How can i buy like the French? Refuse to pay for registered delivery and then make a claim with paypal once the item has been sent non-registered.

Thank you for the serious reply, i've updated my return policy. Well i've tried to but ebay makes nothing easy. If i follow your advice then 50-75%% of my mail to France will be stolen - either by the buyer or postal worker? My new policy of making the French pay for tracked mail means i sleep at night and the 50-75% of sales i lose are very likely to have been the people who want to steal my vinyl for nothing anyway. No lose situation for me.

Hi

AF could you advise what you mean by

self insure so you don't even need to bother with the RM claims

We currently send all our items International Signed for at very high prices but reading your post I think we should change to sending small packet and drop the costly signed for element especially as RM insure for 46 pounds but in the past making claims from RM are very time consuming so interested to know more about an option to self insure

regards

SMDK

Hi

Thanks for that.

All in all it would seem Small Packet is the way to go.

thanks again for the info

SMDK

If you haven't sold on ebay Germany or Austria before, you will also have to open a new seller account there which means you have to sign up to their new payment method.

(Buyer pays ebay, ebay holds money for 2-4 weeks then pays seller if buyer makes no claim or complaint. If buyer makes a claim ebay will refund buyer from the frozen money. If you have several sold items and only one buyer makes a claim ebay will retain all payments until the one claim is resolved)

At the moment this only applies to new sellers on the site but apparently this is due to be extended to all sellers on ebay Germany soon.

hi interesting read , as i find signed for puts people off , but ebay and pay pal say thats the best way to send it  might try the cheaper end listings like this as sometimes if its overseas post is more than item ,

on a plus note ive started using postage supermarket.com for overseas , there great they sell off spare space with tnt dhl etc

i sent a 25 kilo parcel to holland wich was 1 meter square for £48

parcelforce was over £300

went with tnt got there next day .

you should have a look

all the best chris

afantiques wrote:

What works in the USA with USPS and very cheap delivery confirmation

Only cheap if you buy postage online though AF.  At the post office window its 75¢ so about the same as recorded delivery over your way and too expensive to be reasonable.

The USPS has been doing free D/C for priority and above (online postage purchase only) for several years now and just last month made it free with 1st class (online only and ebay sales only).

I send mostly first class so it is nice to save the 19¢ it did cost and to have eBay now offer postage purchase of 1st class (the USPS site does not).  I had to pay for a monthly stamps.com subscription until they made that change.

The changes make me think that

- the USPS has noticed that ebay sales are now their largest volume of packages

- eBay has noticed they have massive clout and have made some nice arrangements with the USPS

I suspect this was all in the works when they started charging final value fees on the total sale including postage and dropped the FVF amount by 1% for most items.

I know it is considered uncool to like eBay changes but since the overall effect of all the above changes has cut way back on the fee avoidance that was so annoying and reduced my costs a bit while increasing sales, I gotta say I like them. 

1. There are at least 2 sides to most issues - buyer's and seller's - and we only see one of them.
2. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.