I’m going to do my best to pack as per usual, but I often bump up the First Class International shipments from once weekly to twice that time of year, that will depend this year.

You’re right about International Buyers now being considered lower class on eBay–perhaps rather than a total abandonment of International DSRs the better move would have been just to weight it a little differently. Who knows, all I see now is potential old eBay style “Wild West” behavior when it comes to international transactions. I hope I’m wrong.

Cliff

Ideally, all orders would ship immediately but if you are too busy one day to get all orders out and you have to make a choice of which orders to get out immediately and which orders can wait, then I think most U.S. eBay sellers will prioritize the domestic shipments. I know that I will.

The trick really is to not make the international buyer so upset that they will leave a negative feedback rating but yet you don’t have to try as hard to please the international buyer where the DSR ratings are concerned because an international buyer’s ratings don’t have a huge impact. Sellers only have to provide “adequate” service to international buyers (so that they don’t receive negative feedback ratings and the average of all DSR ratings, including international, at least meet the minimum required to sell on eBay) but to receive the carrots (ie Top Seller status) the U.S. sellers have to provide top level service to U.S. buyers.

eBay has created a “class” of buyers and international buyers are now part of the lower class.

For me, though, I’ll still provide the same excellent service to international customers as I always have (except possibly taking a day longer to ship their items during the busy holiday season if I am pressed to make a choice on days where we can’t get everything shipped out) because many of my international customers are repeat buyers.

Right now, my international shipments to Great Britain worry me the worst given all their recent postal problems. I find that most international buyers are very reasonable in their expectations, though. If I had to rate international buyers, I would say the vast majority of them are “5 Star Buyers” with only a handful being “1 Star Buyers” who are difficult, impatient, and completely unreasonable. Surprisingly, there are very few international buyers in between.

And, like you, I really love shipping to someplace I have never shipped before. After more than a decade of mail order shipments it happens very infrequently now but it is always a big thrill.