Shipping Overseas

[softap]

Hi

Can anyone recommend a good service for shipping small parcels (eg CDs, paperbacks etc) overseas? We have used Royal Mail International Signed For for the last 2 years, and whilst it is cheap, it does not work very well for African or Asian deliveries - stuff often goes missing.

I've looked at UPS but their prices are about 3 times more expensive than Royal Mail. Whereas somebody might be prepared to pay (say) the Royal Mail shipping rate of £10 for a book to be shipped to Malaysia, they certainly wouldn't pay £30!

I'm intrigued by what other companies use. I can't imagine that people are paying 30-40 pounds for Asian shipments etc.

[Ozzy]

Hi Andy,
Could you not use UPS for Africa and Asia and Royal Mail for the rest of the countries? Yes it may be expensive for those countries but at least you know it gets there, and just charge the extra delivery to the customer.

[SillyJokes]

Hi Andy,

I run an online store and for overseas deliveries we use plain old airmail and most of the time it is fine, if not fast.

But then our products are low value and light.

I am afraid to say that we do not ship to those countries you have mentioned having problems with and the reason is the very high level of fraud we experienced before realising we were being taken for mugs.

Even World Pay have a list of countries they recommend extreme caution over sending goods to for this reason.

I'm thinking that no matter how high the cost of delivery to those countries the fraudsters won't care, they aren't paying with their own money, and you'll still be sending goods into the ether and getting chargebacks on the cards.

[Ozzy]

Your signature is so appropriate for that reply :)

[softap]

Ozzy, the trouble is that the orders are often low value eg a paperback or a CD, retail price between £8 and £10. The customers are not going to pay over £30 for an item like that.

I've got one customer at the moment wants to order 50 tiny (10 page) booklets to Malaysia, total weight is around 1300g and retail value is about £25. Royal mail price is about £16 and UPS comes in at around £35.

[SillyJokes]

Andy, you aren't seriously going to send that order are you?

Is it a normal order for you? Do you send a lot of stuff to Malaysia and if so how much goes missing? Is it adult material? If so it can be stopped from entering some countries (we had trouble with stripping pens).

If this is an unusual number of copies and a new customer then I would urge you to think through whether it is worth taking the risk for £25 and all the hassle.

On the other hand if the leaflets are truly of value to those ordering and they are legit I'm sure they won't mind paying for a service through which they will receive the goods ordered.

[gary]

I would be very wary of sending orders to some of the countries mentioned here - in fact I don't accept orders from anywhere except the UK, EU and USA. There's just too much fraud (not that the UK is perfectly safe either) that there's no way if I were you I would consider sending such a large order to Malaysia. It's not worth the risk for a few quid return.

[Entrepreneur]

Likewise, we don't ship to those countries. We serve mostly the UK, EU, with a very small number of orders going to the USA and to trusted expats in places like Cyprus. In 7 years of trading I can think of just one legitimate order for Africa. All the rest were scams. We set our minimum calculated postage at £2000 for Africa and Malaysia/Indonesia in our "shopping cart". If the customer writes and says "that can't be right" then that's a sign that maybe he's not using a stolen card. But none of them write.

[wilfredw]

I agree that there's a high incidence of fraud from some of these countries but this does not make them all crooks. I believe a good work-around will be to appoint a trusted agent in these countries through whom you can send all orders. It will also allow the agent to aggregate orders and so reduce the cost of shipping.

Wilfred