How can you prevent buyers registered in another country but have a US ship to address from bidding

[mike_bibby]

In my auctions I do not allow International shipping but have recently noticed that buyers who are registered in another country but use a US ship to address can still buy your item. You do not find out until the sale is complete and you look at your payout details and this is what you see:

International Fee   1.65%    -$0.16

Charged because the buyer’s registered address is in Australia.

We need a new setting where you can block these buyers from bidding on your items if you wish to.

[dbfolks166mt]

     I suspect eBay really does not care about sellers risk as long as they get their fees. 

[dbfolks166mt]

     If eBay wishes to modify it's policy to provide a seller protection against potential scamming through the use of freight forwarders or to block international buyers using freight forwarders from bidding on or purchasing items that aligns with the sellers postings then this would become a mute point. Until that time sellers have to do what they can to protect themselves. 

[dbfolks166mt]

     It should amuse you no more than it amuses me that the eBay cheerleaders, or those who have never been scammed, are the first to lambast those sellers that choose to take steps to protect themselves in the absence of eBay's willingness to do so. 

[rosachs]

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@eleanor*rigby wrote:

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@duffy4444 wrote:

...Then you can cancel the order like dbfolks166mt states and refund the buyer, IF you are concerned about the potential loss of your item and your money - or if you simply do not want the surprise of eBay charging you an additional percentage as an "international fee".

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That information is not correct. Transactions cannot be cancelled based on the buyer's address when said buyer is using a freight forwarder. 

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How do you handle this situation when the international buyer is purchasing something (cosmetics are big on this) that cannot be sold to an international buyer?  Who's at fault?  The buyer for going around the No International Sales restriction, the seller for cancelling the order to avoid a VeRO defect, or eBay for creating the situation in the first place?

-Bob.

[yuzuha]

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@slippinjimmy wrote:

You didn't mention tourist visitors, that is about 80 MILLION visitors in a non-covid normal year. One of the prime objectives of tourists is shopping.

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Yep, that too. Excellent point.

[femmefan1946]

I have four countries I will not ship to, mostly because they are war zones or have abysmal postal systems or both.

I understand this means that if someone from one of those countries used a forwarder, I could cancel as "Problem with Address".

But in actuality, how often is a Problem with Address cancellation questioned by eBay?

An Out of Stock is an automatic Defect.

So which do you choose?

[katzrul15]

Neither.  We get an order, we ship.

Never know there is an issue until it is too late.  Would prefer there was a way to block it all together.

[farmalljr]

At one point in time, eBay would protect sellers on some small level, when you shipped to a FF. If it was delivered to the forwarder, the buyer could not claim INR. Now even THAT protection has evaporated. 

Good suggestions have been given here, how to handle the problem with an international sale when a seller does NOT want to mess with international sales.

The business BELONGS to each of us. This is MY inventory, and MY money at risk. IF I set a broad term that I DON'T want to sell internationally, there is no reason I should be FORCED to. I, the seller, am taking 100% of the risk. I am not here to "give away" my inventory. I am not here to pay eBay an extra $20 to give my stuff away FOR me.  I think some here have forgotten that. 

[gmanuser]

What is the concern here? Shipping to a freight forwarder is great. The customer is never going to return the item so it helps filter out scam buyers. If they report a problem with the item you can simply ask for them to return it, they won't, and you'll win any appeal. 

[free.deal]

Freight forwarders have caused me so much headache recently, especially this year.  I have experienced quite a few cases which took me a long fight to get my money back, including a case that the buyer provided fake police report to eBay so I automatically lost the case without a chance to appeal successfully. In the past, once I pointed out the buyer's address is FF address, the buyer lost the MBG and I won the case automatically. 

In addition, eBay looks not so stick with seller protection any more. I lost 2 cases of "payment dispute" over $750 this year automatically even if I submitted proof of signature delivery. I had to appeal to provide the proof of delivery again to get my money back (and eBay CS always say we help you appeal, but we can't guarantee to get your money back...). Such situations never happened in the past. Just imagine if I forget to appeal then my money is gone forever...

Unless seller's protection gets improved, I wouldn't consider to ship to FF address with high value items.

[dbfolks166mt]

     They don't have to return it and they don't have to file a claim through eBay they can simply file a chargeback with their CC company or bank claiming INR or SNAD and there is no way the seller can prove delivery even if they were asked to do so, which in reading some of the posts they never are. The CC company simply refunds the buyer, eBay refuses to get involved other than giving your money back to the CC company and the buyer has the item and his/her money back. Case closed. 

     This is starting to become a trend lately with some of the postings I am seeing on this board and it's not only the international buyers filing the chargebacks. Read the posting I put up today about "Disturbing Trend"

[eleanor*rigby]

Why have you replied to me four times in a row? In some circles, that's called "totem posting!" LOL!

[yuzuha]

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@dbfolks166mt wrote:

     They don't have to return it and they don't have to file a claim through eBay they can simply file a chargeback with their CC company or bank claiming INR or SNAD and there is no way the seller can prove delivery even if they were asked to do so

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Yes they can. They only need to prove delivery to the address on the transaction.

[eleanor*rigby]

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@rosachs wrote:

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@eleanor*rigby wrote:

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@duffy4444 wrote:

...Then you can cancel the order like dbfolks166mt states and refund the buyer, IF you are concerned about the potential loss of your item and your money - or if you simply do not want the surprise of eBay charging you an additional percentage as an "international fee".

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That information is not correct. Transactions cannot be cancelled based on the buyer's address when said buyer is using a freight forwarder. 

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How do you handle this situation when the international buyer is purchasing something (cosmetics are big on this) that cannot be sold to an international buyer?  Who's at fault?  The buyer for going around the No International Sales restriction, the seller for cancelling the order to avoid a VeRO defect, or eBay for creating the situation in the first place?

-Bob.

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Neither the OP's thread nor any other posts have suggested anything even close to cancelling based on items not being able to be purchased in other countries.

No one, myself included, has suggested that a transaction could not be cancelled if the item is prohibited by law from being sold to or shipped to another country. That would certainly be valid reason for cancelling based on a buyer's address, but that is not what's being discussed in this thread or in any of my posts, and I resent the implication that I have said anything of the sort.

The original post and the ensuing discussion surrounds whether cancelling a transaction based solely on the buyer using a freight forwarder as a ship-to address. Kindly keep to the topic of the thread without throwing out a straw man argument and implying I've said something I haven't.

[rosachs]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

I have four countries I will not ship to, mostly because they are war zones or have abysmal postal systems or both.

I understand this means that if someone from one of those countries used a forwarder, I could cancel as "Problem with Address".

But in actuality, how often is a Problem with Address cancellation questioned by eBay?

An Out of Stock is an automatic Defect.

So which do you choose?

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I have a definite problem with orders addressed to a freight forwarder, so that would be a valid cancellation reason for me.  I'm not out of stock, and the buyer didn't request it (they just used a work-around to get-around my domestic-only shipping restriction) - so Problem With Address is the only one that makes sense.

eBay does offer protections against some claims if the product is shipped to a freight forwarder... but you have to prove that it IS a freight forwarder before they will apply the rules.  Cuz I guess they can't tell that they buyer is located outside of the US and consistently has their shipments delivered to a US address...meaning they would have to be reshipped by someone, and that's the very definition of Freight Forwarding.

But, after all, this -is- eBay.

-Bob.