I am in the U.S., but there is something I’d like to purchase from someone in Germany. The possible payment options are Cash, Int Money Order, Cashier’s Check, or Bank Transfer.
Bank Transfer seems to be the safest to me, because at least there is record of where the money went. But does that even matter? If this person does not ship the item, do I have any recourse? Will the German authorities give a crap? Or am I totally screwed?
Do you (or they) use Paypal for Ebay purchases. I use Paypal all the time to sell stuff to overseas buyers of my Ebay wares. Paypal does charge a fee (3-5%) but it’s often cheaper than other international methods of payment.
Yes. If you don’t get the item you are probably screwed, so proceed carefully. If they do any business on Ebay you can look at their ranking .
I used to use bank transfer when I was breeding dogs and sold one overseas. It worked great. The problem today is that the bank fees are now pretty steep. I’d call my bank, if I were you, before committing to doing this.
As astro says, Paypal is safe, and it’s cheap. Even if you use a credit card and pay the transfer fees for the seller, it will almost certainly still be cheaper than a wire transfer. And you can get “Paypal protection” for a very small fee.
If the seller doesn’t have Paypal, it’s not a big deal to enroll. And s/he doesn’t want, it isn’t necessary to sign up as a seller. You won’t be able to use a credit/debit card in that case, but I think you hafta set up a regular bank account (checking/savings) as a backstop for your card anyway. Then, if you tell Paypal to send the money from your (frex) checking account, that’s what it does, and charges the recipient 50 cents (or at least that was the charge not too long ago). It takes a couple of days for the transfer, but a wire transfer wouldn’t be any faster, IIRC.