Hi there,
I am selling a few campy bits on ebay and was just wondering about peoples' experiences with buyers in Japan. I figure it's probably not a huge risk but is there anyone who has consistently had bad luck shipping to this part of the world? I told the gent that I would be willing to ship because I figured there wasn't too big a risk but just thought I'd make sure there wasn't a plethora of other peoples' experiences to change my mind. Thanks for any input!

Edit: I probably should have called this thread 'Japanese Buyers?'

What method are you using to ship?

Most likely it is going to take almost a month at best for it to get there.

Though it all depends on the method.

If you are asking if Japanese buyers are trust worthy, The answer is more so than probably any other buyer.

As far as lost mail, I have never had a problem with it.

Ok thanks, that's exactly the assurance I was looking for in all facets of the question. I am going to look into a number of shipping methods and warned the buyer that if he wins the auction the price and time could be high and that it would help for him to send me his address so I can research the best method. The item in question is a crankset so the box won't be too big. I'll probably look at Purolator (think Canada's version of FedEx) and Canada Post as my first options. Time will tell I suppose.

You might try Yamato Transport, biggest shipping company (I believe) in Japan, you see their cute little logo everywhere. I don't know if they handle small packages, but we just shipped over a whole bunch of household goods, service and rates were good.

I have to agree with Satoru-san. You're probably less likely to get ripped off there than almost anywhere else in the world. That is not to say that in a country of 130 million there are no bad actors in Japan, but the incidence is pretty darn low.

I ship both complete bicycles and components to Japan and I have never had a problem with the Japanese buyer, nor with shipping problems. I ship via surface post and it does take about a month for items to reach target destinations.

My advice is to have no worries. Just do a good job of packing and ship away.

I've never had issues to any part of Asia. My only word of caution is to do your due diligence on shipping. Use the shipping service of your choosing not the buyers. Why inconvenience yourself? just go to www.usps.com and get quote before hand. Add $5 for S&H.

I don't want to derail the thread, but how much does it cost to ship a complete bicycle to Japan? I'm looking at shipping at least one bike to Hawaii here soon, so I assume the logistics are similar.

Hawaii logistics are considerably easier as HI is a U.S. state. Pack the bike in box thats 130" or less length X girth and drop it off at FedEx of the post office. No customs forms. Its that same as shipping it 1 town over. It wil fall under the 'parcel post' 'balloon' category.

Bike shipped to Japan via the USPS need to be a box 108" or less length X girth

I would use your national post office. USPS is much better at getting things through customs. I think that UPS makes money from customs charges, so they take your package to the customs office and go "are you sure you don't want to charge customs on this?" I have a friend that lost a significant amount of money shipping UPS to Japan.

I've shipped several items to Japan through USPS... never a problem and surprisingly inexpensive and fast.