I have sold successfully to buyers in Spain, England, Italy, Romania (with freight forwarding involved), Hong Kong, Malaysia, Vietnam, Korea and mainland China; the vast majority of these sales have (not surprisingly as I have US power-rated equipment), power cords and interconnects. The difference being that the buyer did in each case accurately represent where they were from and in most cases, paid most, if not all of the PP fees and were straight-up on the shipping costs. Negotiation overall took 1-3 additional rounds over and above the 2-3 round norm (my experience, not necessarily everyone's...). There are several aspects to PP when dealing internationally besides the fees;
1. it generally takes 3-5 day for the funds to settle into the seller's PP account in the US
2. if the source bank of the buyer is not fully 'online' with PP, you may get a notice that PP is going to manage the transaction using an 'eCheck' from the buyer to you that PP handles the deposit of into your account, that can take as much as 5-10 business days
3. I always tell any buyer (US or foreign) that I won't ship until funds clear from my PP account firmly into my personal bank account....(another 3 days)
This implies that buyers have had to agree to wait for about 2 weeks before I will ship depending upon how long it takes for me to actually have the money in my account (not just PP). They then have 7-10 days wait time for US Postal Service Priority Mail Package/other service (or UPS/FedEx/DHL in rare cases if they paid the higher fees). If they agree to all this, they are probably safer than some of the more suspect buyers we are talking about here. In short though, document everything at every stage of the process and keep this audit trail!
1. it generally takes 3-5 day for the funds to settle into the seller's PP account in the US
2. if the source bank of the buyer is not fully 'online' with PP, you may get a notice that PP is going to manage the transaction using an 'eCheck' from the buyer to you that PP handles the deposit of into your account, that can take as much as 5-10 business days
3. I always tell any buyer (US or foreign) that I won't ship until funds clear from my PP account firmly into my personal bank account....(another 3 days)
This implies that buyers have had to agree to wait for about 2 weeks before I will ship depending upon how long it takes for me to actually have the money in my account (not just PP). They then have 7-10 days wait time for US Postal Service Priority Mail Package/other service (or UPS/FedEx/DHL in rare cases if they paid the higher fees). If they agree to all this, they are probably safer than some of the more suspect buyers we are talking about here. In short though, document everything at every stage of the process and keep this audit trail!