International shipping costs on eBay

[on:]

Bad news everyone,

are there any other Futurama merchandising fans here who already recognized that the international shipping costs on eBay have been increased dramatically?

It seems that lots of sellers have to use priority shipping with tracking instead of the cheaper first class mail international. This ends up in shipping costs of almost $30 just for a poster including taxes!
The problem is, that the seller will ship the item to a central shipping agency that ships it to the buyer. And of course, the buyer has to pay for this service and both shipping costs. This is organized by eBay and implemented in their system now.

In the past, I was sometimes lucky with smaller items where I did not have to pay any taxes (about 20% of item price including shipping) because it was just too small (they skip handling because they have bigger more interesting packets to check) or because the value was below the tax limit of about $30. And posters were never charged anyway.
And I have seen sellers who does not offer international shipping anymore because of the new shipping system. It seems to be more complicated or just too expensive to be interesting for international customers. But on the other hand it's still possible to offer the standard shipping methods. But only a few sellers still do... 

With the new system, it becomes unlikely to import nice items for a reasonable price.  It seems that my time as a Futurama collector will end soon.

[Reply #1 on:]

I sell on there, and I don't ship internationally because of the rates and to protect my account from feedback like, "cost me x amount of dollars in import duty for an item worth half that, what a waste!" etc etc.

[Reply #2 on:]

I sell on there, and I don't ship internationally because of the rates and to protect my account from feedback like, "cost me x amount of dollars in import duty for an item worth half that, what a waste!" etc etc.

People shouldn't bid if they don't know how much it can cost. That's the risk when buying internationally. And of course, that is not the responsibility of the seller.

Too bad this happens so often that lots of people stopped from selling worldwide.
Maybe thats the reason why eBay has introduced its new system, just to avoid buyers from beeing surprised and complaining. Anyway, it makes shipping much more expensive. 

[Reply #3 on:]

Yeah I agree, read before you buy. However as a seller, to me it just isn't worth the hassle. Bigger companies will sell to almost anyone...but individual sellers, such as myself, prefer an easy transaction. Sorry there Nibbler_04