So already I am being hassled to ‘send a order to a friend to redirect to Ireland’ . ( not from a Folksy customer, from ’ there other side’)
I’ll be blunt , I’m busy enough with orders placed legitimately for UK ( non N.Ireland ) customers to not really be inclined to chase a small number NI orders when I was only posting to UK previously .
I’m not shy about giving a ‘I’m not the seller you are looking for’ reply lol however any of you developed a ‘shut this down’ response ?
I’m thinking ’ I am not currently facilitating any alternative sales routes to Northern Ireland’ I could give a load of reasons but frankly I’m not particularly interested in justification/debate back and forth.
Does anyone from Admin have a view ?
My POV is that this sort of alternative route actually has the potential to cause all kinds of drama around specfication, returns and customer protections should issues arise - frankly I haven’t go the time to support additional order processing quirks never mind the actual legal ramifications.
If I’m understanding you correctly, a customer in NI is asking you to ship to GB but they (the NI customer) would be the one ordering and paying, yes?
I think in this case a simple ‘I am unable to accept orders originating in NI’ is probably your best response. I believe the legislation applies to sales, not despatch destinations, the whole ‘offering for sale’ business.
It is then up to them if they wish to get a friend in GB to order and pay for the goods and have them shipped to a GB address for later forwarding, there’s no way you can know whether or not this happens. Also, by then it’s no longer a business sending to NI, it’s a private individual posting stuff.
This has actually got me thinking. I’m assuming you’re talking about Eeksy, right? I’ve not had any orders there where the buyer is sending to a friend or for a gift so I don’t know what such orders show, but in those situations can you see the buyer’s address as well as the recipient’s? If not, and it only shows the delivery address then that makes it very difficult to identify and cancel orders from NI.
But then again, does buying from NI but having it shipped to a non-NI address count as placing on the NI market?
These are the scenarios I’m trying to get a handle on:
ATM she is suggesting she places an order with a UK delivery address - to get around my restrictions wrt UK orders only ( but not delivering to NI) , but my item would be intended for final delivery into N Ireland and therefore placing an item into the NI market subject to GPSR ? tricky if you are a NI person buying a gift for a UK friend though as if it stays in Uk it wouldn’t be subject to EU GPSR. ARGGHHH!
NI customers getting a UK friend to place order for them for delivery to a non NI but UK address. I’d have no way of identifying that so what happens after that is private person to private person transaction .
The other scenario is UK person gifting to NI with NI delivery address but that order could not be made ( if placed via Folksy) or cancellable by me if ‘over there’ .
If you are being asked to ship to a friend of theirs in the U.K. I would do it. I do this for a few of my French customers, post them to their friends in the U.K., and they pass them on when they meet up in person.
My involvement is finished when item is delivered to the U.K. address.
Hi , me too, I have a lovely customer who lives in France, when new regs came in with brexit I said I could no longer ship to her and so any orders are posted to her daughter in the UK.
So I’ve sent to people who have done this or used freight forwarders .
However with the potential fine issue I’m not so keen.
It’s not the documenting reqs but the ‘responsible person in EU issue that is the big sticking point now .
The specific issue is ‘placing an item in the EU market’ definition , if you do that t then GPSR applies.
Obviously if EU /Ni resident orders and requests their home address for delivery that is very much the case . ( I don’t allow that at all).
But if an EU/NI resident orders and puts a uk address seems a greyer area ? Does accepting an order from
an EU/NI resident customer equate to ‘placing an item in the EU market’ ?
I never thought about that Dawn, it is a bit of a grey area but surely we can’t be held liable for orders which we post to a UK address and which are then posted on to the EU by our customer. There could be plenty of situations where this is happening and we are not aware of it.
I think if the situation arose I would tell them once I have posted to a UK address and they have taken delivery of the item it’s nothing to do with me what they do with it.
Presently I only do it for the one customer who, over the years has bought quite a few pieces, some for her daughter in Gloucester others for herself in France. Her daughter takes them over to her when she visits or she collects them when she comes to the UK and her daughter sometimes posts them on but I only know all of this as she has become a friend so she tells me who she is buying them for.
I lost all of my other customers in the EU when the regs changed after brexit.
You are in a grey area only because the buyer foolishly told you of her plans to do this to circumvent GPSR! She didn’t need to because on Folksy (and any other selling site as far as I know?) you only get an email address and a shipping address, so have no way of knowing if a purchaser lives in NI or not.
Given she has told you she is ordering for herself (so you know accepting her order would ultimately be placing your product on the EU market) I would probably not fulfil the order, as there would - absolute worse case scenario! - be a digital paper trail showing you had knowledge of the item’s destination. But more generally, I would not worry about what NI customers might do to circumvent the rules. (You might politely suggest that for future online purchases, she just updates her delivery address to a GBR one, without notifying the seller she is actually from NI, as that puts the seller in a difficult situation!)
