I sold a small scanner on Ebay the other day as listed below where I offered fixed price shipping within the US. The section detailing shipping is listed below.
A bidder has won the item who apparently lives in Camuy, Puerto Rico in zip code 00627.
My question is whether I (ethically) have the right to email him and ask for additional shipping, or is PR considered part of the “United States” even though it is a territory and my offer of fixed price US shipping must be honored? I am in Maryland and I have a feeling the UPS shipping I normally use will not be at all reasonable to PR even for a package the size of a shoebox .
If PR doesn’t count as part of the US by the shippers, than that’s your answer right there. You were up front about where you’d ship to. I’d say you have every right to e-mail him and ask for additional shipping fees unless he’s planning on having you ship to a United States location.
go to www.usps.com or stop at a local branch and find out what the shipping costs would be. If it is more than you expected, then you can tell the buyer the situation, and if he still wants it, then you can go from there. Guam is also part of the US by that argument, but I bet it costs a lot more to send something there than to anywhere in the actual states.
One of the problems being only UPS offers only air service to Puerto Rico, not ground. Those big brown trucks don’t float worth a damn.
Alaska is in the same fix, but they do offer, oddly enough, ground service from Hawaii but not to Hawaii. Packages fly to Seattle where they are then shifted to ground.
For future reference, I get around this problem by specifying shipping prices for the continental US. HI, AL, VI and PR and foreign lands can then pay higher rates.
I may have missed something in geography class, but last time I checked, Alaska IS part of the continent. If you only want to quote for the 48 states, I suggest you state either that or contiguous, rather than continental, unless you want some very pissed off Alaskans and some negative feedback. Trust me, I live here and have fought and won that battle on more than one occasion.
Also, UPS and DHL are now offering ground service to and from Alaska (or at least DHL is doing it now and UPS is right behind).
From my limited experience selling items on ebay, my preferred method for dealing with shipping costs was to state that the purchaser pays it, without specifying the exact dollar amount it would be. That way it left me able to recoup any unexpected cost.
