why no overseas shipping?

[ras1983]

why is it that most sellers in the states won't ship their second hand gear overseas?(mainly australia). gear is literally half the price than it is here, sometimes less. you americans can charge double what your street price is and it would STILL be about 25% cheaper for us aussies.

so, i ask you brethren, why no overseas shipping?

[David Wilson]

because, for me, to use the USPS (the most affordable shipping mechanism for overseas) is a major pain in the tuchus. The one near me doesn't open until 9am during the week, and is only open for four hours on a weekend so it's always a zoo. With domestic shipping, I ship Fedex/ups and drop off at any location.

Even with FedEx / UPS, there's filling out customs forms and the occassional instance of getting slapped with brokers fees that the recipient decided they didn't want to pay - while it is the receivers responsibility to pay, the seller is liable for it in the event of non payment. That's happened to me enough times that I just won't do it anymore.

[Gard]

Originally Posted by ras1983

why is it that most sellers in the states won't ship their second hand gear overseas?(mainly australia). gear is literally half the price than it is here, sometimes less. you americans can charge double what your street price is and it would STILL be about 25% cheaper for us aussies.

so, i ask you brethren, why no overseas shipping?

I know from direct experience that Bass Central ships to Australia (I worked there for 4+ years). I believe that several other online retailers do as well (Bass Northwest, Bunny Bass are two I'm relatively confident about).

Also, while we (at Bass Central) would ship small items USPS, we refused to do so with larger, more expensive items. The problem is that once the item leaves the US Postal service, there is no guarantee of tracking! We actually had a Lakland bass going to Italy, that the customer INSISTED on our using USPS, disappear. Trust UPS or FedEx for medium-sized stuff (bass guitars), and for larger heavier items we had wonderful luck with Burlington Air Express (www.baxglobal.com).

Good luck!

[Passinwind]

Originally Posted by ras1983

so, i ask you brethren, why no overseas shipping?

I used to work at FedEx as a courier. I found the necessary Shipper's Export Declaration paperwork for Australia to be nearly incomprehensible to the average person attempting to ship to Oz. I spent a lot of time doing it for customers as a favor, but I worked a rural route where I could make the time to do that sort of thing. In many cases, you're on your own.

In training, we spent at least one whole day learning export paperwork. Lots of FedEx people didn't actually learn to do it correctly even so, and the average Joe has much worse odds. I think my wife still has to audit international shipments that go through her station, because having to deal with customers who get their shipments returned for bad paperwork is not a happy scene.