Uk only Shop or world wide ?

[Flying Hippy]

Hi,

At the moment my shop only deals with the UK. I am interested in selling to America and Europe, but do not have experience with shipping abroad and am also worried about fraud abroad.

Please can anyone offer their experience or advice.

:)

[cycloneuk]

I now only ship within the UK, the few orders i did get from Europe were not worth the fraud risk, plus it is hard to verify the identity of customers from Europe which increases the fraud risk, a lot less hassle when you only ship within the UK unless you have high profit margins and can afford to take the hits.

[lesliedocherty]

We ship to europe, no problems so far, just be careful and exercise the usual caution.

Can someone post a list of safe countries ??

[Flying Hippy]

Can anyone say if Royal Mail is a good option for sending goods to Europe and America or is it better using a specific courier ?

A few people I have spoke to say now the pound is down more people are interested in buying from uk ?

[KidsBeeHappy]

What would be the average weights of items you are likely to sending (boxed and packaged!)

[Flying Hippy]

Avererage product are between 500gr to 1.200kilos

I am thinkng of getting large radio controlled product which will be between 1 kilo to 3 kilo

[KidsBeeHappy]

The 2kg cut off is going to be important to you. The post office is usually cheapest for items up to 2kg, but after 2kg a lot of the international services disappear and you end up on an expensive parcelforce tarrif.

You can get flat rate parcels for up to 30kg, but if your items are quite light then you don't really get the best advantage out of those. (eg France £20 for up to 30kg).

Go with the Post Office prices for now, and get some history and some volumes, you've then got the ammunition to take to the parcel carriers to negotiation some decent account terms. (eg you can get 60% discounts with Parcelforce once you start sending 10+ parcels a week etc).

[Flying Hippy]

Thanks for the help it has been usefull.

Do you know any checks i can do for people abroad so that i can reduce fraud ?

[Isabella_Smith]

Can anyone say if Royal Mail is a good option for sending goods to Europe and America or is it better using a specific courier ?

A few people I have spoke to say now the pound is down more people are interested in buying from uk ?

I'm aware of royal mail services, I'd say its good wather its in local and international. It takes maximum 15 days for an International parcel and cost lesser then others.

I'd recommend the Royal Mail.

[scm5436]

Do you know any checks i can do for people abroad so that i can reduce fraud ? It depends if you are selling to consumers or businesses. In the uk we use 192.com to see if consumers are on the electoral roll, but we'd also be interested to know if anyone knows of any similar sites for the main euro countries...

[Victor.ltd]

Paypal already work in Russia, Ukraine and therefore you can increase your sales.

[sirearl]

Ship world wide never had a problem yet.:eek:

Just make sure the money is really in the bank.

Missing out big time if you restrict to UK dependant on product.?

30 million or 1,3 billion potential customers.

Earl

[movietub]

We ship to Europe/US with no major problems (spotted a few fairly obvious attempts by scammers) but we have never pushed this side of the business. Normally people complete the sale including paying for UK postage and we have to make contact and explain the extra cost to ship to them!

We are about to move into Ireland with a dedicated varient of our shop front on an .ie domain. If this goes well we will replicate in Mainland Europe.

My view is there are risks and problems - of course there are! But its worth a fantastic amount of time to work through these problems as it elevates you from selling to just one small island to a large continent. - early days for us but given the potential to grow I can't see myself giving up anytime soon. We start by making a proper effort in Ireland in Feb....