Question for sellers: shipping to 'troublesome' countries

Leftoverbricks

So I received an order on Nov. 28 from someone in Tunisia (case 1) and one on December 12 from a buyer in Mexico (case 2).
The first to Tunisia was a very small order and there was no tracking. The second one to Mexico was bigger and I shipped it with tracking. Both orders were shipped within 1-3 days.
In both instances the buyers asked me about the delivery date ("when will it arrive?") and the tracking number. In the first case I had no tracking ID. To make a long story short:

Case 1 Tunisia
Half way January I refunded all costs to the buyer, including shipping. On Feb. 19 (eleven weeks later!) the buyer informed me that he received the order and he refunded my refund. No blame to this buyer, he acted perfectly. Conclusion: shipping to Tunisia can take as many as 11 weeks.

Case 2 Mexico
Shipped December 16 with tracking. Tracking information shows it was received in Mexico on Jan. 3. It was released by the customs two hours later. After that it took SIX WEEKS to get delivered to the recipient! It's the lousy postal service in Mexico who deserves the blame. Meanwhile I spent a lot of time communicating with the buyer.

Really, I have enough of this. so I stopped shipping to all countries which I consider as 'troublesome':or 'difficult'. Which means all construes in Africa and Mexico for a start.

Am I alone with my experiences?

leopard37

I don't think you are wrong at all. There are plenty of reasons not to ship to certain countries. The only downside is less potential orders. When I decided on what international countries to include I took forum stories like yours as fuel to eliminate quite a few countries. Most of my orders are from within Canada.

The only downside is to your bottom line and you are running the business so if it's more headache than profit why not.

Pikka

My limited experience tells me that shipping from my home country (Czech Republic) may take anything between 6 days (China, Australia) and 6 weeks (USA, UK, Canada). Also, I had an order lost in France. I still have to decide which countries are troublesome...

Calibrick

I found eBay and Etsy forums super-useful for when I initially opened to determine which countries may have problematic customs and postal services for expedient deliveries (moot now, as I've changed my model to shipping within my own country only - wasn't getting enough business to make it worth it, since I would only ship internationally with tracking, which is more pricey).

Calibrick

Also, considering checking what countries your own nation's postal service does and does NOT offer international tracking to for packages. It's a yellow (or even red) flag if your national postal service can't track a shipment in country X (e.g., that country's postal system can't (or won't) share data in-line with international standards, not as advanced a postal system, the postal system is just plain poor, not a central government, country is sanctioned by your government, etc.).

Bricksofloki

@Calibrick Didnt even think to look at that. The idea with checking if local postage can show tracking information is a perfect idea.