posted on March 24, 2008 08:08:06 PM new
I use the shipping calculator through Vendio and have both US and International options posted in all my auctions. Just had an international buyer win an item that is in a very large package. I assumed that when I enter the measurements of the box at the time I create my auctions that the shipping calculator would let bidders know if their country would NOT accept the package as there are size limits which are smaller than the US for certain countries. My high bidder is from Australia and packages cannot be more than 79 inches (length plus girth). The item they won is in a box that is 98 inches...which is within the size limits for the US (108 inches for packages shipped within the US...and for a few other countries as well). Is there something I missed that I should be putting in my shipping calculator to inform international bidders in the future if the package is too big to ship to their country?
I am not aware of any way that you can block users from bidding on your items based on the shipping requirements at this time. If their location is in your list of ship-to locations, eBay will allow them to bid on the item.
We use the shipping carrier API's to calculate the cost of shipping, so the only note that may alert them to this situation is if the carrier displays a 'NA' as the calculated cost for shipping to their location based on that restriction (and then only if they are already setup to do so on their back end.)
It seems that the best way to address this would be to eliminate the locations listed in the 'ship to' area to remove those that cannot receive packages as large as the one being sold currently.
