Power Sellers Unite

greenbed · Joined: 10 Dec 2011 Posts: 7

I sell items on both Amazon and eBay. I notice that a few items that I sold on Amazon had shipping addresses to forwarding companies in Florida. I notice that the buyers' name were Hispanic names, and the billing countries range from Venezuela, to Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, etc. So, I researched the recipient addresses and found some of these forwarding companies' websites. And I discovered that these companies do have forwarding services where their customers would shop for items sold on not just eBay and Amazon, but Macy's, Best Buy, and any other major big players. And then, the forwarding companies (located in the US) would just simply forward the items to foreign addresses. I even found a forwarding company that teaches how to get US billing address on their credit card. (I got all these information using online translation service, so I could be wrong on some of these). I'm not sure whether they handle the freight themselves if they use a third party to do it.

My point is: I am thinking about bypassing this middle man, and just simply offer international shipping to these Latin America countries. I can then load up on shipping insurance. For taking on additional risks (missing items, wasted time on insurance claims, items not working, etc), I will charge higher price than the actual shipping cost + insurance. And I think I can do this because these customers pay the forwarding companies anyway in the first place in order to get my items.

This type of customers count about 25-30% of my overall sales, and when I do my math, items sold to them generally have 5% higher margin compared to my overall margin. This may mean that they are willing to pay for higher price than domestic buyers (or may just mean that they like to buy items that happen to have higher margin). So if I can get rid of the middle man and make more, then I'm all for it.

Question: does anyone here have good experience on international shipping especially to Latin America?

elpereles · Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Posts: 1478 Location: Puerto Rico

In eBay, it is very rare that for International I have people from Latin America, but the little few I had was everything okay.

For "forwarding companies", last month in eCrater I had my first buyer of this type.

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

i have hundreds of courier transaction every year and never had a problem

about 50% to latin america and 50% to the middle east

CS

greenbed · Joined: 10 Dec 2011 Posts: 7

What type of courier service do you use?

Does USPS allow you to get signature confirmation on Priority or Express shipping? And even if it does, do the other countries post office actually ask for the signature?

I had bad experience shipping dozens of items to UK. This was during Christmas 2008, and I used USPS Express Mail. Well, it turns out the UK post office had some sort of problem (strike I think) and shipment that was estimated to be 3-4 days ended up 2-3 weeks. I got plenty of upset customers. But I'm willing to give USPS a try again after Christmas.

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

the courier service is contracted by the buyer and they pay any associated costs

i only know they are using couriers becuase when i see an address used repeatedly i look it up and see who is there

CS

ecommerce-hosting-guru · Joined: 16 Dec 2011 Posts: 5

Anytime you ship overseas there is a much higher chance of fraud. Shipping insurance won't really help you there. If you are going to do this I would recommend that you start small and see how it goes first. Remember if an order is to good to be true it probably is, ie large orders etc.

Schistosomiasis · Joined: 19 Jan 2010 Posts: 192

I do a lot of international business, including a lot of Latin American countries. The "lost" rate is well under 1%, actually lower than in the U.S.
As with everything, if a loss would be a hardship, you should buy insurance that covers international sales. Personally I have found it a lot cheaper to self-insure, ie: take a rare loss instead of paying for insurance for each package.