Shipping To Other Countries, Where Not To Ship?

Hi Everyone,
Before I ask, I want to say that all countries are okay to ship to, however, I was wondering who has had any issues with mailing items to a specific country and what the problem was. Like, took a month to arrive, or never arrived or received torn, etc?

Some times I see auctions and the seller states he prefers not to ship to Russia, or India? I have received mail from both but have never sent to either, not saying there is anything wrong.

I am asking because I want to start some auctions and need some guidelines. I am a member of Listia (auction site) and you can see by my feedback, I am a good seller, 100% positive feedback and mail out items quickly: http://www.listia.com/profile/180533

Thank you!
SueStamps

Italy is probably the #1 country blocked by most sellers. In my experience items shipped there take 2 months to be delivered if they get there at all, by which time the buyer has opened a case and you've refunded their money. I haven't had a lot of problems with any other country, but in my case virtually all of my international shipments are to modern, fully developed nations (Canada, Western Europe, etc) with good postal systems. I'm not sure why Italy is the outlier in that group.

I've actually had very good experience with Italy and mail items there on a regular basis. From my experience it takes about 2 weeks. What I found out that works to help ensure delivery to Italy is to use a customs form for shipment no matter how small or low in value the item may be. The vast number of potential postal thieves are looking for cash - not an used postcard, envelope or even used stamps for the most part. On the form mark items as "used" as much as possible and avoid worlds like philatelic or anything else that smacks of collectible. Odd note about Italy, technically stamps are not allowed to be imported according to regulations found on the USPS website.

Russia is another country that is tricky. Mail there can take 4-6 weeks easily when things go smoothly. Moscow is usually the toughest place to mail to as the postal system has issues. Registered mail is probably the best option if the buyer is willing to pay for it. Customs forms or not, things do disappear in this country. It is frequently blocked by many ebay sellers, but I still try.

I find that most countries are just fine and I'll use the customs form method on any shipment to a country in which the postal system is suspect to theft or chaos. I just mailed something the other day to Ukraine - we'll see what happens. I've mailed items to Haiti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Senegal, Vietnam, most of Latin America, almost all of Eastern Europe (Albania is my only holdout) and many other obscure places without issue. Just use common sense when shipping and make things look plain and simple. Don't use ebay labels, don't use a return business address that announces yourself as a philatelic dealer and the like. Also make sure you address things properly as sometimes Ebay/Paypal garbles the addresses, especially Chinese and Japanese addresses or the buyer mixed things up or repeats information. Ask the buyer to clarify the shipping address if needed.

Good to hear Battlestamps that you are having very experiences with a lot of countries that have bitten me.

Have opened up a few countries since this topic was talked about some time ago now.



Hi SueStamps I have been very hard on a lot of countries and I am not going to upset them on forum by naming them because there are a lot of nice people in the mass of countries I have blocked. I just got sick of being ripped off.

Hi KGV Collector,
Yes, I was actually a bit hesitant to even post this topic just for that reason. A lot of very good, kind members in certain countries and it's not their fault about the shipping delays etc.

I'll just stick to USA only on my auction here on SCF, free shipping, though Paypal gets their 2.9 percent plus a one time fee of thirty cents per each transaction. I think I need to increase the amount of stamps or find something older, more desireable to auction off LOL.

I wonder how well old covers do... Hmmmm. Okay thank you so much!

Link to my Auction: Graf Zeppelin REPRODUCTION:
https://www.stampcommunity.org/auct...uctionID=333

SueStamps

Hi,
I haven't tried it much myself, but I have read elsewhere that using the actual home language of the country would help immensely.

Maybe use Google translate or another translator and use a label?

If you place the information on the envelope as the postal system in the receiving country expects it to be, like ZIP Code where it goes where they think it goes, etc, then that helps a lot too.

Living in Halifax, Canada I think I have lost shipments mailed to me because they went to Halifax, England (same type of Postal Code) or Halifax, NC (instead of NS) or another state.

I've shipped to Italy no problem, just took a while, to Russia, they had it shipped to Romania (maybe for translating first?), to Argentina, Hong Kong, Singapore, Europe.

Not as much as Battlestamps though.

I would avoid Ukraine- I lost $40 on a deal with a guy there last year and also the same applies to some of the Baltic states- had a bad experience with someone in Latvia. I think the Latvian guy was innocent and someone in the PO swiped my shipment. What I run into a lot are bidders from eastern Europe whose English skills are minimal. They can read enough to bid but miss important details such as faults I describe. Then they get the item and are screaming abut it being 'junk'. I tell them mail it back and it never arrives because it turns out they mis addressed it. I will sell to Canada, most of W Europe except Italy and the civilized parts of Asia such as Japan. The PRC seems OK although buyers there tend to expect their stuff in two days or so. Australia and NZ- no problem. I now do not sell to anyplace outside those guidelines.

Is most true, Puzzler, is more to most true <== machine translation joke

I apply a self-adhesive address-size (1*3ish) Avery label, in the language of the receiving country, to every packet: "Contains photographs."

This explains the stiffener, the lack of a Customs declaration, and the worthlessness of the contents.

I have done this with stamps in approval cards, postcards, and DVDs.

For the latter, I use two thinner stiffeners - cut from breakfast cereal boxes, if you must know - to hid the shape.

For the label text, I use two different translators: one to go into the target language, and one to take that translation back into English. When it works *both* ways, I figure it'll work.

When I was a letter carrier, ages ago, USPS was viciously disciplined about getting signatures, step-by-step, for Registered Mail ... of US origin.

Foreign stuff might show-up in the regular mail stream, uncounted & unregistered and, if you pointed this out, you were told that it was your lucky day, because you could just toss that one in the recipient's mailbox, sans receipt.

CYA, the truly Universal Postal Union.

I am not sure why any American would expect even Registered Mail of American origin to get vastly more respectful treatment wherever it travels.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey