Pitfalls of selling overseas?

I run an online toy shop which is a side line to our main business (not sure if I am allowed to post a link?). We don't do any advertising for it at all apart from through our main site but it ticks over with orders.

At the moment, we just accept orders from the UK but I am considering expanding this to allow orders from other countries.

I just wondered whether anyone else does this and whether there are any pitfalls to avoid?

I know that I will have to work out the shipping costs for each country and allow different currencies etc, but I do have a few questions.

Are there any countries that I should avoid? Should I start with Europe to begin with and then branch out to America and Asia or is there no difference?

As most of the items are low priced items, am I wrong to assume that our risk of charge backs remain low. I have always (? naively ) assumed that it tends to happen more frequently with higher priced items.

We use Sage Pay direct and offer the option of paying with Visa Card, Maestro and MasterCard. Should I also be considering PayPal, Google Checkout or other forms of payment?

I would really appreciate any feedback from those of you who sell overseas already.

Many thanks

 

[bargainmania]

Do you sell on ebay at all? if you do avoid the obvious countries.
As for only selling to the UK.. What are you doing about the DSR's


Alistair

 

I don't sell on Ebay at all (dabbled for a while but it is really not my thing and not something that I want to get into).

Can you be be more specific about your question re Distant Selling Regs?

 

[bargainmania]

Well basically, if you are selling from an Ecommerce site you will not be able to ban certain countries but there is ways round that..
ie.. postage to those countries set very high.. Watch out for the likes of Italy where the postage service is extremely crap.

Alistair

 

Thanks Alistair or should I say Grazie tanto!

 

[TotalWebSolutions]

Your Payment Gateway should have an option to restrict to certain countries for purchasing. Therefore, you would only receive orders from sale mainland Europe and USA if that is all you wanted to accept.

Our own Gateway has an in-built Anti-Fraud system which allows you to choose the countries you want to accept orders from. Therefore, if there are certain countries you feel would be classed as a higher risk then you simply untick them and block purchases originating from those countries.

 

[PayPoint net]

I run an online toy shop which is a side line to our main business (not sure if I am allowed to post a link?). We don't do any advertising for it at all apart from through our main site but it ticks over with orders.

At the moment, we just accept orders from the UK but I am considering expanding this to allow orders from other countries.

I just wondered whether anyone else does this and whether there are any pitfalls to avoid?

I know that I will have to work out the shipping costs for each country and allow different currencies etc, but I do have a few questions.

Are there any countries that I should avoid? Should I start with Europe to begin with and then branch out to America and Asia or is there no difference?

As most of the items are low priced items, am I wrong to assume that our risk of charge backs remain low. I have always (? naively ) assumed that it tends to happen more frequently with higher priced items.

We use Sage Pay direct and offer the option of paying with Visa Card, Maestro and MasterCard. Should I also be considering PayPal, Google Checkout or other forms of payment?

I would really appreciate any feedback from those of you who sell overseas already.

Many thanks

Hi Claire

You may find our article on selling safely abroad helpful in your research.

To touch upon Total Web Solutions comment, yes you should speak to your payment provider as they should have an in house fraud management system that has the ability to automatically 'whitelist' (ensure that your loyal customers can transact as often as they like, wherever they are located) and 'blacklist' (eliminate problem cardholders, IP’s and addresses) certain geographic territories. This is one of the features on our FraudGuard risk management service (included with our internet merchant account / payment gateway solution or available as a standalone service).

This is just one crucial part of an effective fraud management system. Our in house risk management team have helped implement this particular function, along with identifying a large number of identity and fraud metrics in real-time, to many of our customers looking to reduce fraud exposure and grow safely in new territories.

Siobhan

 

[JamieM]

Well basically, if you are selling from an Ecommerce site you will not be able to ban certain countries but there is ways round that..
ie.. postage to those countries set very high.. Watch out for the likes of Italy where the postage service is extremely crap.

Alistair

How can you not restrict sales to certain countries? :|

Claire, one of the most frustrating things about selling overseas is orders going missing and it seems to be quite regular with Airmail these days.

Other things to consider are:

1) Making sure you attach the appropriate customs declaration for countries outside the EU

2) You don't charge VAT outside the EU

3) I would recommend stating in your terms and conditions that customers may be liable for additional customs duty and local taxes.

4) You should also consider if your products liability insurance extends to overseas countries. USA is often an exclusion or may be limited to a small percentage of your turnover.

In my experience risk of chargebacks is still fairly high with low order value. Fraudsters use them for test transactions before making the bigger purchases.

Along with SagePay I would definitely offer Paypal. Apparently the have over 240m account holders.

 

[webstoreinnovations-com]

Well basically, if you are selling from an Ecommerce site you will not be able to ban certain countries but there is ways round that..
ie.. postage to those countries set very high.. Watch out for the likes of Italy where the postage service is extremely crap.

Alistair

Well, with most systems I have experience with you can dis-enable countries you ship to.

 

[martin10]

Be careful selling abroad and accepring payments with paypal. I sell on ebay as well as my own website . I have sold a number of items to customers in the USA and on two occassions things went pear shaped. On these occassions both customers paid through paypal , I waited until the funds have been accepted and cleared in my paypal account. Then about one week later after i had despatched the goods, paypal reversed the payments saying that the US bank had reversed the funds. Now that is just not fair !! So that left me with no funds and no goods. Luckily I had proof of postage and emailed it over to paypal who eventually gave me the funds back. But on the first occassion they put a restiction on my account whereby I couldn't draw any money down until after 30 days from when the funds had been rec'd.

I no longer sell to the USA.

So be careful when dealing with foreign banks.

 

[JamieM]

I no longer sell to the USA.

Do you no longer sell to the USA because of the problems you mentioned?

2 transactions where you eventually got the money back? Seems a bit drastic.

 

[martin10]

Plus the restiction on my paypal account which stopped me down loading money for 30 days. Also if this keeps happening paypal will probably close my account.

So its not worth the risk because if my paypal account was closed I would be out of business completely . So I don,t think its too drastic.

Anyway, postage costs to US have also hit that side of the business so I haven,t lost that much really !!!

 

[JamieM]

I'm not sure why they limited the account due to a buyer complaint. Usually they just put the disputed transaction funds on hold whilst they investigate.

Maybe you could set up another Paypal account specifically for overseas orders to protect your original account. You need a separate bank account but if you have a savings account along with your current account that would work.

I guess if people aren't willing to pay the increased shipping costs maybe it's not worth it though.

 

[Miranda]

I will second the throught that the Italian postage is slow, very slow, so best to only send signed for.