Advice on Accepting Payment from Europe (Austria)

[virge]

Recently, I received an inquiry regarding the 570E listed as "for sale soon" in my signature. The person interested in purchasing this item is in Austria.

This person is a lurker here but is an active member of the German Thinkpad forum (www.thinkpad-forum.de). I don't understand German so I can't verify this person's rep there.

What would be the best form of payment to accept in a situation like this?

Any advice appreciated.

[ajkula66]

Moneybookers or direct wire transfer (bank to bank), but check for fees from your bank, that's one thing that could make the deal too expensive, since the machine is inexpensive to begin with...

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions.

[Troels]

Hmm, over here, the usual way of doing this was bank transfer by IBAN, but from what i understand it's hard, slow and expensive to transfer to a non-european (excluding Saudi Arabia and few others) IBAN bank account

People share the IBAN and BIC/SWIFT codes, so the buyer can transfer the money to the seller. Since the US does not have any similar IBAN system, bank transfer is not possible without visiting the bank. But again, it can be very expensive.

So what is left - does he/she have a Visa or Mastercard?
Then i'd just call it a day and use PayPal or Google Checkout. The last time i used google checkout, it was just launched, and had bugs here and there, but i assume it has become better now. It felt pretty safe to use at least.
He might be able to get away with just a checking account, and add funds from there to Paypal, but i think like here, it is not possible.

The last idea i got is escrow. I believe Bill Morrow used/use to do escrows for transactions at a fee. But it might be very silly, depending on the price of the laptop you're selling.
Not sure if an escrow will really help anything in this situation - the person from Austria will still need a way to pay Mr. Morrow in that case.

I could check his/her reputation, my understanding of german is fine, but writing it correctly takes ages. A native german would be better for this task i'm sure. But when going all the way of registering and contacting you for a not-the-latest gen laptop, there should be no risk to take at all

EDIT: It seems, as per September the 3rd 2008, it will be possible to add funds from you bank/checking account in Austria, Denmark and a lot more countries. That is, if this is reliable: http://www.amitbhawani.com/blog/add-fun ... -transfer/

[lophiomys]

I'm from Austria.
In general people are OK over here. It's a small and very much
over-regulated country here. For example everyone has
to register his name and address with the administration.
Be sure you get name and address beforehand.

Anyway if you agree on payment upfront you are free
of most of the risk.
I'd recommend PayPal for amounts smaller than 500 EUR,
because the fees are less, compared to a normal bank
transfer, which would cost 18,- EUR flat with my bank.
Also shipping is quite expensive, and on the Austrian
side customs can be quite mean (20%) sometimes.

I'd recommend you to go ahead.
Cheers,

[AIX]

I'm from Austria.
In general people are OK over here. It's a small and very much
over-regulated country here.

Austria is a nice country - with serious, nice&polite people. A pleasure to visit!

[rek]

Moneybookers is the way to go. I used them to receive payment for a laptop of mine from someone in Russia without any trouble at all.

And their handling charges are so low, it really puts Paypal to shame!

[RealBlackStuff]

If you have so many doubts, why not have the customer send you US Dollars in cash via a registered letter (or inside a birthday card etc.)?

I would also take PayPal from an Austrian.
Recently I sold a T23 to the Ukraine, paid for via PayPal, shipped with USPS.
No problems whatsoever, not even customs duties, and the Ukraine is not anywhere near as modernized as Austria.

[virge]

Thanks for all the help. A kind forum member who understands German has offered to look into the German Thinkpads site. With all the different payment options that have been suggested here, I think we should be able to work something out.

I'll keep you guys posted as to what happens.

Andy