global Priority service from USPS - IIRC they have a flat-rate envelope that if you can get the item in, and get it closed, it's only $5 - I used to send 4 or 5 dvd-r's (in paper sleeves) to Korea to a friend of mine - not bad for 2-3 service.

otherwise, Air Mail is the way to go.