So in the past month I've had two odd eBay transactions.  In both cases, they had shipping addresses to New Castle, Delaware.

First purchase - auction winner did not have a shipping address in account.  After numerous back and forth messages to rectify, he told me he barely spoke English, was Chinese, and had stuff shipped to him from a New Castle address he provided.

Second purchase - winner e-mailed me 36 hours after the auction ended with this message.  In this case, it says member from Germany, but with another New Castle, DE address.

it is a very high bid price.
I mistake sorry..

I want cancel.
I'm sorry

I opened unpaid case against second person.  And made second chance offer to next highest bidder.

I've amended my buyer requirements, but curious exactly what is going on here?  Is New Castle, DE a secondary shipping location for international buyers?  Luckily I rarely have headaches with buyers outside of these two times.

Yeah, you're sending to a mail forwarding service.  I just sent one to Delaware this morning as well.  As long as the tracking shows it made it to the destination provided by the seller you will be fine.  It's the buyer's way of getting around sellers that don't ship internationally.

I've had quite a few orders like this as well, as Huskers mentioned, they are going international. Often they take a very long time to get to the actual buyer, so you may not see feedback or get confirmation that they received it for a long time. I think the stuff all gets bundled and shipped to various countries. Most of my orders have been going to Korea.

 

I'm actually trying to offer direct international shipping, but the cost seems really prohibitive when I check on the usps ircalc site...

Is it a personal street address or more of a building/warehouse park address?  I live in NcCo and you've piqued my interest. 

Is it a personal street address or more of a building/warehouse park address?  I live in NcCo and you've piqued my interest. 

Warehouse park/office addresses.  Another common location is Portland, OR.  FWIW, I haven't had a problem with these buyers yet.  They usually leave good feedback, too.

It's a mattress warehouse I use them all the time to ship to Hong Kong. Only once did I have the buyer say that the FF never sent them their item but I was covered because tracking shows it as delivered. I would think if you would have any issues it would be with the buyer not the FF.