Not sure if there are many Ebayers on here but I thought I'd ask..
I regularly but small items from Europe, either for my collections or for car servicing, mostly from Germany but including Portugal, France, Lithuania and Belgium, the only one country I've had an issue with was Hungary when an item never arrived.
Thing is some of the items I collect seem to be quite common in Italy and there are some nice 'new old stock' items that I would like to buy.. but for some reason I have in the back of my mind of a warning not to buy from Italy!
No idea why, I don't think it's the sellers but it might be something related to their postal system?
Does anybody here have experience of buying and receiving items from Italy?
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Sort of. Not Ebay and not UK.
My cousin & her children live in Italy and we exchange presents through the year. Chile <-> Italy.
We've rarely had any issue and the only difficulties we have had have always been Chilean customs.
Not sure if that helps really, but there you are.
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Yes it does..
I think my reservations stem from Ebay sellers who often write 'will not ship to Italy or Canada' on the bottom of their items (no idea why Canada?).
So I guessed that there must be something wrong with buying from there.
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The problem with shipping stuff to Italy is that unfortunately a considerable proportion of packages disappear in transit so many avoid doing business there. The issue with Canada is that the very high charges made by CanadaPost making it uneconomic. I believe the high charges derive form the huge size of the country which is not always appreciated.
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According to my cousin, and I just exchanged messages with her, it is the delivery process which is unreliable.
Apparently packages left on doorsteps will disappear, certainly if it has anything interesting like "Amazon" etc. etc. on it. Even when it hasn't actually disappeared, it is so erratic that it often gets reported as undelivered when it's really just slow. And apparently the returns process for undelivered articles doesn't exist.
However, according to her, there should be no issue buying from Italy, it is selling to Italy that you might wish to think about it.
Let me just say that I am simply passing on a message from her. We have never had issues with stuff sent between us.
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Ok thanks that helps, I might take a punt on buying the item which is less than a tenner, I guess if it's not 'as described' then I'll just have to except it.
Odd about post from Europe, I've had a very small item come from Portugal in 24hrs which I found astounding, items from Germany come within 4-5 days and at only a couple of euros postage, puts some of the UK sellers to shame when they now want at least £3.50 even for 2nd class taking 7 days.
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The Italian postal service is complete carp in both directions.
I left a (written) notebook at a customer site in Alba which was airmailed back to me. It took over 3 weeks to arrive.
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Ebay buying from Italy - No FM2R
