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Hi Polysix community!
I have a question for the group about international shipping on the KLM-367 PCB clones that I sell. Until last month I had gotten incredibly lucky and never lost a shipment. Now that that streak has broken (I refunded the customer) I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions about international shipping and insurance.
I’ll try to explain the dilemma and questions:
Shipping in the US is cheap (~$6) and easy and includes up to $50 of insurance with USPS Flat Rate Priority Mail. Additional insurance can be purchased beyond $50. I wish I could replicate this for international shipments.
I have used USPS Priority Flat Rate Envelopes for shipping outside the US because it is easy. It is not cheap however (~$21 to Canada, $25 for everywhere else) and does not include any insurance. Nor can insurance be purchased for that service.
Flat rate is nice because I can charge the same rate for everybody but it is a bummer because the shipping costs as much as the product. I could switch to First Class shipping, which would be a bit cheaper (maybe $5 or $8 less) but more substantially work on my end. It also does not include insurance.
With options that include insurance (Priority Mail Express, essentially) the price jumps up to around $45 – which seems completely unrealistic. I certainly wouldn’t pay $45 in shipping for a product that costs $20.
Does anyone know of any reasonable international shipping solutions that include insurance? I only barely looked at FedEx or UPS because their international prices seemed even worse and vary so greatly by location. If you have better information, please let me know.
Barring that, I can think of a couple of options:
1) Offer the really expensive insurance option. Don’t provide any refunds for international orders without insurance (this is not much of a ‘solution’).
2) Have a European “distributor.” Andy already does this to some extent but if the shipping is better/cheaper once the boards are already over the pond maybe there is a solution here? This doesn’t help folks in other parts of the world (whom comprise a very small percentage of orders, but still).
Sorry for the rambling. If anybody has any ideas I’m all ears.
Happy New Year everyone!
Jed