EXCLUDED SHIPPING LOCATIONS

[icando46]

I have some items that I sell that I don't ship to US Protectorates like Puerto Rico, etc due to the weight of the merchandise. 

I just listed some yesterday, and low and behold, a buyer from Puerto Rico purchased it. I thought perhaps I had failed to list Puerto Rico as an exclusion, but I had. He was still able to purchase it. 

I kind of thought that checking that box would prevent people from that area from even being able to make the purchase. Is it supposed to work that way, or can they try and buy it anyway? Was it a glitch?

By the way, I just cancelled under the reason of "something wrong with buyer's address". 

[soh.maryl]

A couple of  questions for you:

Was the Puerto Rican buyer having his purchase shipped to a freight forwarder in the US?

And you don't ship to Puerto Rico because of the "weight of the merchandise"? Isn't the buyer paying the shipping cost?  

[hurryagain]

@icando46 

Was the item in question: 

Sunnen External Honing Stone Set FD48AA73 FD48-AA73 NEW OLD STOCK NOS

If this is the listing that you are talking about, I looked at the exclusion areas that you listed and unfortunately, Puerto Rico is not one of them.

Neither is Alaska or Hawaii.

[casl-patr]

It's welding rod, and it's sold at a set price with free shipping to be competitive. 

I do sell certain items to Puerto Rico because i can put the flat rate USPS box as it's no more expensive to Puerto Rico with USPS flat rate than it is with anything else. 

However, these packages will not fit in a flat rate box, so I cannot ship them competitively to Puerto Rico, so I exclude that option. 

No, not to a freight forwarder, the address was in Puerto Rico. 

[nobody*s_perfect]

---

@hurryagain wrote:

@icando46 

Was the item in question: 

Sunnen External Honing Stone Set FD48AA73 FD48-AA73 NEW OLD STOCK NOS ... .

---

That item was sold on April 25, and the OP mentioned that the sale in question was an item that he had listed yesterday. More likely it's this listing, which was sold yesterday and which DOES exclude the US protectorates:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/394600594267?hash=item5be0073b5b:g:Ar4AAOSw2LRkT~5J

[nobody*s_perfect]

How big is the extra cost increment to ship to PR versus to, say, Florida? I know you are in that magical Midwest area where the contiguous states are all Zone 7 or closer, indeed your ZIP Code seems to even have hardly any in Zone 7, but is the incremental cost between Zone 6 and Zone 8 (i.e., PR) that big? Also, that listing offered economy shipping, not Priority.

I'm sorry I have no idea why your PR exclusion didn't work.

[icando46]

I could have actually used USPS Parcel Select to Puerto Rico at close to 15.00 shipping cost, compared to 12.50 to Florida. That certainly doesn't sound like much, but it's a razor thin margin. It's 28.95 for the product with free shipping, subtract out cost of goods sold, ebay's fees and even shipping to Florida is iffy, but I do it because a sale here in the midwest will even that cost out. 

However, the cheapest service I could use to Puerto Rico doesn't even have any insurance on it, and I have found Puerto Rico to be a higher risk area to ship to in terms of fraud, lost packages, etc.  It's just the nature of shipping to areas that are more impoverished. Don't get me wrong, I still ship to Puerto Rico on certain items, but not this particular one just due to the margins.