Had a buyer with an address to a forward shipping company.
I have my sales set to US only specifically to avoid potential scams.
Are there any extra precautions I can/need to take to protect myself?
If anything you have less to worry about because all eBay should care about is if your item makes it to the listed address. By the time the buyer actually receives the item from the forwarder, they’ll be out of the return window (assuming you don’t have returns allowed).
Also for what it’s worth, using eBay’s International Shipping program is usually pretty good and covers you as a seller very well. They basically just care about you successfully getting it to their shipping center. Beyond that, they usually cover any issues with it getting from them to the international buyer - whether they’re legitimate issues or scams.
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Agreed with @jonbo. If you are based in the U.S., shipping with eBay’s International Shipping program is no different than local shipping. It’s very easy and widens your buyer pool - no reason not to use it.
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What @jonbo said, you’re probably less likely to have problems with these buyers than regular buyers.
In the event that there is an issue do make sure you ask the buyer to contact the forwarding company first though, as they could be to blame for the damages after repacking, either way I assume the return label would be a US one and they can’t do anything with that.
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Forwarders and ebay global shipping are my favorite buyers. Pretty much once you ship an item, the problem is out of your hands the majority of the time.
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Echoing what’s been said above. Your main concern in this scenario is that it arrives to the forwarder/eBay Int Shipping. After that it’s not your issue if there’s trouble in-between them and the recipient. I live in the UK and using eBay Global Shipping programme is an absolute game changer.
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Thanks everyone.
Still curious how they can get away with it.
Their registered address is international, so I got charged an extra 1.5% for that, even though my listing are set to US only.
That’s a scam by ebay in and of itself.
The setting you’re changing when you make a listing are where you’re willing to ship a package. They’re checking out with a shipping address that meets the criteria you set. I’m pretty sure that’s all eBay cares about in that case, so it won’t stop them from buying your item regardless of where the buyer is actually from.
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Hey
Listen, on the one hand, I’m from Israel, my only way to get cards or anything related to Pokemon from eBay is only through this kind of address ( i use SMC)
There is simply no other option.
I have been doing this for over 12 years
On the other hand, as a seller I did get screwed once with someone from Germany with a service similar to what I use in the US
It can definitely be suspicious and most of the times it is better to avoid, but in most cases the profile of the buyer, and a short conversation with him will be able to reveal quite a few more suspicious signs if there are any
no, this is actually better as you have more protections if the buyer is using a forwarder