I haven’t entered any postage charges for Europe for any of my items as I don’t want to deal with the customs restrictions etc for Europe post Brexit.
Austria is one of the countries for the Europe box. However, I have just received an order from a customer in Austria!
The payment was via card so I have sent a full refund through Stripe and an explanation email to the customer.
How is this possible please? Here is a snapshot of the postage section for that particular item.
Rest of world includes all of the other areas in it. If you have rest of world set up then you are set up to ship everywhere.
I can only assume that Europe is covered by the rest of the world but I don’t know for sure sorry.
Hopefully someone who knows will be along soon :).
I only have UK and US filled in on mine.
I did wonder about this. I used to sell a fair amount to Europe before Brexit but since the customs restrictions and having had to bear the expense of packages returned to me in the post I decided to just not include Europe in the shipping options.
This is the first order I have received from countries listed in the Europe box since I did that a couple of years ago so I wondered if this one had slipped through the net somehow.
If this order from Austria has been allowed to be placed because I have put an amount in the ‘Rest Of The World’ box, it is odd that this is the first one for years as I used to received so many orders from “Europe”.
Can somebody explain the point of the “Europe” box please if it can be bypassed by “Rest Of The World”?
I think it may be something as simple as a little piece of missing code. I’d recommend that you message support@folksy.com and let them know so they can investigate.
Like you, I used to send to Europe a lot before Brexitbustit and the new EU recycle laws came in - such a shame 
The Folksy shipping categories are not great; I’m happy to ship to many more countries than I have set here on Folksy and am hoping new and more helpful categories will be introduced before too much longer.
Rest of the World covers everything not already covered by UK/USA/Europe.
For example, Malaysia doesnt fall in any of those three categories, therefore is ROW.
Austria is definitely Europe and therefore shouldnt be ROW.
It’s notable that Canada is missing entirely from the postage lists…and it aint always the same cost to post there as the USA, either.
If you have rest of the world filled in, it covers all countries that haven’t previously been specified. That means if you have the same shipping price for Europe, US and everywhere else, you don’t need to fill in the price three times, you can just put it in the rest of the world box and it’ll cover them all.
We know this isn’t ideal, especially as increasing restrictions for some countries mean the desire to exclude certain countries but not all is increasing. We would like to improve on the shipping options (not just to give greater control of which countries are shipped to, but also to do things such as allow choice of shipping methods and making it easier to update in bulk) but it is a very big job which unfortunately means it’s not something we can quickly introduce.
Thank you Debbie. I have emailed support and will keep this thread updated.
@kimfolksy and @SashaGarrett - Do your replies conflict? I know from other threads you are both extremely knowledgeable and helpful but Sasha are you saying that if I have the ‘Rest Of The World’ box filled in then I can receive orders from Austria, for example but Kim, you say that ‘Rest Of The World’ covers all countries not previously specified, ie, UK, Europe (inc Austria) and USA?
Is it possible to do a quick fix where ‘rest of the world’ excludes Europe but includes places like Canada, New Zealand, Australia and so on? I used to happily send to these places but won’t put ‘rest of the world’ postage because it incorporates Europe.
Mine and @SashaGarrett replies are saying the same thing. If you have rest of the world filled in you can receive orders from Austria.
How much of the world the rest of the world price covers just depends on whether you’ve filled in the boxes for the other areas or not. It’s the rest of the world remaining after whatever you’ve chosen to specify (not assuming that if you don’t fill in Europe or US you don’t post there, but that the price is the same as everywhere else).
@SueTrevor Unfortunately not, because of the way it works it would need developing to set up specific exclusions.
Thanks Kim 
I guess if it had been possible you would have done it by now. Or whoever does that side of computer wizardry!
I was going to ask the same thing @SueTrevor I presumed until last week if I didn’t have Europe set up I wouldn’t get orders from those countries but if we take rest of world out we are only able to ship to UK and US, it’s not an ideal set up. I don’t want Europe but do want to keep Canada, Australia etc and I would hate to have to cancel an order, it doesn’t look very professional, I wish we could exclude those we don’t want to use. Is this something Folksy will be looking into at some point @kimfolksy, I do understand it might take a while.
It is something we’re hoping to change in the future, but there’s so much we want to change about shipping it’s a massive job and hard to know when that will be. Although it would be nice to be able to work on parts of it a bit at a time and put in quick fixes, that’s not always possible as some things may rely on other parts being changed and then it all gets a bit complicated.
Is it OK to put postal prices in for Europe but then if we get an order from a country we don’t want to send to, we just cancel the order? (ie I’m not registered for the France packaging thing so don’t want to post there)
I did read somewhere that if we offer to post then we have to honour it but I don’t know if that’s true.
Thank you Kim
I guess it’s not something that easy to do a cost benefit analysis for but I would think that Folksy is missing out on revenue (just like us) because of the international limitations of the site. But if you can’t work out the possible upside, you don’t know if it’s worth investing in 
Putting that aside though, I would love to know how many US buyers come here? Has Folksy ever marketed direct to that audience or might they? Wonder if that might be a good subject for a SM campaign at least? There are plenty of Anglophiles out there who have no knowledge of Folksy and who would probably be mad for it if they knew there was a place full of British handmade.
My Folksy stats show that I have quite a lot of visitors from the USA to my shop, although I have never shipped outside Great Britain because of the fragility of ceramics. As I only use Pinterest in social media terms, I think much of the visiting traffic comes via Pinterest.
Would it work if we put a ridiculous amount in the Europe box and then the correct postage in the rest of the world? Would that cut Europe out of the rest of the world postage?
I had the same thought - maybe charge £100 then if anybody does place an order, a quick flight over and hand-deliver, cutting out the customs malarky!!
@Knittingtopia We’d recommend mentioning the countries you don’t post to if you do it this way (as you already do). That makes it clear that you don’t offer to post there (the fact someone technically can order is down to our current limitations, and not you saying you offer to post there).
