eBay Woes (somewhat of a rant)

[Amanita]

I've been known to message sellers and ask if they'll ship something to Canada, but I NEVER ask them to lie on customs forms or anything else sucky. And I always say I am willing to pay the extra shipping. So far, I've done pretty well.

Maybe it's the difference between asking nicely vs being a demanding D-Bag.

[RootedPhoenix]

If I'd originally said "US Shipping only", then had someone ask nicely (and the shipping/customs to their country wasn't too hairy), I just might decide that I wanted to send that thing overseas.

If they demanded it, they'd get nothing, even if I knew for a fact that shipping to their country was dead easy.

And I've always, always marked customs forms as what the stuff was (or whatever category best fit the item in question). I refuse to lie to customs people.

[NoRedCards]

When I've had people ask to ship to Canada or overseas, I always make the suggestion that they find someone in the US to purchase for them, and then they can ship it after that. I've gotten burned a couple of times on overseas, so I've had enough.....

[Bob The Random Boy Wonder]

I've been known to message sellers and ask if they'll ship something to Canada, but I NEVER ask them to lie on customs forms or anything else sucky.... Maybe it's the difference between asking nicely vs being a demanding D-Bag.

That's another request I've been getting, but most of those requests are from demanding d-bags who want me to fudge the customs forms by marking things as gifts, severely undervaluing what I'm selling (no, I will not say an item that retails for $400 is actually worth $5), and the whole nine yards.

All that has caused me to block buyers in locations where I don't ship. Not all international buyers are bad, but the ones who have proven their ignorance over and over have ended up ruining it for everyone on my end. I'm not the kind of guy to block anyone, but sometimes in the case of the jerk in the original post and the dishonest ones, you've gotta do what you've gotta do to avoid any future incidents.

[Amanita]

^And that ends up frustrating honest buyers like myself- I only know one person in the US who I could get something shipped to, and because of their work/training schedule, they are often not at home. It sucks that so many people act like bags of dicks and ruin it for us good folk.

[PepperElf]

That's another request I've been getting, but most of those requests are from demanding d-bags who want me to fudge the customs forms by marking things as gifts, severely undervaluing what I'm selling (no, I will not say an item that retails for $400 is actually worth $5), and the whole nine yards.

All that has caused me to block buyers in locations where I don't ship. Not all international buyers are bad, but the ones who have proven their ignorance over and over have ended up ruining it for everyone on my end. I'm not the kind of guy to block anyone, but sometimes in the case of the jerk in the original post and the dishonest ones, you've gotta do what you've gotta do to avoid any future incidents.

yeah that's just dumb cos if the inspectors find out it's YOU who'll pay the price - possibly in fines or jail time. so yeah fuck that.

[Cooper]

We have the customers that are:

Idiots: They ask us to combine shipping, and offer us more than what we were asking. We usually let them know they could have it for cheaper price.
OCD Sufferers: Ask for a difference of less than 5 cents. We accept, and chuckle a bit.
Reasonable people: Ask for a discount between 20% and 10%. We treat them reasonably.
Unreasonable people: Ask for a discount of at least 40%. We counter.
Insane people: Ask for a discount of at least 75%. We ignore.

[Sapphire Silk]

When I was selling gaming stuff on eBay, I sold pretty regularly to folks in Canada, the UK, and Germany and never had any issues with customs. The form's pretty simple IMHO.

No one ever asked me to mark it as a gift, so I'm curious: what benefit could that possibly have?

[Gizmo]

When I was selling gaming stuff on eBay, I sold pretty regularly to folks in Canada, the UK, and Germany and never had any issues with customs. The form's pretty simple IMHO.

No one ever asked me to mark it as a gift, so I'm curious: what benefit could that possibly have?

If its a gift then it has a higher allowed value before customs start to charge tax and duty on it.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

I know you're talking about paintball guns, but, every time I see this term, the first thing in my mind is a Marks-a-lot marker filled with day-glo ink x.x

Yeah, I know. But with how pissy people get when they hear "Gun" we tend to use the more politically correct term of "Marker".

After all, guns are designed to kill, a paintball marker simply "marks" a target with paint-filled balls.

That auction was pulled twice by eBay staff before I asked them why mt paintball gun was pulled when I could show them dozens of other Tippman Pro-Lite's that were listed.

Then I noticed that they were either listed as simply Tippman Pro-lite or as Paintball markers.

Nowadays they don't care and you can find them under gun OR marker...but several years ago they were really annoying about it.