I would like to know how to price a baby for sale when you haven’t been making dolls long and still have some skills to learn. I’m not sure how to do this. Also, does anyone use Ebay Gobal shipping? If so, are there many problems with this?
When I started and sold the first couple of dolls just to re-coup some of my money, I would start them at $20 and got $50 for one and $80 for the other. After that I would ad what the baby cost me and start with that.
The global shipping program is a broker; the buyer pays what ever normal shipping cost, plus the import duty they would normally pay, plus a broker fee. The broker fee varies, I think it goes on value of the item. I do not buy anything shipped that way. I live in Australia and we do not have to pay import duty on anything under about $1000, so i am not happy to pay broker $15 - $20 to tell me that. Not to mention that the item first goes to their sorting facility to be asses, which take several days. Most people who understand what is happening resent having to pay the brokerage fee and avoid sellers who use it. The GSP is somehow connected to eBay, and they quite aggressively push it on sellers = you cannot offer it as well as offering other options, I believe. Another problem for sellers is that the moment the item is delivered to the GSP any insurance your buyer paid for becomes void. And the GSP do not accept any responsibility for damage or loss. I have recently had a parcel delivered with them, it was a hard to find kit, and they sent it with FEDEX, who are very inconvenient for me, should I not be here when they try to deliver it. I sat at home for several days, while the tracking showed the item is with the delivery driver. Couple of days after it finally arrived, the tracking showed as delivered 2 days before it actually came here! I am glad that the info does appear with some time lag or I would have had heart attack seeing it marked as delivered and not having this very precious and expensive parcel here.
My first ecounter with GSP was when I wanted 5 cheap small light items from a seller, who had most of her items listed with ordinary postage for $15 but one that I also wanted was with GSP with postage $35!!!. I wanted 5 of them, I asked her if she combined and send them all without the GSP. She told me she will be able to send them all in one parcel for the $15. So i bought all 5. Immediately the GSP sent me an invoice for all 5! And the shipping cost was “reduced” to $75. i do not remember what exactly the seller had to do but it took several days to sort out. They basically charged brokerage fee per each pair of booties!
Thank you so much for the info. You really made GSP understandable for me.
Over the past week I have been looking at finished reborns from USA, and the postage with GSP to Australia for dolls is not coming to much higher than with express option; I wonder if it is because most sellers will only post their dolls by international express, which is costly, while the GSP use some cheaper method. Considering they do not take responsibility for non delivery or damage, they do not care how is it delivered. However GSP postage for kits and other smaller items is coming up about double to what I normally get them posted by express international, which is already lot more expensive than ordinary parcel.
I personally don’t like the global shipping programme, but clearly enough international shippers have complained about USPS, FedEx or UPS that ebay has responded by creating what they consider a more streamlined shipping experience. Obviously if they are using brokers and intermediaries, the cost is going to be higher. It’s a business just like any other, and nobody offers their services for free. It sucks for us international buyers. But if we don’t like it, I guess it looks like we should find somewhere else to shop.
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clearly enough international shippers have complained about USPS, FedEx or UPS that ebay has responded by creating what they consider a more streamlined shipping experience. .
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GSP is nothing but a broker. The items are sent to their sorting facility by one of the above services, and from there it is sent on by one of the above services. The buyer has no idea how the parcel is going to be delivered, which can be a disaster if the parcel has to be collected from FEDEX depot, which can be 100s of km away in some parts of Australia.
After reviewing all of your responses, I think that for now, I will just ship to United States.
I might consider something else when I feel confident about selling my babies. Thank you all for the valuable info.
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