I'm done selling to Brazil and other countries where mail is getting lost.

Leftoverbricks

Title says all. Every time when I ship to Brazil and a couple of other countries (Tunisia, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea) I face this problem. I don't want to ship to 'the rest of the world' any longer.
From now on I only ship to countries which are democratic and not in a state of war and/or have a working postal system.

I would like to hear if I'm the only seller with this problem and suggestions how we could deal with this.

Calibrick

I did a lot of research when I first opened, and determined to start with my country (US) only and see how orders went. I simply had too little control and no tracking once handoff went from the US to the recipient nation.

I ended up staying US only, as it went so well staying local in my case! There is online paperwork to do for out-of-country, plus printing out the mail forms, cannot send smaller envelopes as the forms are too large to fit on a 4x6 bubble, and lastly shipping costs from the US to other nations isn't remotely competitive at all (whereas someone can ship TO the US cheaper than I can ship within the US).

I've saved myself a ton of headache this way - my only non typical shipments for the US are APOs and FPOs, those I cheerfully do the extra work for, as most of those folks are military or state departments folks working overseas.

It all comes down to a personal decision... how are your metrics shipping internally? Can it carry your sales expectations selling local only? That is what I would ask myself (return on investment of shipping external or not).

Calibrick

FYI, I remember finding a list by USPS that flat-out describes nations with partnering postal systems they can easily hand off to and track with... also, there is with wikipedia for the sanctioned countries list. If you are not US, your country may have similar lists available to help?

Vosblokjes

From the analytics pages:
Brazil, page 6, 3 orders
Korea, page 7, 2 orders
So it seems not to big of a deal when stopping to ship there, but have had no problems with shipping.
Have had more problems (for some period) with shipping to Germany, Austria and the UK, a lot got returned because some idiot copy/pasted (Chinese interface) the address wrong.

But seeing what is happening in the UK I think I will stop shipping to the UK (on BO) way to much trouble, although they are in place 2/3 (order amount vs number of orders) for this year.

CastleBricks

What is happening in the UK causing so much trouble?

Vosblokjes

Well, as you maybe have heard, they are leaving the EU. And instead of 'just' becoming a non-EU country, all kinds of extra laws/rules are being 'invented' which make selling from the EU to the UK much more difficult. For starters the obligation to have a UK VAT and paying the VAT for all orders to the UK, while being unclear on how to that.

CastleBricks

On BL, they have said they are collecting it.
On BO, Lawrence has said he doesn't think it applies.

Leftoverbricks

I've updated my shipping settings. Thanks @Calibrick! My main problem was untracked (cheap) letter mail orders to countries in Africa, Asia, South America and countries in the former USSR. So I excluded those countries.

As a side note: I feel sorry that I cannot ship LEGO to people who probably need/want them the most, especially in those countries where there are no LEGO or BL/BO stores.
Buying LEGO should be a human right, isn't it?

Calibrick

@Leftoverbricks, "I feel sorry that I cannot ship LEGO to people who probably need/want them the most, especially in those countries where there are no LEGO or BL/BO stores. Buying LEGO should be a human right, isn't it?"

So, so beautifully said!!!

Pikka

Our experience is quite different. We do ship internationally but only as Registered Mail (with tracking and insured – up to EUR35). Over 90 % of our orders come from abroad and I haven't noticed that some countries are more problematic than others. Some of our best customers are from Brazil and Hong Kong. We've shipped over 1000 orders so far and lost only three – one in Canada, two in France. And today I'm going to refund a buyer from the UK who hasn't received his package after three weeks, because he thinks it was stolen.

bricksinbins

Yeah there are a number of countries I have stopped shipping to also, with or without tracking. Been too many trouble orders one way or another so it's simply not worth it.

CG - Belgium

I made it very convenient for my Belgian store. I only ship to countries which do not request extra paperwork. This means I limit my shipments to European countries.

Most orders I get is from local Belgian customers or neighbouring countries. I had 1 from Bulgaria and a few from Spain, Italy and Austria and all went well so far.

Leftoverbricks

@Pikka Thanks very much for your input.
I was talking about non tracked shipments, which means: very low shipping costs. You do not offer that shipping method in your shop. Like you I offer registered shipping to my international buyers and the shipping rates are comparable to the rates in your shop (I checked :-)). But unfortunately a lot of my buyers from the countries I mentioned before chose for shipping without tracking and afterwards complain that they haven't received it.
The only thing I could do about this is to stop shipping without tracking. But I will loose many orders when I do so.

As a side note: I regularly buy from shops in the Czech Republic (as well as Hungary, Slovenia and Poland) because of low postage. :-)