Man is that frustrating...

I have my eBay seller account set up to exclude bids from anyone not here in the good old US of A and to accept only PayPal for payments.
Of course, that doesn't stop overseas buyers from asking if, just for them, I'd make an exception (nope!)
Too many horror stories about sellers getting screwed by overseas buyers!

 

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Well, blocking the bidder might work, but that takes time and effort to do each time someone contacts you with a random question. And generally putting up the country blocks is sufficient, but not always. I had a figurine that I listed with only shipping to US, Canada, Great Britain, and Western Europe. No African or Asian countries, because I knew the figurine could possibly get a real good price and I didn't want to risk sending to a country I though might have issues with. I got several bids, and the winner then sent me a note saying to ship it to him in Thailand. I said no, that the item specifically said it wasn't up for bidding in all countries, and how did he get around the block? He said he regularly was able to see and bid on items no matter, because he registered himself as being in Great Britain when he signed up.

I turned around and cancelled his bid, and did a second chance offer, which was accepted. So I got my sellers fees back and sold it for 1 dollar less than his bid. It was successfuly shipped to Holland.

 

Generally any country in Europe is fairly safe to ship to, but I would be more worried with high value coins. Depends on the items, I guess.

 

I've sold many items on ebay and its auto set for North America only.
People from else where can't even see your auction.
You can't blame him for bidding if you missed a step in the process. If its open for his country he can see it and bid.
Only if you list Advanced will it force you to specify who can bid. Even still all you have to do is select us only.
eBay uses billing/shipping addresses to figure out country residence and if you made the mistake of not allowing US only and his addresses match up he would be allowed to leave bad feedback. Its happened to me before when I sold an iPad. Luckily the guy never paid so there waasnt too much hassle.

 

i had a customer in argentina who told me they steal from the mail all the time, i shipped the coin made it, of course the customs form said it was a religous medal