For those who sell to overseas buyers - observations and 3 questions

MrWorldwide · February 13, 2015

OK, I freely admit that a lot of this must come with experience, but when I hear that a young Farang or Thai makes a living here selling clothes or whatever from the markets to folk in other parts of Asia or further afield, two things spring to mind:

1. Fees payable to EBay/Paypal

2. Freight/shipping

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it - I get that - but freight seems like a much larger hurdle to me than the fees charged by the people in the middle of a sale - 3.5% Paypal is acceptable to me. To maintain any credibility with buyers, what you're selling has to get there in a timely manner at reasonable cost : suddenly you're competing with the likes of Amazon and alibaba, companies which can afford to replace lost shipments.

In my case, I sold some audio gear to another enthusiast in the US via the 'For Sale' section on a very popular forum where I've been active for over 6 years. Agreed price was 500USD - Paypal Australia allows me to maintain a USD balance so that was cool, but we're talking about a customer who lives in the land of overnight shipping from one side of the CONUS to the other and I wasnt encouraged by what I'd read about Thai Post and lost packages : not an option unless you're selling something you can replace easily and cheaply. I shouldered just over half the shipping cost to make the sale - ~57 USD - and invoiced him for 550USD. I considered this a worthwhile sacrifice given that the only other interest came from a guy who seemed to be trying to lowball me.

Long story short, I netted roughy 470USD (after 3.5% Paypal and my share of the freight charge) for some gear that cost me considerably more, but that's the way it goes with secondhand audio and its more than I would have gotten locally. If I was trying to sell something new - particularly something with any kind of return policy - I struggle to see how some on EBay and other sites are making any money at all. My customer has his package and we're all smiling but I didnt enjoy filling in that tiny DHL waybill or the other crap they insist on. Such is life, and we're back to the 'if it was easy' part.

My questions for those who are somehow managing to make this work are simple -

1. Do you simply accept that your carrier will lose shipments and factor that into your asking price(s) ?

2. Is it any easier to simply inflate the price and offer 'Free shipping worldwide' in your ad ? One of my competitors was a guy in Singapore who must have been using his uncle's shipping company based on his advertised price, but my gear sold before his. Som nam na, la ?

3. Selling to a price conscious market - and we've all seen ridiculously low reserves on E-Bay - I assume the only way this works is high volume, presumably meaning more shipments and more potential hassles with customers and whoever is shipping your product ?

I'm sure there are infinitely better ways of doing this than the route I chose, but I didnt want to disappoint a fellow audio enthusiast and I know how I'd feel if someone was charging me an exorbitant amount to ship such a small package from the States or Europe. Happy to hear from anyone who has had a more positive experience with the Thai Post EMS system or another carrier - for now I'm just happy that I didnt have to deal with too many time wasters and my customer got his delivery. I have more gear to offload but I'm going to look at alternatives to the US - even DHL dont fill me with enough confidence to repeat this exercise. Happy trails.

Thanks,

MrWW

MrWorldwide · February 13, 2015

Before someone chimes in with 'Hope you've got a work permit !', I don't - this was a private sale and I just want to find a cheap, reliable method to ship from Thailand. My questions are as applicable to someone doing this once as they are to someone doing it 15 times a week : the difference is that the latter have had more time to sort the wheat from the chaff. I have no intention of paying tax on money that will simply go to pay for other goodies online - apologies if that offends some here. I spend a lot of money in Thailand and much of it goes into the pockets of Thais who I doubt have ever paid tax in their entire working lives : that's the cash economy and it still puts food in the mouths of families in Isaan - end sermon.

This is not a digital pikey thread - please dont go there.

mania · February 14, 2015

From my experience....

As you say "fees" like ebay/paypal etc. are negligible & acceptable as a cost of doing business.

For shipping loss I have never had any...perhaps lucky? In any case I use either Thai air or EMS

Although I have not done high quantities so again maybe just lucky still? But always registered in some way type shipping.

As to the cost of shipping it is the killer IMHO

It is just too high for any air type deliveries to the point that it makes most singular goods uncompetitive price wise.

Because in many western markets they already have something being imported which is similar @ a better

price because of their buying power or shipping power...ie: container mixed loads

As for the examples you & I have seen where we just scratch our heads wondering if they make anything at all....

I have come to see that some folks have multiple seller accounts they use one account as a loss leader to get a feel for how

a product is accepted. In this case they say they only have a few to sell.

Then to not be seen as someone who has raised their price they use their main account once desirability is determined

to sell at a more realistic price. That is not to say all that seem cheaper than possible/shipping alone is this type example

The only somewhat reasonable solution I have come to especially for cheaper items is to have a "helper"/partner in the Western country

you would like to mainly target. If items are not perishables buy larger & ship @ slower/cheaper rate to this helper.

Then advertise & have the helper ship locally. Maybe like your description of the Singaporean person?

In any case good luck & wish you success

Edited February 14, 2015 by mania

NCC1701A · February 14, 2015

you know what is interesting, when i lived in los angeles i would buy items on ebay from china, things that cost like one or two dollars, and they would show up in the mail two or three weeks later. they paid a small amount for postage.

i never had a problem.

i know this is different than heavy items, but how is it the chinese can mail their items to the USA and I can't send a letter to the USA from Thailand without it getting lost?

i am still waiting for the letter with my pin number from bangkok bank... i know i will never get it.

dddave · February 14, 2015

Seven or eight years ago, I partnered with a UK friend selling custom made overcoats produced here in Thailand on Ebay. He had a daughter in the UK who was willing to re-ship locally for us and since about 70% of our orders were from the UK, it seemed a good idea. Not so good in practice, however. The logistics of getting a shippable quantity of custom made overcoats in a timely fashion were daunting. Once our cartons of 15 to 20 coats arrived in the UK, we usually got hit with HUGE import duties.

We abandoned that tactic and started shipping individually to customers via EMS: very expensive, about $50 a shipment to the UK. I will say that we used EMS for almost 150 shipments and never lost a single one.

All sorts of problems began emerging: inaccurate measurements from customers, wildly inconsistent quality from tailor shops on this end, poor sizing and at that time, the precipitous drop of the Pound. E-Bay fees added up to a whole lot more than we expected. The final nail came when one day I was mailing several parcels at a Thai P.O. and was approached by an official with a list of all my shipments for the last six months and a lot of questions. He made it very clear that I was in violation of all sorts of rules and that continuing to do business was going to cost a whole lot more.

The whole thing just was not worth the PIA factor so we closed shop; lessons learned.

What can work short term and small scale is very difficult to transform into long term, large scale.

KhnomKhnom · February 14, 2015

Shipping will eat you alive.

ONLY solution is huge quantities and ocean freight.

I tried to sell a 20 dollar book on eBay and the buyer paid that and I paid $68usd to send it to him, Thai Post is cheap but not that cheap.

danbradster · February 14, 2015

Shipping will eat you alive.

ONLY solution is huge quantities and ocean freight.

I tried to sell a 20 dollar book on eBay and the buyer paid that and I paid $68usd to send it to him, Thai Post is cheap but not that cheap.

I agree. Buying in bulk and keeping it in the country you will sell to is far more cost effective.

Using a fulfilment warehouse to store and send your products may work e.g. ShipWire. That is, if your prices can cover the cost.

technologybytes · February 14, 2015

I have been an internet seller since 1999. I can tell you this, eBay is incredibly hard to make a profit and very few professionals these days even bother to try.

Every online business needs to make sufficient profit to be able to refund the occasional customer for a variety of reasons, including lost in the post. In my experience very few items actually get truly lost (i.e. untraceable) but most problems result from customers who give the wrong address.

I allow 4% of my gross profit for covering refunds and other customer service issues, it's actually closer to 2 percent most of the time.

Biggest mistake is to try and compete on price alone, thats not possible when selling from Thailand because there are countries were sellers have considerably lower costs.

Your biggest problem in time would always be reliability of supply. Thai suppliers will always tell you they can get as many of product x as you require... they always end up letting you down. Ideally you should be selling unique products that you manufacture yourself and where the value to weight ratio is good.

Good luck, you will need it.

BKKdreaming · February 14, 2015

ebay fees are 10% on item cost and on shipping cost !

plus paypal fees on both too

so figure at least 15% and a bad exchange rate if you are changing into baht ,

We have way too many problems with Thai post , most problems are tracking that does not track, and Thai post does not care ,

items are sent mostly SAL - small packed -registered

and its always a Thai that goes to the post office so its not a language problem

I hate the loss of business (refund) , maybe a negative feedback and lost of shipping cost when a package does not arrive

I have piles of these items and they cost less than the shipping, so losing the item is not the big problem.

I send a pile by sea post to the USA and have them mailed from there to USA customers, its the same cost for postage USA-USA as Thai post to USA but they get the package quicker.

I do not know how you can afford to do it with expensive cost items and 20-30% markup , even 50% markup is not enough

this is not high volume , 5-10 items a month when a new item is launched and then it slows down some ,

so far no one has copied our items so we are lucky , that is a very big problem in Asia

Advise : find a few items that need to be made from your hobby , sell those and then fill in with "rare" trash you find around town that you can 10x you cost because you paid 30-50 baht for them.

ALWAYS think about shipping cost , and look up SAL -small packet for under 2kg

Privateer · February 14, 2015

You mention incredibly low reserve prices - a while since I've traded but I have seen books at a reserve of just 1 pence (UK). Virtually always they seem to cover it by bumping up the postage and packaging. Their argument would be the labour etc cost of handling the goods and they don't have to pay E-bay commission fees on that. Of course they hope the price will be bid up and they don't mind the small commission on that part.

When buying I did come across one or two traders who were extremely wary and made me as a customer feel like a criminal because I wanted to use the convenience of PayPal. They were worried I might deny receipt of the goods and PayPal would repay me at their cost. Whether they had actually been stung I don't know but if goods are high turnover or modest price you can factor losses in.

Books I have bought from the Usa have sometimes taken an excessive amount of time and arrived after I thought them lost. Items may be held up by the carrier pending payment of import duties but that is the customers problem.

IMO to sell intercontinental either

- very lightweight and non-bulky goods of good value such as collectable postcard or postage stamps.

- goods where you undercut the target domestic market by the amount of your postage

- goods are unique and desirable enough to command the additional costs. Eg some books may not be available (or rare and costly) in the local market. I found this with some technical or long out of print books of American origin.

Privateer · February 14, 2015

Ok BKK I see they have closed the loophole where people used to load up the shipping cost to support a very low reserve. I am not surprised.

WonnabeBiker · February 14, 2015

TBH, I would be very concerned about the buyers' honesty - or lack thereof. Ratings blackmail, denial of receipt combined with sneaky tricks like using a non Paypal approved delivery address or claiming the money back many weeks after delivery. www.paypalsucks.com

It's risky - and at best, PP might just freeze your account.

Heaven forbid, when there are multiple claims, you can get closed down temporarily...

I'm regarding people as often evil. Be careful!

BKKdreaming · February 15, 2015

Ok BKK I see they have closed the loophole where people used to load up the shipping cost to support a very low reserve. I am not surprised.

yes thee were $1 items with $1000 shipping to not pay commission

BUt ebay makes the seller look like a thief because the buyer does not know we have to pay the 10% commision on the shipping ,

so we look like we are padding the shipping , when ebay takes their cut in the dark !

not fair at all , but what we have to live with....

Thaijack2014 · February 15, 2015

This is a very interesting topic. I have been selling on Ebay for many years. Due to my job as a flight attendant I was able to bring many goods "customfree". I admit, I was not always legal, but I tried to buy within the range of what I was allowed to bring in duty free.

But now, living in Thailand, I experience the same problem, mainly the shipping costs. Besides that, I think it is also the problem that you will get a lot less customers, because of the distrust towards anything that comes directly from Thailand. Eventhough the harddrive in your pc might be built here, selling the same harddrive would be more difficult.

As far as Paypal and criminal customers concerned, I have had my fair part in experience. In the time I was living in Germany sellers as buyers tried to cheat. Thanks to my cool head and thanks to Paypal, I was only once a victim and that was when I "bought" a laptop out of Ebay.

My latest experience was with a New York seller. He had a phone for 29 Dollars (HTC EVO 3D), but you could make an offer. Didn't react on my offer, but when I sent an email, he would sell it for 25 Dollars, payed via Paypal, but outside of Ebay. In the end I didn't trust him and stopped the payment. Never in my life I have been so insulted by a seller. Not only he was illegally using Ebay's platform to sell (without paying commission to Ebay), but he also tried to make a profit by doubling the postage. He never answered mails from Paypal (eventhough he claimed he did) and refused to resell the item via Ebay. Now the result was, that he didn't get his money. Paypal agreed with my complaints.

It is over a month ago. If by some miracle my package will arrive (he claimed he sent it)... I might consider paying him. But so far he was a total jerk.

This is just one more experience to add to my list of bad experiences with sellers or buyers.

Doing this from Thailand... I doubt if it is worth your time and effort.

You really need someone who can assist you at the other side, but implies of course that you have to share your profit.

MrWorldwide · February 15, 2015

Thanks for the brilliant feedback guys. I remain mystified as to exactly how people are buying clothes etc at the markets and selling them online when most of the clothing I see here could easily have been made in China, but clothing is the last thing I'd be trying to sell given the aforementioned issues with supply, quality and customers providing the wrong measurements. This isnt something I could do for a living - I just want to sell the remaining audio gear and have some confidence that it will get to its intended destination.

In my case, I was able to deal with someone who understood exactly what they were buying and - fortunately - dealt with me in a very staightforward manner : no language barrier and zero confusion. He paid on Saturday morning in Maryland and had the package Thursday morning. DHL - IMO - did a pretty good job this time even if I still think the price is too high for such a small package, they met their 'express delivery' promise.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Forwarded for delivery

BALTIMORE AIRPORT, MD - USA