shipping outside the US. - need to raise prices?

Shipping a dozen decks of cards outside of the US would mean it would cost $70 more than shipping them inside the US.  It would probably take about ten days to get there.

I get the impression that it now takes closer to 40 days to get there.  

Most people have read the news and understand that borders are closed and ports are putting packages in quarantines and stuff like that. About 1 person in 20 is demanding that the package arrive in about ten days anyway.  They are eating up the time of a lot of different people on our end - which doesn't change anything while the package sits in quarantine in their country.  



If I refund them, then this means that the nasty people got extra candy and the lovely people did not.  This is a violation of my standards.  

FedEx would be $140.  It would arrive in about ten days.  


Part of me is thinking of just stopping all international shipments - just so I don't have to do deal with that one person out of 20 that demands a refund AND still receives the package.

Sucks, eh?

I have many, scattered thoughts.  Take the good ones and ignore the rest:


Shipping to and from the USA to outside North America is absolute crap right now.  

2020 happened, things...blablabla... end result, shutting down just about all international air travel.  Most international post travels in the cargo hold of passenger planes.  No plains, the parcels have to go by surface (sea) which can take upto 10 weeks to most places in the world in normal times.  (as a comparison, it's 8 weeks from NewZealand to Vancouver, Canada.  Canada post says that surface, during normal times, takes 14 weeks, plus a couple extra in customs)

blablabla more boring stuff you don't need to know.

Most US sellers I know are not shipping outside North America at this time.  The customer expectations of fast shipping aren't taking into account that COVID happened and is happening.  Since most countries didn't shut down international travel the same way that the US has, they don't understand that American sellers are having such drastic problems.  It takes 8 days to get something from Europe to Canada, why is it taking 40+ days for something from something a few miles to the south in Washington State?

...

What should you do?  I really don't know.  

Personally I am happy to do a bit of shaming when people complain of shipping delays during the time of social distancing.  Once it's shipped, I've done my job.  Here's the tracking number.  If it doesn't arrive in the time the Post Office says it will, then I have to claim insurance and can do a refund.   But I won't do a refund until the post office confirms that it is lost.  The post office knows shipping better than I.  I rely on the opinions of professionals.  But I'm in Canada where shipping internationally is still pretty seamless to about a third of the countries in the world.  

If you were selling on Etsy, the recommendation would be that they can send the item back and you will refund when it arrives.  

...

If I was living in the USA right now, I would probably put a hold on international shipments until things clear up.  (but I'm not you).  The stress wouldn't be worth it for me.  Either that, or increase the shipping price to make sure it's covering the actual price - the high price - and the customer can decide if it is worth it to spend that much.  Maybe leave a note explaining that this is during the pandemic, and the price will revert to the slower shipping service once international shipping becomes more reliable.  

...

There's something called Pirate shipping or Pirate Ship or something like that in the USA that many etsy sellers use for international shipping.  I don't know what they are or what they are like, but people seem to love them.  

Paul, if I were you I would not ship overseas, period.
Here in Brazil we did not have Amazon or Ebay for a long time because most deliveries didn`t make it within the 90 day refund window (today we do, but things from abroad still don`t usually make it within 90 days. The refund policy has since been changed...). I used to translate the user feeback for Ebay and 90% of the complaints were about exactly this.
There is nothing you personally can do to make a delivery arrive, why deal with that headache. I see nothing wrong with saying, sorry, US/North America shipping only.
If you really want to be nice, you can offer special arrangements for Fedex/DHL/whatever. Most people who live abroad will get it, and most people abroad who buy things in the US have workarounds (like US mail forwarding services, or shipping to relatives/friends in the US).

Going forward I would just tell international folks to expect their shipment 180days that their USA counterpart. That way if they still want to spend their money they will already have the expectation of a 6month delay. Most likely they can be pleasantly surprised with it only arriving only a month later.

I dont think that they should be refunded. This is the covid era, they paid for it during the covid era, knowing full well that it might take some time, and that things are a bit unstable. I do understand their frustration, but things are moving as fast as they can. I had to deal with that frustration when I bought some things overseas, a month or two ago. It helped when I saw a tracking number. Ever though it still took a really long time for it to reach me. Or at least it felt like a long time, but I knew that going in.