ebay sellers that only ship to US- what's up with that?

[Shaun]

I have searched the forum, but did not get any hits for this topic.

Can anyone explain to me why many sellers on ebay only ship to US, or very few countries? I'd love to know...

[Geek]

Hi,

This annoys the living (bleep) out of me too. But, I have asked many of them and their answers fell primarily into four classes of responses:

#1 - Oops! I didn't know I set that restriction on my selling account.
#2 - I use [insert courier company here] only. You can bid but don't complain about the brokerage!
#3 - Why would I want to?
#4 - [insert xenophobic answer here]

Fortunately only TWO I asked fell into category #4.

It never hurts to send them a message. By far the majority of my answers came as category #1

Cheers!

[Shaun]

Originally posted by Geek

By far the majority of my answers came as category #1

That's good to know. I've been browsing there last night, and was dismayed to find most of the items that interested me had this restriction.

[Original Burnedfingers]

I've been burned badly by selling outside of the U.S.

I had a Canadian fellow that purchased a radio chassis from me and then refused delivery because I wouldn't lie to customs about the purchase price of the item. He tied up my Paypal and ebay account in the process. I finally sent copies of the emails between him and me to ebay and they released my account. As it turns out this gentleman has a habbit of this behavoir.

After that no more sales outside the U.S. for me.

Granted this gentleman was probably not the normal Canadian and I'm not saying that Canadians in general are bad.

[Shaun]

How is this related to selling outside US? Are you saying that this might not have happened had he been a US resident?

[Geek]

Originally posted by burnedfingers
I've been burned badly by selling outside of the U.S.

I had a Canadian fellow that purchased a radio chassis from me and then refused delivery because I wouldn't lie to customs about the purchase price of the item. He tied up my Paypal and ebay account in the process. I finally sent copies of the emails between him and me to ebay and they released my account. As it turns out this gentleman has a habbit of this behavoir.

After that no more sales outside the U.S. for me.

Granted this gentleman was probably not the normal Canadian and I'm not saying that Canadians in general are bad.

So you convict us all on this incident?

That's very unfair, IMO.

[theAnonymous1]

Some people are lazy and just don't want to deal with the customs forms.

I personally hate shipping anything over 4 pounds outside of the US because it requires a more complicated form.

[ErikdeBest]

Originally posted by Shaun
How is this related to selling outside US? Are you saying that this might not have happened had he been a US resident?

The problem is, I think, that for any shipping abroad (so not only Canada) one has to declare the value received for the item... It is not much of a problem if the buyer is willing to pay the import duties, but not all buyers want to do that... Therefore they ask the seller to declare a lower value, but, declaring a lower value is a 'federal crime' and not all sellers want to be criminals.

This can all be avoided by limiting oneself to do business only within the national borders.

Erik

[Shaun]

Originally posted by ErikdeBest
... It is not much of a problem if the buyer is willing to pay the import duties, but not all buyers want to do that... Therefore they ask the seller to declare a lower value, but, declaring a lower value is a 'federal crime' and not all sellers want to be criminals.

Our customs office asks to see the receipt and invoice (for informal transactions this might consist of the the Paypal receipt and email correspondence). They disregard declared value. I find that sellers often voluntarily declare a lower value. It just ends up in me spending more time in the customs office.

Originally posted by ErikdeBest
This can all be avoided by limiting oneself to do business only within the national borders.

Sounds like a rather strange way to say "I'll declare full value".

[ErikdeBest]

Hi Shaun

That is indeed true: I have also had to handle in copies of creditcard receipts for importing stuff both into the Netherlands and in Brazil (even though the declared value was valid, ie, matched with the creditcard receipts).

I posted the earlier reaction to explain the conflicts between seller and buyer: the new tactics by the custom offices may indeed put an end to this conflict!

Erik