[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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