Ebay sellers not shipping to Canada?

[thecatspajamas]

I ship to Canada (and other countries) on a regular basis, but I have to admit, it's a bit of a crapshoot. I have gotten so many e-mails starting with "Where is my item?" that I have worked up a standardized response. The reality is that when you ship outside the country, you're working without a net. You can ship only Fed-Ex or UPS, or you can refuse to ship internationally. The result will be the same: no international business.

There are NO trackable USPS shipping options for international shipments. Reason being that obviously other countries have separate postal systems, so there's no way for them to scan the package at delivery. Fed-Ex and UPS work because they're still the same company in Canada and everywhere else, all connected to the same tracking system. The one USPS option that might work is Registered Mail with Return Confirmation (in which they have to sign a card which is then mailed back to you as proof of delivery) which usually costs way more than the regular shipping itself. The one time I've used it, it still took about a month to get there (to the Philippines, and it was at the buyer's request due to a large number of stolen packages in his location, yikes!), and it was about 3 weeks from the time he told me the package arrived to when the return card made it back to me. Had he been bent on fraud, the whole case could have been wrapped up by then, and I'm not sure if Paypal would accept the signed card as proof anyway.

But I still do ship internationally for the simple reason that there are no more fraudsters outside our borders than there are here in the good ol' USA. I've been taken advantage of more stateside than otherwise, but I still sell in the U.S.A. Whatever fraud protections eBay or Paypal puts in place, there will always be ways for people to get around them. I had a verrrry long conversation with an eBay rep one time about how I could, as a seller, protect myself 100% from someone falsely claiming that they did not receive the package. Was delivery confirmation enough? No, because that just shows the package was delivered, not whether it was delivered to the right address or not. Was signature confirmation 100% foolproof? No, because I have no proof that the person who signed for the package was actually the buyer (have you ever been asked for photo ID when signing for a package? Me either). The end of the conversation was when I bluntly asked the eBay rep if there was any way that I, as a seller, could protect myself 100% from a buyer who was determined to defraud me, and the answer was "no." If a buyer is determined enough to defraud you and lie throughout the Paypal/eBay claims process, there is no guarantee you will come out on top, even with delivery confirmation. In some cases eBay/Paypal may choose to back you under their "Seller Protection" policies, but if it's a high-dollar transaction or if there is any deviation from their very narrow set of qualifiers for the transaction, they'll just refund the buyer's money. (Incidentally, that's exactly what had happened in this case. DC showed the package was delivered, but the buyer said they didn't get it. Paypal removed the funds from my account and refunded them to the buyer. No recourse for me other than the long conversation and suggestion that I submit an official complaint about the policy, which as we all know goes nowhere).

But, all that said, I still continue to sell on eBay. Dealing with fraud-minded customers is a part of any sales business (which is another fun quote from that conversation. Thanks eBay rep). Thankfully, there are still far and away more honest buyers out there than dishonest, even north of the border So I say that the sellers should do what they have to in order to feel comfortable, but if you want to sell outside the country, you just have to suck it up and do it. It's really not that much of a stretch over selling to US buyers. It just takes longer.