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Hi Fellow Scavengers – I usually use Global Shipping for everything – a while back I added Worldwide Shipping (Priority International) to all my listings to catch anything slipping through the cracks.. and never have had any issues on the occasional international sales that I send direct.
Tonight I got a best offer on a vintage hardcover book to China – (Priority Mail International probably will be ~$63 to ship this to China). The book was sold for $47.00 – I paid < $1.00 for this book so I don’t have much to lose here.
As soon as I accepted the offer (before payment) I get this message (See Below):
Basically… he’s asking for me to send this a “cheaper way” – Registered Air Mail – which I know nothing about – but the buyer sent a picture (I guess of another book) and seems to think this should cost ~$28.55 shipped to China..Buyer writes:
Hi there,
Thanks for your kind acceptance of my offer. Would you please do me a favor to shipping the book by Registered Air Mail ( see attached picture ) please? The USPS Registered Mail with Pre-fix tracking code RE is available tracking and trace in China mainland . It used to cheaper than USPS Priority Mail. The only thing that causes you inconvenience is that you have to go to post office by yourself instead of post man picking up home or your office. Your help is very appreciated.
Regards
(Chinese Buyer)***I don’t mind going to the post office to do this…(I’ll chalk it up to a learning experience and then consider taking off Worldwide shipping outside of GSP…) I am trying to research Registered Mail to China – but it’s a little confusing on whether or not I would be able to upload any kind of “tracking” that eBay would find acceptable. And there is the other half of me that is saying “Whaaaat??? Shouldn’t you negotiate these things before you make the offer?” I don’t really want to get into haggling over price, shipping & handling, etc. but if this service is legit and works and saves him $30 – I don’t want to cancel this sale without checking in with you guys first. IF anyone has any experience or insight or advice, please chime in! How should I respond here?
Many many thanks! 🙂
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Good advice 🙂 And thanks for responding.
From what I am reading (not much online) Registered Air Mail seems to be like First Class International (It is for under 4 lbs) you can pay to “register” (which provides a form of tracking – but eBay doesn’t recognize it – no seller protection now.) I think I need to cancel this sale – or pushback and explain I am only set up for Priority International and ask him if he wants to proceed. I’m going to sleep on it and figure out the best way to respond (or not) tomorrow after seeing if anyone else has any advice. Thanks again! -
We personally just say sorry, no thanks. They saw the shipping we use overseas when they purchased. Unless we’re hungry for the sale, it’s not up tp us to jump through hoops.
When shipping internationally you need to be careful about who is responsible once it leaves your house. The cheaper the shipping, the more responsibility lands on you, the seller. If it gets lost, stuck in customs, damaged, etc, you eat the cost since it wasnt successfully delivered.
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If he put in an offer and saw that it said $63 for shipping, it’s on him to pay the $63 for shipping. Buyers can’t negotiate different terms for shipping after they have put in an offer and agreed to the stated shipping amount in that offer.
I would just tell him that this is the way that you have to ship, since you originally indicated in your listing that you would ship that way. If he is unhappy with that shipping method, you would be happy to cancel the order for him.
No need to go through such a fuss for an item. If he’s this much trouble to begin with, you don’t know what it’s going to be like when he actually receives the book (or doesn’t receive the book, since it’s international).
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Thank you Jay, Ryanne, and Almasty for your replies.. You guys are right – I have already spent WAY too much time working on this one… I just cancelled the sale. He should have just bought the book Priority Mail International if he wanted it, but was overly concerned about saving $20. No thanks.
Anyway, I was attempting last night to create a new listing for him through GSP – which is another story for another post… I was wondering why this listing didn’t go through GSP in the first place because I have GSP enabled on every listing. (I don’t think GSP allows antiquarian books – especially to China) However in working on this … late last night I did a search on my active listings with “Global Shipping Program” = “Enabled” and only 129 of my 1150 listings showed GSP “on”… even though they are all marked for GSP.. clearly a bug going on! I need to call eBay Technical Support. My shipping policies are so jacked up – I can’t ship to Hawaii or Po Boxes or US protectorates, and now my GSP is “on” but not really available for most of my listings. No wonder my sales are down. Anyway, thanks for providing some sanity… I honestly prefer asking here than calling eBay customer support, but I have had a handful of growing shipping glitches for a long time now and I keep finding more – it is so frustrating.
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Sounds like you have an issue and a call to eBay would be smart.
Some items cant go through GSP even if you have it turned on. I believe there’s a list somewhere on eBay, but it often feels arbitrary.
For all our items, they either ship GSP or defaults to Priority International if it gets kicked out of the system.
Very rarely do we ship First Class overseas, and then only if the buyer arranges it with us before hand .
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Once an offer is made the p&p terms can’t be altered (I tried!) If the offer is accepted and the item is to be sent via GSP the buyer gets automatically invoiced by eBay, and you get an error page if you try to invoice them yourself. The buyer then has to pay the full amount, or gets a “non-payer” strike. If you cancel the accepted offer it goes down as a defect on your account- it’s better to let things ride until the buyer cancels.
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Antique Frog – Thanks – yes, I should have let this ride out and have the non payer strike take effect – but, I did cancel it last night (I didn’t want it to go through and have him expecting a refund, then claiming INR/INAD, etc.) I chose “Buyer requested to cancel” as my reason – so hopefully no defects. He wanted to pay me for International Priority first and then credit him back on the backend once I took it to the post office to buy the cheaper shipping that isn’t trackable… – so no deal… wasn’t going to go there. Oh well.. he is still trying to buy the book – turns out it is signed by a famous illustrator from the late 1800’s and may be more valuable than I originally thought…
Thank you for your advice. -
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Well, good luck with the book! I’ve never had problems with shipping to China, apart from one odd instance where a camera lens went missing. It was returned to me after 6 months with a message which seemed to indicate that something had gone wrong with the postal carriers in China (not “undeliverable” but a “system failure” of some sort). Some Chinese buyers provide scans of their addresses in characters.
If anyone’s posting to the UK, two-thirds of (my) eBay UK buyers don’t know their correct postal address, or how to capitalise it (or their names) properly, or even how to spell their names. The Royal Mail website’s pretty useful for checking.
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