Question - Selling (Sort of Drop Shipping) from Colombia to the US

[aahy33]

Hey All,

Hope someone can give me some direction here because I'm super novice on Ebay selling.

My wife's family is able to get items in Colombia which are collectable, and we've had success selling them on Ebay. We want to test selling them online and having them sent directly from Colombia. Can someone please tell me how or if it would be possible to: 

Use our account in the US to manage the listings but also

-Have her family ship directly from Colombia? 

-If her family can ship directly from Colombia, is there any way to use our US address as the return address? Or would we need to use their Colombian address as the return address?

Thanks all for direction and ideas

[joseh1445]

If I was in your shoes, this is what I will do.  I will ask the family to send you a bulk of items in 1 box, to your personal address.  After you get them, just list them for sale.  After you make a sale, you just ship.  This will be the easier method.  

Otherwise, having the family send the items directly from Colombia, will only bring a lot of headaches.  You are going to get frustrated, and the family will get frustrated if some thing goes wrong.

Good luck on your selling journey!

[bonjourami]

Drop shipping is never a good idea, whether from family or not. You understand that it is your account that will take the hits for damaged,or not as described, or item not received cases? You can use your address as the return address,since you are the seller, and any payments will come thru your account.Just make sure you put on the listings that the items are coming from Columbia, not the U.S.

[slippinjimmy]

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@aahy33 wrote:

Hey All,

Hope someone can give me some direction here because I'm super novice on Ebay selling.

My wife's family is able to get items in Colombia which are collectable, and we've had success selling them on Ebay. We want to test selling them online and having them sent directly from Colombia. Can someone please tell me how or if it would be possible to: 

Use our account in the US to manage the listings but also

-Have her family ship directly from Colombia? 

-If her family can ship directly from Colombia, is there any way to use our US address as the return address? Or would we need to use their Colombian address as the return address?

Thanks all for direction and ideas

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Yes you as a seller can be based in the US and have your items shipped directly from Columbia, to be eBay "legal" you would need to show in the listings that the items will be shipped from Columbia. There is a shipping type "from outside the USA" that you can select during listing.

A couple of caveats....

1 - Hope you wife's family are reliable and can handle the packing/shipping process properly.

2 - I don't know how the postal service is from Columbia to the US,  it's pretty poor going the other way in my limited experience. US buyers don't like to wait and they like to see tracking which might be costly from 4-72.

[a_c_green]

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@joseh1445 wrote:

If I was in your shoes, this is what I will do.  I will ask the family to send you a bulk of items in 1 box, to your personal address.  After you get them, just list them for sale.  After you make a sale, you just ship.  This will be the easier method. 

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Totally agree. It will be cheaper for you ( @aahy33 ) to arrange a bulk shipment to you from Colombia. You can then do your own listing(s) and do your own shipments domestically, within the U.S. This will also allow you to offer much faster and cheaper shipping to your buyers.

If your buyers had to pay international shipping charges to get their purchase all the way from Colombia, I suspect many would not want to purchase the items.

[maxine*j]

Dropshipping is fraught with many problems.  Mixing family life and business is fraught with even more.   I say, take Joseh1334's excellent advice.

And even though it's family, have a clear written agreement, whatever you decide to do.

I wish you all great success.

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[aahy33]

Thanks all for the great advice. It looks like if we proceed we are going to go the route of shipping one box in bulk from my wife's family to us. I hate to eat the shipping cost because from what I can see it would be at least $300, but it absolutely would save a lot of headaches.

[albertabrightalberta]

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@bonjourami wrote:

 You can use your address as the return address, since you are the seller, and any payments will come thru your account.Just make sure you put on the listings that the items are coming from Columbia, not the U.S.

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I don't think the OP can use a US return address since the shipping cost calculation is based on where it's coming from and where it's being shipped to.  Another issue would happen in the event that the delivery address was bad or if there were a problem and the package had to be RTS. It has Columbian postage but a US return address. 

I'm with @joseh1445's advice. Take full control of the inventory, pictures, description, shipping, responding to questions, etc. 

Another thing to consider is if potential buyers need additional pictures and/or measurements. Now you're taking the request, forwarding it to your relatives (in a different time zone), waiting for them to respond and forward the info to you (hoping they took good clear pictures of the correct areas), forwarding that to the buyer, hoping it answers the buyer's questions.......

The telephone tag will make you crazy. I've been there, done that and wouldn't recommend it! Just get everything into your possession and you can be in charge.