Shipping to China on eBay?

January 24, 2025 7:12 AM

Do you have any experience shipping secondhand goods to China via ebay or indeed at all?

I've got an inquiry about an item I'm selling that is worth about $140 from a potential Chinese buyer, but everything I can find on eBay message boards says that things get lost and you have to issue a refund. Ebay's international sales hub service is only for new goods. Ebay does not offer DHL.

I'm willing to go to a little trouble over this, partly to make the sale but partly because I worked in China some years ago and was very happy, and I like the idea of my (somewhat unusual) item going there. And of course, partly because someone who is very motivated to buy the thing will enjoy it, and I like that.

One thing I'm thinking: I believe that the buyer could attach a printed address in Mandarin as an image in the eBay messaging system and I could work that into my shipping label (since I assume that part of the problem is navigating China's postal service with English shipping info - I'm sure there's a lot of English-language capacity now but I bet Mandarin would work better).

I don't really want to try to go outside eBay's ecosystem - my eBay membership is longstanding and I'm selling a lot of stuff right now, and I don't want to put that at risk, so I'm not really interested in providing my email to the buyer - even if we only used email to coordinate the shipping, it could still ping eBay and cause problems.

Any ideas?

posted by Frowner to Shopping (6 answers total)

eBay has changed.

I have been using eBay for a long time and never had any trouble, but after my most recent experience which would never have happened before because I can navigate eBay returns and never had any problems before, I have reason to believe that eBay systems that previously worked may no longer work because some employees may have been replaced with an LLM.

My new approach with eBay going forward is to treat it as though there is no customer support. I am sending my money into the void based on trust and this influences my decisions on how to interact there.

If you send this item to China, send it based on trust and with no expectation of recuperating any losses should they occur.
posted by Mirth at 8:30 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]

re: Ebay's international sales hub service is only for new goods

Is this different from eBay International Shipping? I just sold a vintage auto part to a buyer in Switzerland... my only responsibility was to send it to eBay hub in Glendale Heights, IL. Forwarding and returns are taken care of by eBay.

Unfortunately I can't tell if China is supported 'cause the the supported countries link in their FAQ doesn't point to a list
posted by tinker at 9:40 AM on January 24

There's a list of supported countries and other eligibility requirements here (search for "Eligible countries"). That International Shipping page links to this one in the FAQs at the bottom.

China is on the list of supported destination countries.
posted by trig at 9:47 AM on January 24

I likely wouldn't.

Ebay has gone very buyer-centric. I never sold a ton there, (I sell my games on BoardgameGeek, but new laws changed their marketplace for the worse), but I won't even sell there to overseas. Too expensive to ship, too much to go wrong.

I have shipped twice to Brazil, stuff allegedly never got there. I don't need that reputation hit. So I just don't anymore.

What Mirth said above.
posted by Windopaene at 11:17 AM on January 24

You can ship through Pirateship.com and should be able to buy insurance through there. I ship to China all the time on eBay and generally don't have issues. Ask the buyer if there's anything special you need to do on the Customs form--sometimes things are treated differently depending how you write them up. I'm not suggesting under-declaring, which would make the insurance useless.
posted by Slinga at 12:24 PM on January 24

I ship used gear to china and other places relatively frequently. there is some risk, as shipping insurance isn't guaranteed to cover loss.

I ship using ebay's built in shipping tools (not the international forwarding, whatever they call it), that way the buyer is responsible for entering their address correctly. I take pictures of all stages of the packing process and the final packed box from all angles. All serial numbers internal and external are recorded and photographed and I use tamper evident seals. As a seller, doing all that has saved me form losing any money as a seller thus far.
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:21 PM on January 24 [2 favorites]