Urgent help from American retrobikers for small ebay purchas

[Carsten]

hmm, i have shipped plenty of complete bikes, frames and parts over to europe. always with USPS, no problem so far and all that matters is the size limit for the box. the weight can be guestimated or even measured pretty precisely and the very handy USPS rate calculator has always been reliable. they offer insurance up to some limits and are now even online trackable. tracking varies a bit by destination country but e.g. swiss poss has an online system similar to UPS, very nice and handy.
the buyer always decided how much insurance he/she wants and if it is beyond the limit they need to decide if they want to take the risk or not. never was an issue. customs charges are always the buyers problem.
for small uninsured items i always buy the certificate of mailing but the risk is entirely on the buyer's side.

carsten

 

[gump]

I have had some good resposnse from US sellers on the bay.

Recently had a bike sent over, no post charges agreed before auction. I did some online quotes, suggested 1 or 2 boxes etc depending how it could be split.
He ended up with a quote for ~$150, which for fully insured 3-5 day courier I thought was pretty fine.
Turns out there was another excess when went to post to me, another $48 - asked if I was happy to pay extra. I said fine - hey, actual shipping prices are hard to get right! We had had some discussion by then, so was pretty sure he was not on the make.
When posted, came to UK fast, was held in customs till I said OK. I offered to PP him the extra postage. Reply was not to worry

There are good guys around - key thing is shipping is hassle. Shipping abroad is more hassle and harder to quote. Shipping whole bikes abroad is a real PITA - Any country. Everything can be worked out with effort and money, and can well understand why someone would not post abroad.

 

[SeeingisBelievingGTMuseum]

I find american sellers can be quite irritating. If it isnt ridiculous international postage, it's no paypal for international bidders, or they wont even ship international (even if it's an easy enough thing to package).

Not so, not all the time. I've pumped a ton of frames across the pond the last two years. In fact I'd bet the Zaskar and Xizang number balance is getting close to equal on both sides of the ocean. Most sellers stateside just don't understand how easy it really is to process the shipping. They think UPS not US Postal when they ship. No PayPal bank transfers is understandable because they take two weeks to clear and by the time the part gets to Europe it's another 6-10 days and if you wait 24 days to get something you will grow impatient and leave bad feedback because the banks are the ones slowing up the process. I take PayPal but by credit card only. You need to understand the situation from both sides. Especially too with your currencies being so strong against the dollar.

Why don't you talk your government into lowering their postal rates so you can ship frames back to the states for US$50. The postal people over there must be eating steak for every meal for what they charge. It only costs five dollars more for me to ship a frame to Europe than California and California is a lot closer to where I live. You guys are getting a heck of a deal on shipping frames and for that matter complete bikes too. Complete bikes go forr between $120-140 shipped in two boxes. Heck that's the same rate as one frame from the UK to the US.

For what it's worth I've done third party buying and shipping for at least a dozen people from Retrobike in the past year. One last week from Romania even. So it's not impossible just don't be afraid to ask.

 

[pinguwin]

You can look at other threads where this subject has come up. There are numerous reasons, some excellent ones, why people are reluctant to ship overseas. Those reasons might not be to your advantage, but the sellers (many of whom are experienced sellers), feel those reasons are to their advantage.

Do some searching on this and you'll see why various people feel that way. It's not as silly as you might think.

 

[dyna-ti]

Yeah I just mean some sellers on ebay, not all US sellers.

Too late!.
I think theres some guy out at a cruise missile base in the US typing your home address into the targeting computer