I sold 2 Oz whistles to a very good person in China. That was in November 18 ,2021. I shipped them at that time after I received his payment. It came within a couple of days.. Here is the Rub. It is April 18, 2022 and this fine person finally received his Oz whistles yesterday. I can say we both went through a great deal of grief waiting for this to completion. He was very patient . The post office assured me the whistles would be returned to me if undelivered at my expense. That was fine. They were shipped Air Mail but whatever happened in between baffles me. I went to the post office several times and they told me they were probably sitting in a cage in China waiting for a full cage before they would pick them up and deliver them. They were shipped at my expense , I wished I had paid full expenses first class to get them there in a reasonable time. So maybe I might save someone heart ache waiting for a deal to complete. Pay the extra ,share the expense and get it there on time.
The buyer has informed me he is loving the Oz whistles and they play great. No surprise there. I even sent him a bunch of session tune books in pdf and I think he will enjoy playing through them.
I had a different problem selling a couple whistles to a woman in Korea.
I went to the US Post Office, FedEx, and UPS and sent her photos of all the quoted prices, which were between $50 and $70.
She went ballistic, accusing me of lying about the costs and claiming that it was only $15 to ship to Korea.
She wasn’t right about me lying, but it turns out she was right about the costs.
I work with a Korean guy who explained that due to the vast Korean population here in Southern California there are local branches of a Korean shipping company which only handles the thousands of packages that go between Los Angeles and Seoul every day. Yes a package is only $15.
Ditto with shipping things between here and the Philippines, there are branches of a Filipino shipping company which only handles the thousands of packages daily going between Los Angeles and Manila, and their prices are a fraction of what the mainstream US companies charge.
What I don’t know is if there’s a similar thing with China.
Once I bought from Thomann Germany, shipping was like $23. Wanted to return the item. Was going to be like $60, so I didnt bother. Shipping outside the USA for some reason is really bad. I got a whistle once from Russia, shipping was $7.
This doesnt make shipping internationally good, but theres a website called easyship. It has a paid service, but you can still use it for free, which works fine for someone like me who doesnt ship a ton of items and hit the limit. You put in shipping info, and it compares all the different shipping services, adn you pick what one you want to use. It doesnt have ones like Richard was mentioning that are specific to an area, so it wont find stuff like that. but for example, I was selling to someone in Alaska. USPS was still sub $10, UPS and Fedex were like $30+. You can then buy the lable through easyship. I’ve found it makes my shipping life a lot easier.
Similar to Richard"s example AnPost has a system for online shoppers buying from vendors who don’t ship to Ireland. They provide a virtual address (in the US or UK) the vendor can send their package to and take over from there, shipping to your address in Ireland 'from €15.99’ : AddressPal
Other countries provide similar services AFAIK.
Wow that’s super, I didn’t know about AnPost.
When shipping things you sell on Ebay from the USA to anywhere in the world Ebay uses their Global Shipping Program which has you post the package to Ebay’s international shipping facility in Kentucky. Ebay takes care of Customs forms and the international shipping. It’s brilliant because for the seller it’s a simple inexpensive domestic package.
International shipping is so strange! It’s cheaper to ship to the UK than to Canada for example.
It’s brilliant because for the seller it’s a simple inexpensive domestic package.
Ebay charges the buyer an arm and a leg though and for a lot of purchases their Global Shipping scheme has raised shipping prices to a prohibitive level at the buyer’s end, particularly for relatively low to mid-priced items.
I’m mixed on Ebay. The fee’s exist but usually arent as bad as people make them sound (but they do add up, also dpeends on the item category). Ebay gives discounted shipping vs not shipping through ebay. Which can help counter the ebay fees, especially internationally, and on cheaper items that $5 saved on shipping counters part of the fee. I sold a whistle to Canada through Ebay and the shipping was like $13, which is significant savings over not using Ebay. bigger ticket items, $200+, I generally avoid ebay because the % fees add up more.
What I do when I list a whistle on ebay is I sell it for a bit more than I would on here or Facebook to counter fees. Which makes it sell slower but it’s worked a few times. I usually try here and Facebook first. If it doesnt sell I let it sit on ebay until it sells.
It’s not so much ebay fees that make certain purchases non viable.
Here’s a , randomly chosen,real life example of an item from the UK when buying from my location : Generation G whistle
It’s listed at an opening bid of €8.70 (£7.30). Global Shipping scheme adds £9.38 (approx EUR 11.18), which is in itself prohibitive but then ebay slaps on ‘import charges’ of £5.60 (amount confirmed at checkout), that would most likely not occur at all when using the postal system to send this from the UK to Ireland. .
Completely silly.