[time-nuts] US ebay sellers who won't ship outside the US
phil
fortime at bellsouth.net
Fri Jul 17 07:18:00 UTC 2009
A few other reasons that come into play for not shipping outside of USA,
(1) With respect to items a seller may purchase from Federal auctions or a
company such as Honeywell that is under federal contract, the "general"
terms of the sale/auction is that the items will not be exported. Certainly,
some items could/would fall into the "dual-use" category. I doubt a kitchen
table would be "dual-use" unless you assemble bombs on it, yet the terms of
some auctions are explicit, no exporting.
(2) What stops the most "small" sellers from shipping out of the US is the
financial risk.
In reading some of the forums on eBay, sellers are getting scammed in
numerous ways. You have PayPal that seems to side with the purchaser
regardless of circumstances. If an item is returned to seller for any reason
the seller will at least loose the shipping cost, possibly fees, and with
extreme luck get the item back rather than a box of rocks.
Should a buyer tell PayPal an item is counterfeit, PayPal will often tell
the buyer to destroy the unit/item and refund buyer everything. A charge
back is issued to the seller and the seller is out all cost, fees, shipping,
and DOES NOT get the item back.
If you notice, some of the sellers that do export require an irrevocable
form of payment (non PayPal) and stipulate no warranty or returns when
shipped out of the USA.
(3) Excessive shipping cost. Shipping cost on a heavy item to Europe can be
in the hundreds of dollars. PayPal now requires a signature on anything
250.00 US or more and I understand that overseas signature can only be had
with air shipping.
(4) Not only the financial risk and excessive shipping cost, the additional
paperwork, extra PayPal fees to convert the foreign currency to dollars make
it not worth the effort.
A seller can sell/ship with relative safety state to state and have some
assurance of legal protections, virtually no protections selling/shipping
out of the US.
A thought
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