Ebay china Question

[Kevin Crisp]

Well, it was stories like that which concerned me. But he has a NY shipping address so off it goes.

[richardman]

Anecdotal evidence do not mean much. I send and receive many packages at my $dayjob$. Facts:
1) You can create/purchase USPS online to China, but not Russia
2) you can create fedex/UPS labels to both China and Russia.
3) If you think China's mail system is bad, you have never mailed things to Brazil and Argentina, (and probably many others)

THIS is a package from northern California to Washington STATE. The label is computer printed. It should have never gone to Southern California in the first place, and definitely should not fly east to NJ. OTOH, we must ship at least a dozen packages a week using USPS and this happens just once or twice a year. Should I hold this up as "never ship using USPS" or "never ship to Washington state"?

You don't have to ship to anybody if you don't want, but I dislike people categorizing an entire country or the whole group of people based on anecdotal "evidence."

[goamules]

What you call "anecdotal" I call "personal experience." The OP wanted some of either. There isn't a handy statistics site for "Chance of Problems, Shipping from US to China." There is only our experiences.

[richardman]

What you call "anecdotal" I call "personal experience." The OP wanted some of either. There isn't a handy statistics site for "Chance of Problems, Shipping from US to China." There is only our experiences.

True, but I just hate personal experiences turn into a Mob mentality :-)

[Old-N-Feeble]

I'll bet I've sold at least two dozen fairly pricey items to Chinese buyers and only one was 'almost' a problem. The others all went very well. I've probably bought a couple dozen items from Chinese sellers and only one type of item was a bad experience... and this happened twice. I will never again buy Lithium-Ion batteries from any seller in China... or anywhere overseas for that matter.

[koh303]

postal service there is slow, and may be unreliable.

USPS may be slow and IS unreliable.

...I used to sell to China a lot. Once I established that 1:5 problem ratio, I quit.

If you have only 5 sales that is a difficult ratio to measure, but in any case, my experience is 1:5 ratio of problematic buyers in the US, who have strange standards of what they deem acceptable for a broken, sold for parts, as it thing...

[koh303]

Anecdotal evidence do not mean much. I send and receive many packages at my $dayjob$. Facts:
1) You can create/purchase USPS online to China, but not Russia
2) you can create fedex/UPS labels to both China and Russia.
3) If you think China's mail system is bad, you have never mailed things to Brazil and Argentina, (and probably many others)

THIS is a package from northern California to Washington STATE. The label is computer printed. It should have never gone to Southern California in the first place, and definitely should not fly east to NJ. OTOH, we must ship at least a dozen packages a week using USPS and this happens just once or twice a year. Should I hold this up as "never ship using USPS" or "never ship to Washington state"?

You don't have to ship to anybody if you don't want, but I dislike people categorizing an entire country or the whole group of people based on anecdotal "evidence."

+1 on all - however Shipping to Russia is now once again allowed through the online site, and Ebay for FCMI as well as Priority, but not express.
OTOH - DHL Express will only send B2B when sending to Russia due to customs issues.

With respect to China, and all we do not understand about other then white anglo saxon cultures - the USPS is not even close to the level of service of some countries, and China's PO is by far superior to MANY countries. I mentioned Italy, because i send there often, but as Richard notes - various SA countries, are even worse.

[W K Longcor]

Well, based on comments here ----- I will be selling some old classic lenses soon ---and I guess I will try selling to China. Thanks one and all for your input.

[Old-N-Feeble]

Here is my current list of eBay, "Excluded shipping locations" from my listings...

PO Box (any), Cape Verde Islands, Niger, United Arab Emirates, Burkina Faso, Middle East, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Yemen, Niue, Oman, Latvia, Russian Federation, Ghana, Lebanon, Iraq, Serbia, Turkmenistan, Armenia, Togo, Jordan, Lithuania, Turkey, Congo, Wallis and Futuna, Saudi Arabia, Moldova, Israel, Chad, Namibia, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Guernsey, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Belarus, Bahrain, Kuwait

I'm sure this is out-of-date because I haven't investigated problems for the last several months.

China is not YET on my exclusion list.

[goamules]

deleted...disregard.