AW: [meteorite-list] International shipping isssues

From: dean bessey <deanbessey_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Mar 31 18:00:21 2006
Message-ID: <20060331215721.6240.qmail_at_web31515.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

I guess I ship internationally more than most people
given my 25,000+ ebay feedback and since 80% of my
sales are in the USA anyway. Mostly sent from Canada
but more recently from a very poor service feature and
overpriced (Although very reliable) New Zealand post
office.
I have a lot of German customers and mail 4 or 5
packages a week to Germany and have not had any
losses. Interestingly though, New Zealands post office
will not insure packages to Germany so maybe I am just
lucky. I will say that Germany has the most
troublesome customs service in the world as far as I
am concerned and I have delays often with packages
held in German customs but usually its just a week or
two delay and only 1 in 10 packages maybe. Maybe 2 a
month is two weeks late but the rest arrive unusually
fast. Interestingly the economist (A business
newspaper from Britain that I am sure you all have
seen) regularly harps on the regulations and moronic
problems for business in Germany (And France to). They
like saying for example that When Germany and France
talks about "harmonizing" regulations throughout the
EU they really mean increase taxes, restrictions and
regulations everywhere else to match them. So its
probably not just us meteorite people complaining
about German customs.
But Germany has not been a problem for me postage wise
outside a few delays. Mail always get through an
dusually the post office is faster than other postal
systems. I have a lot of customers in Germany (More
than anywhere except the USA) and the postal service
dont worry me.
I have had several packages lost to Belgium and the
Italian post office is so bad that I occasionally
think about saying that I wont ship to Italy anymore.
I have had 3 out of 10 packages lost to Mexico and I
have never shipped a regular airmail package to
Romania that actually arrived. In addition mail to
Hawaii is regularly a month late. Otherwise I dont
have problems with the post office and regularly ship
mail to south america, South Africa and all over asia
including some third world asian countries like
Thailand and Indonesia. I also ship a couple packages
a month to Russia without ever having a problem
(Albiet that is usually an oversized or regular letter
as my Russian customers usually buy coins and stamps
which dont require customs declarations).
Overall most of my lost packages are to the USA but
with the majority sent there that would be natural I
guess an dsometimes I wonder if my customers are
honest. Interestingly canada has an awful postal
service to and they even have insurance that they
force you to buy but they most likely wont pay if
something dont show up and they once called up a
customer of mine and accused him of lying that he
never got a package that was sent with a tracking
number.
That being said, I have only had one lost package
since I came to New Zealand in september and I was
running less than one a month when I was in canada and
listing 4000 auctions a month on ebay.
So I cant really complain about the postal services of
anywhere that I send packages to except Italy, Mexico
and Romania.
Cheers
DEAN




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Received on Fri 31 Mar 2006 04:57:21 PM PST