No Overseas Shipping

As mentioned, you need a scale.

Your biggest international shipping destination will be Canada, and for 1st class shipping prices are comparable to the U.S. Anywhere besides the U.S. and Canada will be a very small percentage.

Once you have your scale, and your boxes and shipping material, you should be able to estimate the weight pretty accurately. Go to the USPS website, and you can calculate postage. For international, you'll have a 1st class rate until the package reaches 5 lbs or so, and then the cheapest way to ship becomes priority.

It's like anything. It takes extra time until you have enough experience. I wouldn't hesitate to ship anywhere to forum members.

 

That was good to hear you shipped so much and had no problems.

 

I see a lot of eBay sellers who won't ship to Italy. What is the issue there? Is your experience shipping to Italy typical?

 

You ignore, Keith, the possibility of there being people who would be more than happy to sell things to carrols, even though he doesn't live in the USA, and who didn't know he had this issue until he posted about it.

 

It took me three months once, too, almost to the day, to send something to Italy. It was a 3-CD set, so I joked with the buyer that it takes a month per disc.

I already knew about the issues people were having with shipping to Italy when a prospective buyer approached me on AM to ask me if I would make an exception. So I said yes, I'd send it to him in Italy, as long as he agreed that if it ended up reaching him late, damaged, or not at all, he would not seek financial restitution, nor leave me negative feedback. I was glad he'd agreed to that exception when it finally got to him, almost 90 days since I'd mailed it.

 

Just for the record, during the end of my ebay days, I also would not ship to Italy due to 2 bad experiences in a short time frame. Though my last sale in the classifieds I mailed lps to Italy and some other places, and they made it there fine.

I was also told by someone, that shipping priority, with a large value, insurance, and tracking number, makes a package MORE likely to disappear, as it has the appearance of "worth stealing".

It seems counter intuitive, but the best way seems to be to mail 1st class, and cross your fingers!

 

Cheers Jay, I never doubted it for a second. ATSMUSIC has given the go-ahead for me to bid on his stuff, so problem solved.

 

I thought it was rather funny. Maybe our Western European sense of humour...

 

The way I understand it is...there have been known problems with the Italian Postal Service for a while now. Long delays and packages disappearing. And correspondingly, PayPal chargebacks filed. So a lot of sellers have given up on the whole country, understandably.

Some folks will only ship to Italy with insured services, which is definitely cost-prohibitive...but many won't ship there at all after one or more bad experiences.

 

The only parcels I ever lost (so far) were mailed to Italy. I sent them by registered mail, but that didn't make any difference...

 

Yaaaaaaaaay!

 

Nice try to save face.

 

OK for forum members now stated openly on my 3rd party thread, though I've
always granted access upon request.

 

pack one, two three, four items for shipping get the weights and exact shipping fee at the postal office and use it to calculate the total.
the is a weight borders in shipping fee - here in Russia they are same shipping for 250 g parcel, then for 500 g parcel then for 1000 g etc