Question
I always limit my sales & shipping to the U.S. because of some bad experiences many years ago. Lately I put up some camera lenses up and have been inundated by e-mails from Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan to please accept their bids. My fear is that if anything goes wrong I'll face chargebacks and negs. Is it worth this risk to attract more bidders?
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You can accept bank wires. There will be no risk there. Just make sure they know that they will have face fees on their side.
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You may also incur bank fees for incoming bank transfers. Check with your bank before you go that route.
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Originally Posted by gnarler
I always limit my sales & shipping to the U.S. because of some bad experiences many years ago. Lately I put up some camera lenses up and have been inundated by e-mails from Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan to please accept their bids. My fear is that if anything goes wrong I'll face chargebacks and negs. Is it worth this risk to attract more bidders?
Include in your Terms that you only accept PayPal from (Verified/Confirmed whatever they call them) the US, Canada, and UK so you're (fingers crossed) covered by the SPP. Other bidders welcome to pay by bank draft, bank check, or money order in USD drawn on a US bank, or postal money order in USD.
Read PayPal's TOS so know how to ship and be covered by the SPP. Note you get better protection against fraudulent chargebacks through a merchant account than PayPal.
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Not selling to international buyers only limits the amount of sales you can make. Best suggestions would be to either only accept money orders from international buyers or require insurance for items paid through paypal. I wouldnt require it on ALL international since you cant insure letter post (if your items qualify for letter) I would say require insurance on international orders of $50 or more. That way if you do get a rare occassion with a chargeback, you not losing a whole lot. At the sametime it will allow to take the limit off of how much you can sell.
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But is insurance, tracking, and delivery confirmation actually available for most international shipments?
Back when I used to ship internationally, that was always the problem.
The other problem was customs. After having several packages get picked up by Canadian customs and held for 2 months - only to later be released with no penalties (and after I had to reship) - it started becoming very costly.
Time is also an issue. USPS - my priimary shipping method - requires tedious customs forms be filled out AND manually verified and stamped by a post office employee. This meant that instead of just dropping off pre-paid packages at the post office counter (and avoiding all lines), I had to stand in line - very very time-consuming during the holidays. There is also added "processing time" for these orders - filing out customs forms, inconsistant address formats (data reformatting), different required packaging (I use priority mail boxes, for example), and even simple communications problems. I was spending 90% of my "processing and shipping time" dealing with 5% of my customers. (Realize, I run an extremely efficient operation - all by myself - processing sometimes 40 orders in a day - and need to be finished by noon.)
If you used Ebay, feedback is another issue. For some reason international customers don't seem to realize it might take a month to route a package to their village in Italy. The worst were Canadians, who not only seem to believe there should be no increase in shipping cost, but also don't think they should have to pay the huge Canadian "tarriffs" that their country seems to impose on everything. Somehow this is the fault of the seller.
And of course paypal. Very few countries will qualify for any kind of seller protection, and even fewer international customers. Mixed with the extreme uncertainty of international tracking, the chance of you beating an international chargeback is slim to none.
What you need to calculate is your opportunity loss versus your increased financial risks and costs. For me - someone who's average profit per sale is maybe $10 - the added time and risk wasn't worth the 5% of sales.
Rich
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But is insurance, tracking, and delivery confirmation actually available for most international shipments?
We ship insured only in most cases when we can. Otherwise buyer takes all risk. But, Pay Pal sees it differently if the buyer claims they didn't get the package. We lose our monies. Since, it's not trackable in most cases.
Careful selling is best. Insure when you can. Track when you can. Watch for countries on the USPS site that are high rist countries. Spain, Italy, Mexico and others that incur high theft rates.