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UGH!!! What the heck??!!!

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UGH!!! What the heck??!!!

DumboLover21

Active DPF Member
Rating - 98.8%
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Bay Area, California
As some of you may know it's been a while since I have traded and now that I am slowly getting back into it I went to drop off 2 trades made through pinpics. Well one of them was international to Paris France. Well I shipped it in a regular small packing envelope and it was $7.92!!!! What the heck????!!! It only a small mini pin that I have in it!! I've never had to ship anything international in a small package at that much price!!! Looks like I will no longer being doing international trades
 
The stupid USPS raised the rates in late January. Sadly many int'l traders are paying the price because fewer people are willing to trade. Or want a better in their favor trade due to the higher price of shipping now.
 
I recommend buying international stamps in bulk. You can print the costume forums out online and just tape them to the package. I've been able to save on postage when I ship internationally and no one has ever questioned it. I ship pins for around $4-$6 depending on how many I am shipping and where I'm shipping them too.
 
I will read that thread thanks for posting. When I shipped it was 6.55 not to bad but if Im trading for a pin I want I will still trade international. It just really scares me not shipping with tracking number.
 
Wow that's quite a bit for a tiny pin. Someone has just posted me 4 shirts and it cost $24.15 to get them to me in the UK.
I just shipped a pin to the US for £3.50 what's that about $5?
 
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Yeah, the prices went up... and it is outrageous...

Also, your signature is too big. You gotta change it. You will get a warning if not. The mods are cracking down on signature sizes!!

I don't want you to get in trouble that's why I'm posting this!
 
Jazzy B Bunny said:
Wow that's quite a bit for a tiny pin. Someone has just posted me 4 shirts and it cost $24.15 to get them to me in the UK.
I just shipped a pin to the US for £3.50 what's that about $5?
Click to expand...

It's a little more than $5.

I shipped a shirt to Britain last month and shipping was around $4. Granted, I didn't ship it in a box. I used a large bubble wrap envelope.
 
I made a post yesterday ( i think) about how I was being charged $50 shipping for 1 pin! Its insane, when another seller offered it for $6. I know there are some exceptions, but thats insane :O
 
postage within the UK has gone up loads too since theyve changed it to size of a package instead of weight makes everything 100000X more difficult
 
Postage to France is expensive, we had ours at 7.80 the other day. UK and Canada is cheaper, but not that much. Our post office mentioned that we cannot ship as large envelope when using bubble mailers so that is not an option. The cheapest shipping will be for 1 ounce or less, at 6.55 to the UK, other countries are more expensive....like The Netherlands was super expensive for 2.10 ounces (counts as 3 ounces as they round up, even if it is at 2.01) as it costs us about 9.56 dollars.

It shouldn't warrant not trading international, but rather trading multiple pins as some shipping rates cost the same as rack pins or sometimes LE pins in the parks. Just be aware how much more you'er going to spend when trading with international members. We recently heard that they don't have to spend as much to send here so the rates only negatively affect US traders.

As for tracking number, the customs forms have tracking numbers that tell you when it left US customs, when it arrived the international country's customs and from their on, the person receiving should be able to track it to their home. We haven't tried it but that's what we were told.
 

I have tried using the customs # and nope, it stops once it exits the US
 
I hear you. I just mailed one to London today and it cost me $13.75. Ouch!! I made the mistake of going to one of our local Post Box Plus places. I think they charge more than the regular post office. I will probably have to avoid international trades. It's too expensive.
 

I know that some people are having problems convincing their local postal clerks, but a bubble mailer DOES qualify as a "large envelope". As for the customs forms tracking numbers, they don't track past the 1st or 2nd sorting centre and they never track as far as customs (another example of the clerks not knowing what they're talking about).
 
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I had 2 trades to France last week. I forget the exact prices but they were outrageously different.

The first trade had one pin and cost about $6.00. The second trade had 2 pins and cost $9.50. I was asking the mail clerk what the heck the price fluctuation was all about. Adding a second pin to an envelope added about 0.4 ounces and they wanted $3.50 more? I was pretty angry about it, but I didn't feel like doing it myself at home at the time. Definitely will be going that route next time.
 


We tried convincing them too but at the end of the day she decided it was not a large envelope so we couldnt really do anything about it.
We still trade internationally, we just try to get a multi-trade going rather than a one pin trade.
 
PinHunters said:
We tried convincing them too but at the end of the day she decided it was not a large envelope so we couldnt really do anything about it.
We still trade internationally, we just try to get a multi-trade going rather than a one pin trade.
Click to expand...

I'm curious - what was her reason for saying it wasn't a large envelope?
 
PinHunters said:
We tried convincing them too but at the end of the day she decided it was not a large envelope so we couldnt really do anything about it.
We still trade internationally, we just try to get a multi-trade going rather than a one pin trade.
Click to expand...
Yes, my postal clerk(s) is the same way. I have gotten different arguments but the most common ones are either the package is not flat, or if the package is flat, then it's too thick. I've even tried going to a different post office, but it was the same story there. I cut small bubble mailer sized cards out of stiff card stock and lightly wrapped with bubble wrap and still it was too thick. I just gave up and downloaded the software to do it home and that seems to save some money. I just couldn't argue with the P.O. people anymore.
 
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