Hi all! This is a super simple question. I am not new to the world of selling, and sell regularly on Mercari (Japan) and used to sell on eBay and FB Marketplace a few years ago. I’m looking to sell on eBay again as an international seller (JP → WW). It looks like some things have changed but wanted to get some consensus before I start given I know a lot of people here use eBay.
For context, the last time I used eBay I had to pay to list and you could withdraw to PayPal only (in fact they were linked). It looks like now there’s just FV fees and I can link my bank account to make things much easier (I don’t own PayPal). I own a US Wise account so I’m hoping this is sufficient but will look later.
Some questions I’m hoping you can help with!
How frequently are sellers being scammed? Should I be sending everything as tracked mail?
Following on, do sellers usually pass on all shipping costs to the buyer, or just soak them up? Registered mail from JP is not cheap so honestly I’d rather just send by airmail without tracking (for cheaper cards) but happy to know what is common.
Any tips/suggestions etc would be great!
I’m mainly going to be listing some smaller stuff here. I’ll likely list larger items through Z&G/PWCC/smpratte.
There’s always a risk with selling on eBay, but to be honest scamming isn’t as common as people online might make it seem. Bad news usually gets reported far more than good news, after all.
If you have access to it, I would use the eBay Global Shipping Program as your shipping option, as it takes some of the hassle out of it. If items go missing or undelivered, you will not be out of pocket as eBay will front the costs back to the buyer. The downside with this is that the GSP is expensive for the buyer, so this may put them off the cheaper items.
I’ve sold quite a lot of cheap single ungraded cards through non-tracked cheap shipping within the UK and only had 1 “item not received” claim in the last year. You can usually claim the value back through the postal company though as long as you retain proof of postage.
Recently a book collection arrived damaged but that’s covered under their guarantee as I got it to the UK warehouse intact before it went to the USA. It was a 3k sale so it would have been a pain to sort by myself.
And before that a piece of ccg art went missing, ebay refunded the buyer at their expense, it turned up very late. Win/win for both of us.
Scams are very slim. Especially with all their authenticated items services. The only issues come from the occasional lost mail. That can happen anywhere and is not ebays fault. It sucks when it happens though