Can You Curtail Sales From a Single Country?

I know there is a way to curtail sales to all foreign countries but is there a way to curtail sales to a single country. Just lately my last 2 shipments to India (different addresses) never reached their destinations and I was forced to issue refunds after 6 weeks or so. Thank you.

Comments

  • 11 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • Yes, but it's about how you set up your shipping.
    It's a little complicated here, because you have to set up shipping rates for the countries you do want to ship to, as oppose to just excluding countries you don't want to ship to. So most either just ship "Domestically" or ship "Everywhere Else". It's that one that is the tricky one. Instead of "Everywhere else" you have to set up shipping for the countries you will ship to, and a rate one-by-one.

    The second option (and this is what we switched to) is just watch where the shipping addresses are, and if we get a buyer from a country we can't/won't deal with, we just cancel the order. It's a little more complicated, and runs the risk of annoying people, but if it's a high-value, high-risk item, we'd rather take that option.
  • I sold on Sebastian Delcampe's site for about 1 year & had numerous orders from India.. Every one of them, upon purchase would message me with a U.S. shipping address. A friend or family member living here in America. Seems all were aware that a family letter had far less odds of being stolen from the Post.. Usualy about 10 weeks after I would get a nice Feedback comment.
  • You can set up the rates by location group, you don't have to do it one by one. You can set them up by Asia, the Pacific, SA et al. You have to go under postage set up first. Then set up the location groups. Enter the name of the group and then click on the choose locations and it will add those countries that you will ship under that group. You will have to set up the postage charges under the default listing settings and you have to use the same group names. (Once you do that if ever want to add or remove a country at that point it's really easy to do. If you choose to remove other countries just go under the postage set up page, and go down to your groups and than click on the choose locations and you can just click the little x in the upper right hand corner of the country box and it will remove it from the list.) You just have to make sure you update your listings after you do it.

    If you go the other route of refunding the customer because you won't ship it it will take you longer in the long run to deal with the emails and handling the refunds than taking the 15 - 20 minutes to set it up right in the first place.
  • Michael, that's kind of true... but it's not "Retroactive". You have to update all of your current listings, one by one. Unless you bulk download them and update, and then reupload, but man, that just introduces all kinds of issues. We spent months fixing a "shipping rate" problem that was created by just changing our store type... So I'm leery of anything that mucks with these, because for a while, we didn't realize it, but we weren't visible to almost anyone. (Visibility of listings is tied directly to "where you ship" so really, be VERY careful mucking with these settings.
  • Scott,

    .No you don't have to update them one by one. That's one of the things the bulk edit is for. If you want to change the shipping on all your listings in bulk after you have the rest set up, Go under members area, click listings, than on that page click the box that says all on the left hand side. Go down to the bottom of the page, click bulk edit, then go down to shipping and then click on the link for postage. Make the changes you need to there first. After your done with that click on the orange box that says update.
  • Yeah, have used it, just warning that it is messier than expected.
    Especially for things like this. If you have lots of shipping options, this field is rather complicated.
  • I never sold to India but did buy from India a few times. I always received the material but you have to give it about ten
    weeks. Shipping to some countries, one should refrain from using attractives stamps. No explanation needed.
    Francois
    https://www.hipstamp.com/store/stampboutique
    .
  • The whole Covid fiasco is wreaking havoc even within the lower 48. I think everyone needs to understand shipping "normality" is totally unpredictable at this point, regardless of the origin and destination.
  • Forgive me, I'm just a customer these days, but I think that PayPal's returns structure is stuck in a reality that left us in 2019. Refunds are allowed far too soon. And six weeks for anything to India is stupidly unrealistic, even in a good year. When I was a hobby dealer I sent several model kits to India back in the 20-aughts and they all took 8 weeks or more.
  • Thank all of you for the valuable information. I'll mull over all these options. Thanks again!!
  • David,

    One other thing that has not mentioned on this. If you do as Scott does and issue a refund, Paypal will not refund you the fees you paid to them. They stopped refunding the fees some time last year if I remember correctly.
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