Why people from UK does not ship abroad?

[Belike]

I really don't understand why most of UK sales on ebay does not have shipping options outside that "country".
I'm really pissed of sometimes with that, maybe somebody from here can explain me what's the odds with shipping an item to outside UK.?
It has to pack, drop at the post the same way, all the costs covered by the buyer, why is it so hard to write an "international" adress to the package?

[level42]

I think some can ship from their home easily (pick-up by the mail or other shipping companies). If they do "large" quantities this is often the case.

Then, if they have 1 or 2 international shipments they will have to go to the post-office. That is probably the main problem.

I have the same problem: Post offices are only open during working hours on working days and saturday morning. So I usually can only go there saturday morning but often my son has to play football so this greatly delays my shipments (as some of you are experiencing now, sorry guys it _will_ be on it's way next week!).

Apart from that, I sense that _some_ people only want to sell within their country because of trusting their own people only. But I see that in all countries.

Also, some people simply forget to set the "international" selling option on e-bay. If you then send a message to ask if they will send it to your country, often it is not a problem (may depend on _what_ country though, not sure). I've experienced this often with US sellers.

[Dazza]

I never used to ship outside the UK until recently.

I do it now because I know what is involved. Anything under 2kg can easily be handled by "Royal Mail", the standard choice offered by local post offices. Anything over 2kg and it gets very expensive, in which case you then have to use a courier (TransGlobalExpress, Parcel2Go, EZDelivery etc.) and that means you have to be around, at home, ALL DAY (any time between 7am - 7pm) within the week. Obviously most people work and this is not an option.

If the buyer is prepared to play the inflated price offered by Royal Mail (and believe me it's bloody expensive), there is not really a reason why you would no ship outside the UK, it's just most people don't realise how easy it actually so don't bother.

There is also the hassle associated with your contents getting potentially broken on the long journey and the logistics of then trying to sort it out over such a long distance.

[Belike]

Hmmm, I'm starting to understand now.
It's very different from hungarian methods, you have to take your packages to the post(no pick up option in your home) and the post offices open till 7 pm. and we also have a few non-stop drop off points.
I think the heart of the matter is in Dazza's post "it's just most people don't realise how easy it actually so don't bother."
Thanks for your replies and helping me to calm down.

[Blanka]

I guess because Royal Mail packages are handled by Selektvracht in the Netherlands, and then they get lost, are used before delivered, used to smoke pot with, used to burn in the furnace as the postman of Selektvracht does not earn enough to pay his gas bill, wanked upon, trashed, given as present to the wife, or squeezed into a post box no matter what size the package has.

And then the arguing between the buyer and the seller starts....

[Blanka]

Also really bad about Royal Mail:
The tracking service does not know where the package is when it has left the country.
Even the FRENCH can track this, so what is the problem here?