I Don't Sell Internationally Anymore And Here's Why

A few months ago I finally had it. I had 4 overseas shipments that were "lost", 3 or 4 people asking me to take the stamps off pages so they could save $7 shipping, someone asking me to mark the custom form as "gift", a buyer asking me to cut the pages up into little pieces so the album pages would fit in a small envelope amd finally a Chinese customer complaining that he hadn't received the item he'd paid for 5 days before. In my auctions I ask buyers to read my shipping policies and "PLease Don't Bid" if you don't agree but every week I have overseas bidders asking for an exception. I told my wife "That's it no more International sales"! She said we had good customers in Canada and Australia and suggested we make an exception for those countries and that's what we did. I expected to lose some bids and see a decline in sales but I really didn't, sales have been great this spring. A handful of overseas folks wrote to me and asked to bid. I explained my issues to them and most of them agreed and I put them on my "Bidder Exemption" list. Two of these folks are excellent customers.

A few weeks ago there was a post about "Private Auctions" and I realized I was running open auctions for US customers and private auctions for over seas bidders and it's worked very well. The main purpose of this post is to reach out to overseas SCF members that may want to bid in my auctions. My overseas shipping policy/requirements is as follows;

1. A collection on pages is shipped for $12.91 and when we combine items for shipping the cost increases based on weight. We NEVER charge more than our postage costs. If an item is small and sells for less than $40 we drop it in an envelope and send it for $3.

2. We insure everything that sells for more than $50 after combining items. Our insurance company requires us to wait 45 days before we make a claim for an overseas shipment. As soon as we make the claim they send an electronic form to the buyer. As soon as I see the buyer has certified the loss I make reimbursement. If a buyer files an ebay claim for a lost item it starts the clock and I am out of luck.

3. I do NOT take stamps off pages to reduce shipping costs. If I damage a stamp the item is no longer "As Described" and I have a big problem, plus my time is valuable too.

If you can live with those rules and want to bid on my auctions let me know and I will be happy to add you to my "Bidder Exemption" list. I am just starting to sell a really terrific Scott Volume I so check out my auctions.

I don't sell much overseas, but, fortunately, I haven't had anything go missing. Given the killing nature of postage costs for international purchases, I don't think the requests to remove from pages or cut up pages are illegitimate. Equally, I can understand why you don't wish to do it. But I am grateful for international bidders - looking at a couple of items I sold today, the reasonable prices achieved were because bidders from Portugal and Malta, not just those in GB, participated.

I'm very grateful for international buyers. Over half of my sales are overseas and the percentage seems to be growing. Since I sell covers I don't have some of the same issued you do. The postage rates don't seem to affect sales much at all - U.S. postage rates are a good bargain compared to some other places. However, in the end you have to do with what you are comfortable with.

90% of my sales are stamps on pages, often with 10-15 pages in a lot. There is no cheap way to ship overseas and I sell 55 items per week. By the time last week is ready to ship I'm working on next week and don't want to stop and remove stamps and ship them without tracking and insurance.

There is a way to ship album pages with stamps at a cheaper rate other than the parcel rates. There is the international large flats rate. Pages that fit into a 9x12 envelope with two sheets of chipboard are still flexible enough to qualify. I use this to ship larger oversized covers, commemorative pages/panels, large souvenir cards and the like. The restrictions are listed in the USPS website, but it's a valuable method I believe it underutilized by many.

On a different, but related note I did have two out of 426 shipments go astray from my last big ebay auction last March. One of the "lost" shipments was to India and another to Russia. I already refunded both buyers. However, yesterday I received a message from the Russian buyer that he just received my shipment and wanted to resend the payment. Why the shipment took nearly three months to be delivered may never be known, but hey the buyer was honest and eventually the system worked.