What is the issue(s) with shipping overseas?

An interesting observation in this thread regarding a few of the posts, are that those against shipping overseas appear to be retired.

I thought when you are retired you had more time on your hands and life goes along at a steady relaxing pace, well for most people anyway.

I seem to have this all wrong, retirement seems to be more busy than full time work and other commitments. 

I must remind myself in a few years time not to retire as work is less stressful.

I think you should work until you drop.   Being retired doesn't mean we have money to burn driving to the post office and waiting around.

But in this case John, somebody has helped you first. Not only by buying the items that you wished to sell, and paid for the postage and packing, but has also sent you the money in advance. Surely this is worth a few minutes of your time? 

If someone in the US buys it, they've done all of that as well, but I don't have to shag to the PO to ship it.  Some folks value their time in a different manner, and that's fine with me.

Again, I buy and sell a lot of stuff on eBay.  I have bought from Poland, Russia, that other place that I can't spell starts with a C, Japan, China, Mexico, and Canada.  Mexico took about 2 months and Canada took just over a month to receive my items.  All others was just a couple of weeks.  NO problems. 

I usually state in my eBay ad that I do not ship internationally.  But, I really don't know why I do that.  I had 1 fellow that wanted to buy an item from me on eBay and the only thing different I had to do was fill out some forms.  The only problem was he wanted me to under value the item when I declared it.  I'm not saying he was a bad guy but to me this was a red flag.  He said something about high import taxes and tariffs.   Maybe, we, here in the U.S., don't realize how lucky we are to be able to buy almost anything we want and pay little or no taxes to get it.

One thing I ponder is when I bought the item from Poland that cost me $15.00 the postage was only $10.00.  I am in western  PA and if I wanted to send the same item to eastern PA or Ohio it would probably be twice as much.  Go figure.

P.S.  eBay makes it REAL easy to ship internationally now.  You actually ship to a drop here in the U.S..  Then they ship it over seas.  Haven't tried it yet and don't know the details but it is available.

Rick

No big deal for me.I have had excellent service using USPS and Deutsche Post (On the other end).I went on a Marklin buying spree a few months ago while on assignment in Germany.I shipped several 20 to 30 pound packages.Everything arrived within 10 days and in perfect shape.The cost wasn't all that bad.

ACTUALLY, the item is NO LONGER INSURED when shipping USPS when it leaves our shore...look it up!!!  And a couple exagerators above overstate the complexity of the Customs Form...an intelligent child could fill it out properly.  Some items are not readily available in other countries, so foreign buyers often are more willing to pay extra for shipping/customs, and do not whimper if  they decide to purchase.  The only barriers I have experienced is communication with Non-English speaking people.  It seems they use machines to interpret our language, sometimes leading to a misunderstanding.  Otherwise, their money is as good as mine...Ron B.

I guess if I work a bit longer I can plan in a bit extra of my finances to allow me to go to my post office to post the items people need from me to make their day brighter instead of miserable.