Collaboration Chronicles

It was right there on the website, beckoning me to buy. It was an item I could really use for my business. But the site wouldn’t take my order because I didn’t have an address inside the country.

This was a common problem I had been working around for some time. It’s one that benefits me, when people buy from me, but costs me when I have to buy from an alternate source or just forget it.

There are international re-mailing services. They almost all seem to work by yearly subscription, with a few you can try for a month. Nobody seemed to do remailing per item. Their customer base seems to be retired people browning their butts in the sun, sailing around on yachts and picking up mail once a month or so- far from an efficiency-based service.

“Isn’t it nice to be lazy, Myrtle? Let’s have another julep! hohoho!” – adorable retirees.

I tried one monthly service and had a comical series of accidents and failures. Some were on my part (time demands), but most were theirs. Lost email, mishandled requests, but mostly no service, no response. There was no automated process for receiving then shipping out mail- they did it all by email request (with no confirmation). I even sent them a suggestion plus .jpg sketch for how to organize it with a form, something to refer back to and keep on record for a user account. I promised that it would lead me to pay for more use if they did, and told them I know a software engineer and some designers… that usually doesn’t lead anywhere, but if it does you might have a business opportunity for each other. The failures continued. I got fed up and sent an ALL CAPS message asking, where’s my stuff? They finally responded- to demand an apology for shouting. That earned them my best write-up on the shady yet useful site, ripoffreport.com, a catch-all lint trap for disgruntlement… it mentioned people farting around in their bathrobes in front of the telly with tea and crumpets, while your mail gathers dust and your meter runs out.

I figured that my need (which was occasional and unpredictable) would best be helped by a friend in that country willing to do favors, and I would be happy to pay them. I found someone willing, but the next time I got in touch to make the deal, they had moved back to the states.

I tried posting on several forums dedicated to sellers and shippers. They responded with suspicion or indifference.

For a while, I had been successful with approaching individual sellers (as opposed to companies) to ship wares they were already selling that I wanted overseas to me, when they hadn’t enabled that option. This led to inspiration.

The next time I did this, I explained the problem and asked the seller if they could receive another package and ship both together. I asked to do these steps:
1) I pay for the item I bought from them.
2) They receive another shipment, have 2 items/1 payment, and ship both to me.
3) On receipt, I pay balance for the extra remailing postage, plus a tip for the favor.

It’s like working by contract with mutual trust- Client pays an upfront retainer, I do the labor, then I get the 2nd half payment.

Both sellers I asked were enthusiastic, problem solved. There’s risk, but a good part of it is covered. Maybe I can even get a helper to do it regularly. Just asking on forums didn’t work to make that relationship, but buying something did.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.