USA sellers and shipping fees

[ttp]

Don't have a problem with declared values (if you read the other "USA seller" thread) but I've noticed a tendency for high shipping costs from US to overseas buyers, eg. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fluke-8520A-Digital-Multimeter-ID-23913-/160974636871?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item257ad60747

$45 item comes up with $864.92 shipping fee (or more if you want express). Suddenly a bargaing becomes very expensive. Dealing with some (Doug/voltagestandards.com) it looks like it can be done for very reasonable price. I don't live in US and wonder what the reason is: Is postage so expensive? Are sellers not interested/scared of overseas buyers? Is overseas posting system so hard and timeconsuming for the seller? Or you just like to keep bargains to yourself?

[marshallh]

Shows as $76 shipping for my location.

He likely doesnt give a flying fook about shipping it overseas, it maybe didn't cross his mind even. He could be shipping through a reshipper or something.

I know I could ship that domestic with UPS for under $50.

Simple, don't buy from dumbass sellers on ebay.

[EEVblog]

They are using couriers, and they are very expensive unless you have some sort of corporate account rate with them.
Heavy stuff is very expensive, that meter is maybe 11-12kg packed.
Not all sellers will offer a bottom rate USPS option, and I don't really blame them. It would be much simpler and safer for them to use their courier service.
Get Doug to ship you something that weights 10-15kg, and you'll be complaining about him too!

Dave.

[GeoffS]

If you're already using a courier, there's no incentive to also use a postal service.
If you ship a lot of parcels, then a courier makes sense. For an account customer, all the paperwork is handled by the courier and they pickup, something not all postal services do.
For ground shipping in the USA (for example) it's also quicker and cheaper than USPS (in most cases)

[EEVblog]

Is overseas posting system so hard and timeconsuming for the seller?

Yes, that's why I gave up selling my uCurrent's internationally myself.
It's ok when you get a bulk of orders, like say 10-20 units, that way you can amortise your time of walking/driving to the post office, standing in line, processing, and doing the customer paperwork etc over many units.
But if you sell dribs and drabs, like say one unit this week, and it sells for like $50, it's hard to justify doing all that work just and the trip for that one unit that week.
If you value your time, then it might realistically take 30min to even an hour to do all that for just one unit. Even if you make $30 on that unit, you've just spent your time working for $30 to $60 an hour, just for the packing and postage, not factoring in the other work to produce it, so maybe half to $15-$30/hr.

Dave.

[gregariz]

Everything about shipping is a pain. If your item has any kind of weight or size to it and won't fit into a USPS flat rate box you will pay a lot for it. Check the pricing out for yourself

http://ircalc.usps.com/?country=10013


Dave: Would it be better to let Seeed do the items instead of doing it yourself in Oz? Or do they take a huge cut out of it?

[Wuerstchenhund]

Shipping from the US to Europe seems quite expensive, often much more than the other way around.

But what I find worse is sellers which in addition to the shipping costs also add a "handling fee" on top of the purchase price. Things like that should be priced into an item's base price.

[JoeyP]

But what I find worse is sellers which in addition to the shipping costs also add a "handling fee" on top of the purchase price. Things like that should be priced into an item's base price.

I agree! If you're in the business of selling things then "handling" is what you do. I find such fees insulting, and when possible I avoid doing business with people who charge them.

[EEVblog]

Dave: Would it be better to let Seeed do the items instead of doing it yourself in Oz? Or do they take a huge cut out of it?

IIRC you only get 10% or so, chicken feed unless you are talking huge numbers. And then they can't test them like I can, and there is no personal attachment any more. You might as well open drop shipping website and sit back and take a small cut. Companies like Dangerous Prototypes work like this, they don't handle or ship anything themselves, ad as a result only get a small cut. But if you sell enough and produce enough new stuff, it's worthwhile.
There is some satisfaction (for some) in doing it all yourself knowing you personally handle each unit, and some buyers like that as well, it's part of the experience.
From the profit side, it's bad enough having resellers like Adafruit et.al, as they often make more money on each unit than the manufacturer (i.e me or you).
As is almost always the case, by far the most profitable business to be in is retail. But of course that comes with it's own set of problems.
You can't have the best of all worlds, i.e. high profits and no hassle.

Dave.

[Thor-Arne]

It's 601.06USD shipping to Norway...... 

[bitwelder]

It is not even about weight: same seller has a "Agilent HP 10498A 8-Channel 6" Probe Lead Set" (weight 0.02 kg) shipped to Europe via UPS at $150.22 

[Thor-Arne]

Ridiculous, I'm getting packages from China with DHL-Express at about $30 shipping cost.

[gregariz]

Ridiculous, I'm getting packages from China with DHL-Express at about $30 shipping cost.

My conspiracy theory is that when we ship with DHL, UPS, FEDEX in europe or the US... what we are actually doing is subsidizing DHL's, UPS's or FEDEX's China operations. This is because if DHL, UPS or FEDEX charged full rates in China they would not be able to compete.

If you go to China post or Hong Kong post and try to ship a 1Kg parcel to the US

http://app1.hongkongpost.com/calc/eng/overseas/step2.php

I get that it will cost me HK$37.4 which if we divide by about 8 into US$ gives US$4.68

I can't ship anything across town in the US except a letter for that... let alone put it on a plane and send it half way around the world.

Its just a competitiveness question and a good example of why someone like Seeed could only do what they do from China. Its a good advertisement for everyone basing their hobby electronics/gadget/trinket business in HongKong.

[M0BSW]

 I've always found buying from the UK , Hong Kong/Japan & India is easy, everywhere else is a  pain in the arse

[Thor-Arne]

I'm not sure that Europe is included in any conspiracy to make shipping from China less expensive.
When I order from RS (ships from Norway or UK) it's only 110 NOK (approx USD20) with DHL-Express. Orders above 500 NOK is free shipping.