Buyer frenzy

[Tony Gordon]

I haven't really noticed a buyer frenzy on my auction items. Though sales have generally been good.

As far as selling to Canada, my best customers are Canadian. I haven't had any problems in the 11 years I've been selling cards internationally. Also, after years of handwriting all my shipping envelopes, I've finally gotten with the program and printed my first shipping label to Canada yesterday. It was painless.

The thing that bothers me about international shipping is the fact that eBay now charges an extra fee to have your items available for viewing by U.K. customers. This just nags at me and I won't pay the extra fee when it used to be free.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by Tony Gordon

As far as selling to Canada, my best customers are Canadian. I haven't had any problems in the 11 years I've been selling cards internationally. Also, after years of handwriting all my shipping envelopes, I've finally gotten with the program and printed my first shipping label to Canada yesterday. It was painless.

Tony, glad to hear this. More pleasant responses regarding these transactions would certainly get me to reconsider my stance.

At one point I bought into the idea that the extra international bids would drive my prices up and thus negate the negatives of extra shipping costs, increased angst, locked up funds and negative feedback due to impatience. But the increased angst was ultimately what killed it - it just wasn't fun dealing with those 1-2 bad apples per year. At that time, on ebay I was only allowing U.S. and Canada - not other countries. I dealt with other countries non-ebay - no problems.

For the most part, it still simply comes down to how ebay handles things - non-ebay, most anything can be worked out.

[peterose4hof]

I offer international shipping worldwide on all my Ebay listings. I have had only 1 or 2 bad experiences in the past few years. That is a comparable if not better percentage than I have had with US buyers. You are going to run into unreasonable buyers no matter what country they reside in.

As a whole, international buyers seem to be more polite and appreciative. I have noticed of late that packages are taking much too long to get to my Canadian buyers. In fact, I shipped about 40 items internationally on Mon, August 6th to places like Canada, Germany, Italy, Austrailia, etc. I started receiving positive feedback from the non-Canadian buyers within a week to ten days, whereas it took a minimum of 2 weeks to receive feedback from my Canadian buyers. I recently got my first low DSR (1-2 stars) for shipping time from a Canadian buyer.

It pains me to say, but if this persists I may have to stop selling to Canada. My Top-Rated Seller status is far too valuable to risk losing.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by peterose4hof

My Top-Rated Seller status is far too valuable to risk losing.

I lost mine because I was charging actual shipping costs - had two buyers complain, and even after I showed them the shipping receipts ... status gone soon after.

Now I only do free shipping on baseball cards. But again, mostly to reduce the angst of senseless friction.

[zljones]

Originally Posted by peterose4hof

I offer international shipping worldwide on all my Ebay listings. I have had only 1 or 2 bad experiences in the past few years. That is a comparable if not better percentage than I have had with US buyers. You are going to run into unreasonable buyers no matter what country they reside in.

As a whole, international buyers seem to be more polite and appreciative. I have noticed of late that packages are taking much too long to get to my Canadian buyers. In fact, I shipped about 40 items internationally on Mon, August 6th to places like Canada, Germany, Italy, Austrailia, etc. I started receiving positive feedback from the non-Canadian buyers within a week to ten days, whereas it took a minimum of 2 weeks to receive feedback from my Canadian buyers. I recently got my first low DSR (1-2 stars) for shipping time from a Canadian buyer.

It pains me to say, but if this persists I may have to stop selling to Canada. My Top-Rated Seller status is far too valuable to risk losing.

That is my biggest fear is those dang stars. Since I am not usually a seller, anyone that zings my stars can block my funds thanks to Ebay. As a not very often seller like me I am basically skating on thin ice at all times so I crossed out all international and U.S. protectorite regions. If ebay was not so tight on stars like that then I would certainly ship international.