I sort-of understand your frustration.
Especially for us who are into retro stuff, the second-hand market for consumer electronics is quite bad here.
I think it's partly a cultural thing, people throw almost everything away so the few pieces that are kept are rare, even if not of value to the seller they see there is some demand.
I have bought a bunch of smaller items from the UK where the market (ebay) seems to be anything from 30-50 times larger than here, even though the population is "only" 10 times larger, and so far I've gotten items as described every time and in reasonable time.
But many my experiences are similar to yours to an extent, so many items are marked "Will only ship within the UK", half of the time I don't get any response at all on a check for shipping costs to my location (even though I ask well in advance), and several other times they offer shipping for £50-£75 or more for items weighing (rough estimate w. packaging) a couple kilos.
I appreciate sellers taking responsability in packaging the goods well (and yes some freight companies can mangle packages sadly) but I do wonder if there aren't somewhat cheaper shipping options. Maybe they don't consider it worth the hassle to ship abroad?
Oh well... I'm open to comments from sellers, they can tell me how it looks like from their end.
I see your point, As a seller, I am seriously debating not to ship overseas on Ebay, and to even go to the length of blocking any NON English speaking (or reading) countries, because 99.9999% of questions I get, is from people overseas that can not or refuse to read the shipping terms (that I put in BIG BOLD red letters in font 5x bigger than the description).
As I get older, my patients for these people wears mighty thin, not to mention, if I ignore those questions, then I end up looking like a bad seller. Lately, I have got to the point, where I put the question for everyone to read, and tell them to re-read the listing.
Yes, I can and have been sarcastic, but if the guy is from Timbuktu, I really don't wish to swallow the shipping cost there anyway, not to mention if he will ever see the package, for I found the best way is to state a price that includes shipping. If I take a bath on the shipping charges, and make no money, so be it, but it avoids the whole "oh, I only paid $1 for that item, and now I have to pay $150 for shipping? I don't want it then".
I had this just happen last week with my A3000D. I had a buyer press buy it now from deep with in Europe. It clearly stated that shipping was free to North America, but an extra $100 USD for anywhere else in the world. He refuse to pay, because he did not read the listing(or could not) as his English was very poor.
Just yesterday, I got an e-mail from another guy asking "whats the lowest price including shipping to X Country. My auction is a BIN with no offers taken. I e-mailed him back to re-read the listing and then he e-mailed me back blasting me for telling him to re-read the listing.
Selling on e-bay is no joy at all, when you have these constant pains with shipping.
I won't even go into the "will you consider this offer to end the auction early" from the cheap butts out there.
