We do not post out of the USA !!

[Sidewinder]

After seeing some phonographs being sold for scandalously cheap prices on ebay.com I was wondering if the fact that stating "No international buyers / We do not post out of the USA" has anything to do with this? Looking at the value of for example the Euro to $, surely to close out the euro people with strong currency has an impact on the value one achieves for the item?

Are foreigners not good customers, or what?

Of course juxtaposed to those that allow Worldwide shipping and the Australians always win

[flashpanblue]

Hello,
I have come up against the same problem many times. I have even emailed sellers to ask if they would ship to me only to be told absolutly no shipping outside U.S.A. The kicker is that i only live across the border in Canada!! I have also watched machines sell for low prices because they have limited the bidders. Worse even is the sellers that won't ship at all, and require you to pick it up in person. I can understand not wanting to crate up an Edison Stand up Diamond Disc machine, but many times they are small machines that could easily be boxed up! You may have to do what i have done. I have a friend in Seattle who i have all my ebay stuff sent to. I drive down several times a year to pick the goods up. If you could find someone willing to receive your Phono stuff and than forward it to you it would solve your problem!
Pete

[phonophan79]

I've heard most of the nightmare shipping situations come from shipping to Asia. ...so I usually leave that as the only option that I won't ship to. I don't offer free shipping, so in my mind if you're willing to pay for it, you got it.

[Kirkwood]

I have done really well selling to bidders outside of the US. I have heard that customs delays and fees (paid by the buyer, not the seller) have made overseas sales problematic for many buyers, but so far I haven't heard of any problems. The only problem I ran into was in the size limitations for a few items, and even then it was a matter of being more clever about the packing. I go out of my way to be accurate, and to pack things really very well, and so far it has paid off in sales. It got to the point that I'd joke that the only bidders out there were overseas, that Americans just weren't spending any money. Of course, I'm part of the problem, I have (almost) completely stopped buying on eBay, since I have so much stuff already, and no job. Seems that it stands to reason that prices have been low, since we have much of an entire country holding back. I really value the overseas buyers, they are polite, pay quickly and leave nice feedbacks. My only sale to Asia was a set of Dictaphone cylinders to Taiwan, and he was great. Maybe I've just been lucky....

[larryh]

This is something that has often come up in auctions I have run also. When I started to part with many of my collectables I made the decision due to feedback from the International sellers forums, as well as my own limitations when it came to understanding and dealing with shipping, postage, customs paper work, ect. to be taking on a lot of challenges I wasn't comfortable with. So I have opted to not sell outside the united states. However you still get request from people who plainly ignore the information and ask anyway. I suppose that is fine, and my reply is normally something to the order that was suggested above. That being that if they have someone whom resides in the U.S. and is willing to bid for and receive the item then It is the way around my set guidelines. That has been done a number of times and I am happy about it. One party who resides in the European countries has evidently managed to get an eBay ID that is registered here and will circumvent the blocks to out of the country bids. I have sold him a number of things and they are shipped to San Francisco, and retrieved by him as the party above does. The bottom line for me is that I am retired, not overly computer savy, and now and then a bit perhaps senile and prone to silly mistakes. Adding overseas selling just doesn't seem in the cards for me.

Its not that I don't feel for those who wish to have something I may be offering, mainly its my own problems that prevent it. I have gone way out of my way a number of time, especially when a paper type item was the item being auctioned to offer to make the International buyer a free copy of the pages in question for their research.

[Steve]

Excluding foreign buyers (wherever you live in the world) will, of course, affect the prices achieved. The same is true of Paypal (I'm sorry to admit) for those countries that permit Ebay sellers to not include it in their payment options.

There have been many auctions on http://www.ebay.com (effectively the USA arm of the international site) that have excluded foreign bids in the past. The sellers have a right to refuse bids from anywhere so I don't blame them at all but they are definietly losing out, so it's their financial loss.

AS for Paypal being added into the equation, the best Ebay site in the world to look at for the painful truth about this is the French site at http://www.ebay.fr

It is very common for high end Pathé machines to make "Continental money" when the seller refuses to accept Paypal or ship worldwide. The same items being offered with Paypal nearly always sell for a lot more. This is also true of items available "worldwide". However I have also noted that whilst some French sellers offer Paypal, they nearly always refuse worldwide shipping whilst those who do offer worldwide shipping, conversely don't accept Paypal. Why is this and is it purely a coincidence? I think not as it must be the case that the average French seller does not trust the foreign buyer or at least expects problems from them. Paypal offers so many guarantees to the buyer (sometimes at the sellers expense) that the argument seems to be, if you want Paypal guarantee on my item, you'll have to collect it from me yourself so I see who you are and get a signed receipt from you. Alternatively, if I post something internationally, by refusing you the Paypal option, I'm preventing you from having the normal buyer guarantees. Personally I think sellers who play this game, are somewhat short-sighted and they are feeling the pinch in their pockets as a result.

[Nat]

I closed down my business a few years ago, and things may have changed, but I also refused to ship outside the US. it was no reflection on my mostly) Canadian customers, but the amount of paper work I had to do to export was ridiculous, time-consuming and complex. In the end, I'd only do work for Canadians if they could find some way to pick my work up, or in a few cases, find an accommodation address south of the border I could ship to, where they'd then pick it up. It was a deadly combination of FedEx and US Government paper...