Sending to Italy was a bad idea

[assortedcollectibles]

Sold a rather expensive, highly collectible doll to a buyer in Italy.. nothing fishy about the account going all the way back to 2005 with lots of activity.. only strangeness is private feedback.. which of course could be to hide the fact that the buyer opens INR cases against sellers since these precious buyers cant get negative feedback, but that is purely speculation.

So anyways.. package gets sent promptly using the only shipping option i have available here on the countryside which is through the national postal service.. everything goes ok, package leaves the country the 23rd of november, no problem..  then after that crickets.

At this point i start doing a little research and come to find that the Italian postal service is notoriously slow.. reading other reviews on trustpilot shows that many are having the same experience as me.. sent in november and still nothing, not even scanned in Italy.

So now i am paranoid that i will lose the $ and be at the mercy of the buyer who was rather quick to open an INR case against me and for sure knows how the Italian postal service (and ebay) operates. I am also sure that this loophole gets exploited extensively. Slow postal service = freebie.

Lesson learned.. i will not be shipping anything more to Italy which gets handled by their national postal service and i suggest nobody else does until ebay starts giving a **bleep** about their sellers and study local conditions and learn from them instead of running everything on auto-pilot. If you have to send to Italy then use DHL, UPS or similar.. unfortunately those type of services are not available for me where i live.

The possible loss of this deal will throw me deep into the hole and take quite some time to recover from.

I really hate the stress of having this hanging over me.. this comes right after another buyer opened a case against me for INR for another rather expensive item, but in that case it was because he had used the wrong adress.. thankfully i got the item returned to me and only lost the shipping cost, but now he wants to rebuy and to be honest i am not sure i want to. I have not had a single payout for over a month thanks to these holds on funds due to things that are outside of my control.. heck i don't think i can even recall the package from Italy to save myself from potential disaster.

[geesarasachidissa_0]

I didn't know about this scenario.

[7794heather]

Hi. First of all, BREATHE! Nothing has happened yet. You don't know what will happen, but you can't worry about something you have no control over. Has the item been scanned at all since it left your postal area?

This IS a lessoned learned, something we all, as sellers have to go through to decide if its worth it to send to one country or another. I used to send my items ALL around the world. Not anymore, not with how ebay has proven they do NOT have Sellers backs like they used to, and let the  buyers get away with anything their hearts desire.

Check tracking (if there was any), keep checking, and hopefully you will see some movement.

Again, don't stress over something you can't control. Perhaps the person in Italy knows about the notoriously slow post and is a patient person. 

Once buyer does contact you, then you can take the appropriate actions. Until then, just cross your fingers it gets there and buyer is happy. 

Merry Christmas!

[shado-x]

At this point i start doing a little research and come to find that the Italian postal service is notoriously slow.

Could have told you this 20 years ago when shipping laserdiscs to Italy (which was was much cheaper) but with the same, very slow service. ... and no tracking too.

[assortedcollectibles]

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@7794heather wrote:

Has the item been scanned at all since it left your postal area?

Merry Christmas!

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It got scanned several times on the way out of Norway before finally being cleared by customs and shipped out of the country. Merry Christmas to you and yours as well.

[assortedcollectibles]

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@shado-x wrote:

At this point i start doing a little research and come to find that the Italian postal service is notoriously slow.

Could have told you this 20 years ago when shipping laserdiscs to Italy (which was was much cheaper) but with the same, very slow service. ... and no tracking too.

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It is a shame that it is impossible to send cheaper items without tracking where the buyer is responsible for the potential loss for opting to do so.. as it is today it is the same as giving away free items which means that items in a certain price range are not viable to sell on ebay. I do however send items without tracking here in Norway and have never had any issues strangely enough.. only when the option to get the items free it seems that packages don't show up.

I have sent to Italy before, but that was tracked letters.. the type that starts with RR where you can use stamps for the postage and they always got scanned in a timely fashion.

[glasser]

I know for the US when using our postal service most countries update tracking and you can track to most final international (or at least the countries I sell to) destination. I believe Italy is one of the countries that does not update the tracking.

That said, a couple of suggestions. 1) try a site like ship24.com the consolidate tracking from like 1,000 carriers so maybe it shows up. 2) go to Italian Post Office site and try the tracking number there. It's possible it's in their system but not being shared back to whatever service eBay uses of your countries PO.

Don't know if either of these will work for you but ship24.com gave info eBay didn't have on a package and I was able to pick up a package in the Belgium PO once that wasn't appearing anywhere else.

All said have shipped to Italy and every package arrived. Shipped two packages-Germany, Austria--in the lay month both spent weeks in custom clearance in final destination country. Been super slow since Covid.  So patience is needed. If you can find the package and its moving. reach out to the buyer immediately and inform them you will personally check on the progress.

Communication has always worked for me. Recently, I saw that a package was attempted delivery in Germany and I messaged the buyer. He indicated that he was aware and the package was delivered after the weekend. He appreciated my concern and attention.

[beautifulbeauty2012]

Italian Post has been notorious for horrible service for decades. I guess we all had to learn our lesson to make that decision not to ship to Italy. Even Italians hate using it within the country.

[slippinjimmy]

Italy.....

Customs processing time (time from arrival to handover to Poste Italia for delivery)

Normal - 1 week

Normal during Covid - 2 weeks

Normal curing Covid in the midst of a major spike - 3 weeks

Normal during Covid in the midst of a major spike in the weeks before Christmas - ?????

My Italian buyers are generally very patient and are aware of the long delivery times. Probably because they tend to do a lot of buying from North America.

The next tracking will be a quick in/out with customs but it won't happen until they get to the pallet your package in on.

Was it sent First Class or Priority? The latter generally gets faster processing through Customs.

[assortedcollectibles]

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@glasser wrote:

Don't know if either of these will work for you but ship24.com gave info eBay didn't have on a package and I was able to pick up a package in the Belgium PO once that wasn't appearing anywhere else.

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I have already tried.. didn't show any more information unfortunately.

[assortedcollectibles]

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@beautifulbeauty2012 wrote:

Italian Post has been notorious for horrible service for decades. I guess we all had to learn our lesson to make that decision not to ship to Italy. Even Italians hate using it within the country.

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ebay for sure knows which is why i think it is reasonable to expect them to operate with different estimates on shipping time before buyers can open an INR case on a poor unsuspecting seller.

[assortedcollectibles]

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@slippinjimmy wrote:

Was it sent First Class or Priority? The latter generally gets faster processing through Customs.

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I'm not an American so i don't have such options unfortunately. We used to have an "express" option, but it seems they discarded it for private individuals some time ago.. the service would have cost 336 usd if available which is way above what anyone would be willing to pay anyway.

[slippinjimmy]

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@assortedcollectibles wrote:

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@slippinjimmy wrote:

Was it sent First Class or Priority? The latter generally gets faster processing through Customs.

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I'm not an American so i don't have such options unfortunately. We used to have an "express" option, but it seems they discarded it for private individuals some time ago.. the service would have cost 336 usd if available which is way above what anyone would be willing to pay anyway.

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OK got it, didn't check your location.

Rest of my post stands, Italy and Greece* are top of the list for the slowest customs processing in Europe.

* Greece in the pre-covid days was quite good.

[7606dennis]

I've made numerous sales to buyers in Italy in the past without a problem.  Of course, I block buyers with more than one bid retraction, ones that I feel leave too many negs that I deem undeserved and any buyer that sets their feedback to private.

[southern*sweet*tea]

Someone refresh my memory please, but doesn't Italy ban the importation of toys? If that's the case the doll  may never make it to the buyer.