selling on ebay question

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Be careful with shipping across the border. Unless you ship via a carrier that provides tracking all the way to the destination, you can be screwed like I was.
The only service that would ship to China (at least then) was the US Postal Service. So off it went. A month later, the guy contacts me and says it never arrived. He had the tracking number, which showed tracking info, but the US post office doesn't operate inside China. They pass it over the border to China's postal system, with no tracking inside China. The USPS tracking stops at the border. Same going into Canada...passes to Canada Post with no tracking once it's inside Canada. UPS and Fedex operate inside Canada so they will provide tracking and proof of delivery.
I'll never ship anything outside the U.S. again unless I know who I'm shipping to, and proof of delivery is available.

I can not speak for all countries, but I do know Canada Post and Royal Mail will track US tracking numbers once they are in Canada and the UK. The reverse also works for US Post. I have had luck with Japan Post as well with the exception of cheaper shipping options. Japan tracks most packages but Canada only tracks express or EMS mail. I do not know if it would work in China as I have never directly shopped or bid in China. I have only used eBay for Chinese transactions. Buying only, not selling.
 
My rule is that I'll ship international but there's no refunds, especially if tracking shows it got to the point I was told to send it to. It's worked well so far, the only time someone has tried the "it never arrived" line was domestic.
 
I've sent alot of stuff across the Detroit river into Ontario and to a bud out in Calgary and with no problems other than Canada post has gotten slower than shit, not sure whats up with that and yes tracking numbers are reciprocated between Canada and the US. But they used to not be a long time ago. I won't ship anywhere other than US and Canada anymore. anywhere else just seems to be an enormous pain in the ass. I've found less problems and slightly faster shipping into Canada when I write happy birthday on the box but that is shipping to friends.
 
Generally speaking, the postal services for most of the major countries of the world now use a unified tracking number format that looks like this, AA123456789CA, where the last two letters are the country code indicating where the shipment originated from (ie CA = Canada, GB = Great Britain, CH = Switzerland, etc.).

If you want full tracking info you generally have to use two websites, one for the post office that handled the originating shipment, and then one for the post office of your local country. Once your package is handed off to the international carrier, the originating postal service ceases tracking your package and it goes in to the tracking system of the destination country, so for example for stuff from the US, I'd start with usps.gov and then canadapost.ca (since I'm in Canada), or royalmail.com and then canadapost.ca for UK to Canada, or if it's one of D-V's shipping services in Switzerland or France, I'll use the respective websites of those countries.
 
When I sold on ebay about half of the stuff I sold went out of the country and I had no problems with those items (although I was careful where I shipped to, and had a number of auto bid blocking rules in place). The UK postal service has certain bands of insurance which can take care of some of the risk even without being tracked, but I think I'd want to use tracked abroad now. The biggest problem I had was an unscrupulous seller I had previously left bad feedback to attempting to interfere with one of my auctions.
 
My rule is that I'll ship international but there's no refunds, especially if tracking shows it got to the point I was told to send it to. It's worked well so far, the only time someone has tried the "it never arrived" line was domestic.
Just so you know, at least on eBay, even if you specify no refunds, you are forced to refund if the item is "not as described", and you are also forced to refund for non-delivery. You don't even have a choice in it. They do the refund and charge it back to you, including shipping cost. Even if you can show proof of shipment, that's not good enough. It has to show as delivered in the tracking schedule.
 
I'll let you all theorize what happened in the case of my shipment.....but it sure seems ironic that the buyer was emailing me every couple hours and when I sent him the tracking detail with signature....I've heard no more. Zip...nada...zilch. Crickets........

Good. But for the casual seller like myself, the aggravation is not worth the time, effort and whatever few extra bucks made by agreeing to sell overseas.
 
Good. But for the casual seller like myself, the aggravation is not worth the time, effort and whatever few extra bucks made by agreeing to sell overseas.
I hear you....I do not plan to sell outside US again....unless I personally know someone. Just too stressful...and I got enough of that without adding more.
 
I'll let you all theorize what happened in the case of my shipment.....but it sure seems ironic that the buyer was emailing me every couple hours and when I sent him the tracking detail with signature....I've heard no more. Zip...nada...zilch. Crickets........

Guess he either was attempting to get a refund and hope you wouldn't be able to provide proof of delivery to ebay, or he legitimately didn't receive it due to a misdelivery. Either way, you do have proof of delivery so you're covered.
 
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Guess he either was attempting to get a refund and hope you wouldn't be able to provide proof of delivery to ebay, or he legitimately didn't receive it due to a misdelivery. Either way, you do have proof of delivery so you're covered.

You are right, could have been either.


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Ebay is a buyers paradise. You can even play dumb and dishonest and if the seller doesn't have their ducks in a row, they're screwed! (Please don't be dumb and dishonest.)

Be thorough when selling!!

I think you'd have to coordinate with shipping services from multiple countries as mentioned to cover your butt for international shipping. And you'd have to pay for that! And it might not be possible for every country to get all the i's dotted and t's crossed enough to guarantee coverage.
If you can document putting it in the hands of a shipping service and if you pay for the insurance to cover replacement cost should they lose or destroy it, you're golden.

I've sold computers on Ebay before. I prefer selling locally instead! You need to document every internal component including secret hidden marks to ID things for the clowns that will remove the internal parts and replace them with broken ones and then claim it arrived DOA. You need to be able to point to the different parts when it ships back so you can say "Sorry, this isn't what I sent you. Please return the actual machine if you want to discuss this further. Please send prepaid postage if you want the different parts you sent to me returned to you."
PITA!
 
Ebay is a buyers paradise. You can even play dumb and dishonest and if the seller doesn't have their ducks in a row, they're screwed! (Please don't be dumb and dishonest.)

Be thorough when selling!!

I think you'd have to coordinate with shipping services from multiple countries as mentioned to cover your butt for international shipping. And you'd have to pay for that! And it might not be possible for every country to get all the i's dotted and t's crossed enough to guarantee coverage.
If you can document putting it in the hands of a shipping service and if you pay for the insurance to cover replacement cost should they lose or destroy it, you're golden.

I've sold computers on Ebay before. I prefer selling locally instead! You need to document every internal component including secret hidden marks to ID things for the clowns that will remove the internal parts and replace them with broken ones and then claim it arrived DOA. You need to be able to point to the different parts when it ships back so you can say "Sorry, this isn't what I sent you. Please return the actual machine if you want to discuss this further. Please send prepaid postage if you want the different parts you sent to me returned to you."
PITA!

I think they actually have "scam centers" set up like call centers in China or wherever. One tell is when any communication with the buyer (scammer) has a 48 hour lag. He's forwarding your message to the English speaking supervisor to get a response written out for him to send to you and it takes an extra day.

... and I'm not smart enough to hit edit instead of reply apparently!
 
Just so you know, at least on eBay, even if you specify no refunds, you are forced to refund if the item is "not as described", and you are also forced to refund for non-delivery. You don't even have a choice in it. They do the refund and charge it back to you, including shipping cost. Even if you can show proof of shipment, that's not good enough. It has to show as delivered in the tracking schedule.

This is exactly why I stopped eBay'ing. A dishonest buyer can claim ANYTHING and eBay/PayPal will refund them everything. You could send out a mint LP, buyer claims it's VG, then he sends you back a VG- LP - at YOUR cost, plus you get charged back for whatever you got for the item plus the shipping.

The seller is really exposed these days. :eek:
 
A buyer can claim anything...
But they need to return it for refund then. And when they can't return what they said they got (because they're lying), the gig is up! But you DO have to have your ducks in a row as a seller or you can get taken advantage of if you didn't save and keep evidence.
Buyers can get negative feedback too! :)
 
Buyers can get negative feedback too!

Only if the transaction is actually consumated. I sold a MOFI Beatles LP box on ebay, but the buyer never paid. All I could do was get my final value fee refunded by ebay and block the buyer from bidding on my stuff. But I could not leave negative feedback even though he was a deadbeat...who had a 100% rating no less.
 
Buyers can get negative feedback too! :)

That hasn't been true for years. Sellers can only leave positive feedback or no feedback at all, there is no negative option for the seller.

this is what a seller sees when leaving feedback:

40505


That's why all buyers have 100% feedback if they never sell anything, because it can ONLY be positive.

and if you guys think selling on ebay is bad, amazon is 100x worse.
 
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