If you purchased a $15 kit which was the size of a matchbox, do you think it's suitable to send it:
- In an envelope via airmail with no tracking, $3
You can't legally send an envelope with anything but documents in it.
A matchboxed size item
must be sent by parcel post, and the absolute minimum is $7.95 for up to 250g to New Zealand.
- or in a small box via seamail with no tracking, $7
- or in a small box via seamail with tracking, $11
- or in a small box via airmail with tracking, $16
Forget sea mail, it's a joke. Make sure any shopping cart you use totally exclused the sea mail option, otherwise everyone will use it because it cheaper. And then complain when it takes their package 3 months to get there.
I'm thinking the $3 option however payments would be through paypal and if the buyer reverses the payment I wouldn't have proof of delivery. Maybe increase the price of the kit by a few dollars to cover this?
The usual method is to just assume that you might lose a small percentage of packages, or get someone who claims they didn't receive when they did etc, ad you write those off and simply send another one.
I have lost precisely ONE package in 25 years of sending 10's of thousands of items via Australia Post, all
without tracking.
Send stuff overseas is already a PITA, so adding tracking and registered mail etc just makes it all the worse.
I've now got my international package packing and sending down to a fine art, and trust me, it saves a huge amount of time when you streamline the process and offer as
few postage options as possible.
In fact I offer just one, unregistered, untracked airmail. So I don't have to dick around with who paid for what option etc.
Australia post do now offer an tracking on international parcel post for an additional fee, but I won't be offering that until I get hooked into the clickandsend.com.au system, and have a shopping cart that supports it.
All this maybe doesn't matter much if you send a few dozens kits, but when you get into the hundreds or thousands, you'll be begging to do anyting possible to streamline it.
Dave.