crash course in international shipping?

has anyone cross referenced paypal with usps?

[amznVibe]

Well sometimes success can be a (growing) pain. An independent, self published book author who's website I manage has gotten some great reviews and now the online store I wrote for her is receiving some international order inquries, so I am thinking about trying to automated at least part of the process.

Fortuantely all these countries so far are on PayPal's list and can get shipping via USPS. But has anyone seen an attempt to cross-reference PayPal's international list with USPS costs/regulations?

Global Priority Mail, flat-rate envelopes seem to be a good solution,
but take Germany for example and check out all these rules and regulations:
[ircalc.usps.gov...]
[ircalc.usps.gov...]
[ircalc.usps.gov...]

Any pointers from people who do this / have been throught this?

[pshea]

Not sure exactly what you are asking . . . but I can tell you this: a lot of countries charge an Import / Escise Tax on goods outside their country. The package is held at the local PO until the buyer comes and pays the taxes. Some customers think this is you ripping them off for more money when they've already paid you for shipping. Take the time to email your out-of-USA buyers and advise them that they may be charged taxes you have no control over. Congratulations on the good fortune!

[wingslevel]

good point pshea, we set up an automated peice of text that drops into international confirmations - we get tons of complaints about this, so i guess everyone does't read their confirmation email.

[bird]

The Regulations and Observations you found for Germany are completely normal in international trade (ok, I don't understand the restriction on playing cards either). In most cases, all you need to do is prepare a form for a commercial invoice, and append the required number of signed(!) copies to the packet. When exporting from the EU, you'd also need to add an export declaration when the value of the shipment is above a certain limit (primarily for statistical purposes). This may or may not be the case from the US. The reason that you can't send to PO boxes is that in most cases, the recipient will have to pay for any customs fees on delivery, invoiced by the postman in person.

As long as you're staying within the so called "western industrialized countries" (Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand, and probably Japan), all that works perfectly well. You may be able to include a number of other countries in that list after some checking. The PayPal list may be a good start, but I'd recommend to double check each one individually.

I'm just dealing with a very negative example myself. This is not meant to bash a specific country, but just to illustrate the potential pitfalls. I'm operating from Germany and currently processing an order from Egypt, at a price above 2000.- Euro, and I'm learning the following in the process:

If I want to ship to Egypt, then I first need to:
- Produce export declaration documents (for EU trade statistics)
- Produce a commercial invoice in 5 signed copies
- Produce a certificate of origin in 2 copies
The invoices and certificates need to be confirmed as authentic by the local chamber of commerce (they keep an additional copy and make their stamp on the others, no problem). Then the egyptian consulate needs to "legalize" them. I'm still trying to figure out the exact details, but as far as I currently understand, the price of this legalization is 80.- Euro per copy. You do the math.

If this wasn't such a large order, then I could easily make a loss on that transaction simply by paying for the necessary paperwork. So here's my advice:

Never ever accept an order to a new country before you have checked the exact regulations that you need to follow for shipping there, and what it will cost you to do so. In my case, UPS told me what they need to bring my stuff through customs, the USPS should be able to give you the same information, maybe even in a more up to date version than in your links above (the DM has been replaced by the Euro a bit more than a year ago). And the more the destination looks like a development country, the more careful you need to be.

[amznVibe]

Thanks to everyone for the very helpful advise. Worth days of Googling for it and learning the hard way.

Here's another important question. Since this item being sold is typically $35 and this paperwork does add more time and labor looking up and obeying all the regulations, is it fair to add more handling costs to international shippments?

Are international customers used to extra handling costs from USA vendors or will they reject this and drop the purchase? I wonder if sending via the USPS "Global Mail" envelopes make things any smoother or if they are treated with the same evaluation by each country receiving it.

Maybe since its its dark on the USA right now, I can get some of the awakened international peeps to chime in with their experiences. :)