Correos says I need 3 physical copies of the eBay invoice and a customs declaration ??!?!
Hi, I went to the post office to send my first sale on eBay to a buyer located in Croatia (a country within the European Community) and the lady at the post office told me that to send it as a package I would need 3 physical copies of the eBay invoice and a customs declaration.
Does what she says sound right to you?
I was talking with other eBay sellers in Spain and they think that this is not the procedure. I wanted the package to be sent by Correos Internacional Económico, Certified, and with insurance of 150 euros (the sale price was 147.50 euros, I think.
The lady at the post office was a bit older and didn’t know that Croatia was in the European Community and didn’t know how eBay worked.
please let me know, thanks.
5 comments
srgelias
·3 years agoYou can already go excluding countries like Italy where there’s too much corruption; on the other hand, exclusions also aren’t that useful because before the purchase they can edit the address (that happened to me a while back with a couple of Americans who made up Hispanic addresses), just leave the EU zone as the only valid one because outside it buyers will pay customs and may then back out when it’s time to pick up the package.
On the other hand, I seriously doubt you can track the package within Croatia, so the buyer can simply say they never received it. You also couldn’t trust people with feedback 100% pq there are also cases of impersonated accounts, usually accounts with little activity but accounts with hundreds of positives get hacked too (that happened to me with 1 French guy and 1 German)
and if we think through the whole operation the other way around: imagine you’re a veteran user, would you risk buying a €150 product from someone with 0 feedback on Ebay and who lives in the former Yugoslavia?
dafernand7500
OP3 years agowell yesterday I went to another post office to ask for more or less the same thing (but to send a sale to the U.S. instead of Croatia), and the girl at the counter didn’t ask for documentation and I had my eBay invoices and the original sale with photo on eBay - so it’s very variable what one person tells you and another at the post office!
dafernand7500
OP3 years agoI looked into the buyer and have communicated with him many times, and I know he is definitely a buyer. (He is an IT guy at one of the companies that makes software for 3D applications for animation and 3D models, etc). But I know what you’re saying; at the beginning I had many excluded zones like Africa, South America, China, Russia, etc etc, but I’m also removing more countries like Bulgaria, Belarus, etc. etc. for Europe. About what the older lady at Correos told me about 'the 3 physical copies of the invoice and a customs document' to send that Ebay sale to Croatia, I think that was a fantasy and she was treating me like a company or a commercial seller, and I am not, I am a private individual. On top of that, if the value of the item + shipping cost that you sell second-hand is less than the value you paid to buy it new, you do not have to declare it to customs. Today, talking in chat with an Ebay representative, he told me that to avoid paperwork and documentation it is better to use the internal shipping service 'PackLink' there you can print the shipping label / invoice and take it to Correos or Correos can print all that for you and send it via Packlink without docum
srgelias
·3 years agoIf in the end you couldn't send the package, you can thank the lady because she will have saved you from a scam, the operation smells very bad: Croatian buyer, novice seller, item worth almost 150 euros, too many loopholes in eBay's abusive conditions
with a 95% chance we can say that the Croatian will make up any excuse to keep the item for free
dafernand7500
OP3 years agoAnother thing, the lady at Correos was marking it as 'merchandise' - that's correct, right? it wasn't a return, etc.