I’m trying to sell a card valued over $1000 to an international buyer. With eBay’s GSP, the shipping cost is over $300. The buyer is asking me to declare the value low and ship. However, I want to insure the card. Can I insure the card for $1000+ and declare the value at say $100. That doesn’t seem like it would work. Please let me know what options there are to ship for a reasonable price while still insuring the card.
Better be same hour delivery by ebay for $300+ shipping charges damn
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Very risky, if the card becomes lost…
Why does he want it declared low? For GSP or Import/Tax?
I would offer free postage and up the price which covers you paying for shipping on your terms
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On a card of that value you certainly don’t want to declare the value low. On smaller value cards it’s often not an issue and declaring a low value can really help the buyer avoid extensive customs charges (although illegal and you should never admit to doing it in eBay messages). For example Canada charges import duties on any package with a value over $20, and theres a $9.95 fee before any duties are even applied. Just saying this so people know why buyers ask for low declared values and why it’s not a 100% red flag.
That being said, the buyer should prepay customs charges through the GSP and that should be reflected in the total shipping charges. With the GSP everything should be done for you, the only need for insurance would be to the US shipping center as eBay’s bare bones seller protection will protect you from not received/damage claims after it passes through the US center.
Basically if you’re using the GSP, buyer will have prepaid customs charges and you don’t need to worry about international insurance. If for some reason the buyer is trying to circumvent GSP, you can still do that but make sure it’s declared value is exactly the selling price and it’s fully insured.
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@0ean if I ship without GSP and declare low, the buyer will basically avoid all import fees. With the GSP, the buyer has to pay the full import fees based on the sale value of the item.
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If they want to avoid those fees then tell him he must take the risk which would mean he must pay by friends and family and if it gets lost, he loses all.
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@fourthstartcg thanks for the reply. I’ll keep in mind not to discuss declaring low in the eBay messages. The GSP is very convenient for me in that it takes care of all import fees as you said. However, the buyer doesn’t want to pay almost 1/3 of the card value for shipping and import fees and I can understand why. If I ship without GSP and declare the full value, won’t the buyer just end up paying the import fees when the item enters their country?
This.
I wouldn’t risk insurance on a £/$ 100 yet alone a £/$ 1000+ card.
Yes
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@garyis2000 I’ll get penalized by eBay if I ask to do the transaction through PayPal right? eBay would be losing out on their cut.
If they catch you then yes. I’ve done it hundreds of times though without incident. Now buyers may be more likely to know and trust me?
Actually that’s not true, eBay doesn’t care how the transaction is done as long as they get their fees. They warn their members that want their protection that they must do the transaction throught their system as that’s the only way they can reverse the transaction. If you want your buyer to buy the item, mark it as paid on eBay and continue the transaction elsewhere, you can.
eBay communications won’t let you send contact info through eBay messages, but you can find the buyers email under your orders page and clicking the record number. There’s other ways of bypassing the system, but if you’re going to allow eBay to collect their fees that way is easy enough.
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I mailed a card that was sold at $2450 and didn’t declare a value at all. I think I said it was worthless and the USPS person put $0. Customs confescated the card and made the buyer cough up a bill of sale. He ended up having to pay an additional $700 for “Our honorable president tax”, “import fees” and taxes in Germany. Pretty sure I paid $50 in shipping and it came with up to $200 in insurance.
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Wow speak of bad luck. I think your mistake here is not declaring anything at all. That will always look suspicious, especially if there’s a $50 shipping label. Lol
I advise you to put playing cards and the correct customs code,etc… and you must absolutely put a value. I usually have it as $25 sale or $50 gift when I shipped to Europe.
Another tip would be printing a bogus invoice if the package ever gets opened at customs.
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Yup, always put declare a value that would justify the shipping price, $50-$100 is what i usually go with
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do this bro ^
I mean the risk is really small that a card with tracking number gets lost, I would always prefer a smaller declared value than paying 30% import taxes. You can almost lose 1 card out of 4 if you don’t pay import taxes, instead of having the card fully insured.
I’ve bought alot of cards from the US, never had a card missing or anything. I only wish that more seller would agree to declare a smaller value.
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Small risk or not, put yourself in the seller’s shoes. Not many people can afford to lose $1000+ even if it only happens 1% of time.
Lost packages aren’t the only problem, sometimes the tracking just stops updating somewhere along the way. For example, I shipped some cards to an efour member from Germany back in January. They received them about 5 days later, but to this day the tracking shows the package hasn’t left my local post office.
That was F&F, but I would have fully refunded them if they weren’t honest with me and likely only getting $50 or so back(the declared gift value).
Now a lot of high volume sellers don’t mind doing it as they can absorb the occasional loss here and there. In an ideal world, both parties would agree on terms that make some sense. The thing is a lot of buyers expect 100% protection, no customs, free shipping,etc… They want it all. lol
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