14 Jan
2003
14 Jan
'03
2:10 a.m.
> One of my main beefs are the number of sellers in
the US
>who restrict the volume of bids by refusing to ship to
>anywhere outside own their limited vision of the world.
>Either thru fear of unknown extra efforts, (which for the
>most part are minimal) or even ignoring the "will ship to"
>section. I routinely respond to something I'm interested
>in with "will you not ship to Canada" and the answer is
>almost invariably yes. They simply did the default form.
You'll be happy to know, that I check that I will
ship to Canada. I've
only done a few auctions, but those that I have done, I always say yes to
Canada. Not to other places, but that is going to change... I have been
limiting my ship to range only because I am new at auctions and want to
get a feel for it before I have to start deailing with international
shipping.
Well, as long as we are talking about Europe or Japan,
There's no big difference to the US. I've send stuff
both ways, and never had a failiure.
> The problems with the commercial shippers like
UPS is a
>different number, and while it may work well in-country is
>a disaster outside.
This is my major problem with shipping outside the US
(minus canada). I
have heard horror stories about UPS and FedEx going to other countries.
So when I am counting on using FedEx for delivery, I worry about what is
going to be involved with getting the package to the person if they
aren't in North America.
I can't realy speak for other countries than the US
and Germany (although it is quite similar for other
European countries), but the best to use are the
traditional services, so for the US this would be
the USPS. UPS and FedEx are quite more expensive
without offering any additional benefit. Also ther
service on the reciveing side, at least here in
Europe, is not existing. Deutsche Post (as partner
for USPS) offers repeated delivery, or local pickup,
and storage up to 30 days before the package gets
returned. UPS for example tries just two times, and
then you'll get a week to schedule another atempt.
If you'r not able to arange a delivery, a pickup is
only possible at their centre, middle of nowhere,
miles outside the city.
Also the only case where I lost a shipment once was
UPS. Same with an urgent delivery of an airplane
ticket I did thru FedEx. I did send them on Wendsday,
to be delivered before Sunday, they told me it would
be there (in a mayor German city) on Friday. I even
payed additional Saturday delivery just to be shure.
Guess what - of course the tickets where NOT deliverd
in time. If I had send them with regular mail, the
chance may have been quite higher. Of course I didn't
get any cent back.
Anyway, use the good old USPS. Maybe their aperance
and reputation is not as fancy as other companies,
but you'll get a decent service and high reliability.
Gruss
H.
--
VCF Europa 4.0 am 03./04. Mai 2003 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/