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Extortionate overseas shipping


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It's a mess.

To send a standard American car model kit to England costs exactly $7.60 postage from Washington DC as verified by my sister, who lives there.
Show me one American eBay seller, who doesn't charge at least twice that much. Crooks. The ugly lot of them.

Weirdly, getting stuff sent from France to England is more expensive, than getting stuff sent from America.
 

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Yes I've had this problem for decades. Due to the huge decline in model shops in the UK, I frequently look at buying models either through ebay.com (USA) or from model shops in the USA.  I recently bought a kit from ebay USA at the price of $9.99 (£8.24) and was charged $27.99 (£23.08) shipping which took three weeks to arrive. I was then charged a further £8 Post Office handling and £15 import duty by Customs. The total cost £46.08 for a kit worth £8.24.  OR for a kit worth £8.24 shipping of £23.08. As you can tell I don't buy too many kits from the USA.

My son lives in Canada, so I buy kits and  resin accesories from shops/suppliers in the USA have them send them to him (2 days) $5 shipping and he sends them to me taking 7 days at the cost of $7.99 total cost $12.99 and 9 days in transit.

But my major problem is seeing a rare kit and the supplier refusing to send it out of the USA although I pay by Paypal immediately to any supplier.

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Postage costs out of America to New Zealand seem to have really taken a jump in recent years.

Many retailers and Ebay sellers appear to use an automatic shipping calculator which gives preposterous costs.

I've found  Tower Hobbies to be the most reliable these days. They send out regular discount coupons and their shipping costs are not unreasonable.

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The shipping can be quite steep sometimes, I don't know why.
But the thing that annoy me the most is the "Global Shipping Program" ebay started with a while back, if you buy a thing for lets say $5.00 on ebay the shipping cost are 6 to 8 times the value of the item at around $30.00-$40.00 with this #¤&¤ thing, the parcel allways goes by the more expensive Priority Mail and all import charges are included...even tho' I usually don't have to pay any import charges for an item for that low price...pretty annoying if you ask me.
If you send the same thing with USPS First Class Mail International the shipping is about half or even less...and most of the things passes customs without any charge.

Edited by Force
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It's a mess.

To send a standard American car model kit to England costs exactly $7.60 postage from Washington DC as verified by my sister, who lives there.
Show me one American eBay seller, who doesn't charge at least twice that much. Crooks. The ugly lot of them.

Weirdly, getting stuff sent from France to England is more expensive, than getting stuff sent from America.
 

This is very true ! 

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Don't always blame the sellers.  Sometimes eBay has a mind of it's own.

I read a blog about the eBay sellers community.  Many of them are upset because the eBay shipping calculator is faulty. Notice that some sellers have disclaimers in their auctions, asking you to message them for a postage quote.  

The eBay Global Shipping Program - Sellers have remarked that they opted out of this program, preferring to serve their own customers.  Later they notice that eBay as put them back into the program, and it's on their auctions.  They often don't notice until someone international buys something!  One of the issues with this program is that the US based seller has to mail the package to the eBay shipping center, and they send it onward from there.  Already at that point you've paid to mail it twice!  

Recently on a stamp collecting board there was an issue with a Canadian who bought a stamp from a US dealer. The dealer hadn't noticed that they were in the Global Shipping Program. He was willing to mail the stamp directly.  eBay wanted close to $30 to forward a friggin postage stamp!  Upon both buyer and seller approaching eBay to honor the transaction, but not use the program, eBay wouldn't allow it.  Their only option was to cancel the transaction totally.

 

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This is why myself and many of my modelling friends do not buy very much from the U.S.A. any more . I was quoted $74.00 U.S. to send a 1/43 Starter kit to me in Australia , what a rip off . You can usually buy stuff from Japan or England ( sometimes with free shipping ) with a lot less postage costs .

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I am confused by some of the comments.......last November and December I sold 17 kits that I felt I would never get around to building out of my stash on Ebay.  When I wrote up the kits for auction and/or buy it now the Ebay program gave me an opt out box to NOT use their shipping service, but handle the shipping myself on all listings.  I shipped pretty much all over the US, I kit to Greece and I kit to Germany.  I just used USPS Priority Mail which was reasonable in cost and delivery time.  In the feedback I received a few of the buyers even remarked about the reasonable shipping costs.  I have a personal account with USPS but Ebay doesn't know that.

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