Hi folks,
I’m selling a flute at ebay and their software prevented me from ticking all the locations I will ship the flute to. That resulted in ebay displaying only the US and Europe at “Ships to:”.
Does anybody know if eBay prevents people from bidding on an item that isn’t declared as being shippable to their location?
Quick replies are appreciated, many thanks in advance!
Hi Gabriel
If it is the Reviol flute you are selling, then to the UK it is only visible if you select Europe or Worldwide in the search criterion.
David
I don’t think that the software at ebay will prevent someone from bidding on your auction, even if the buyer is located in a country outside of where you mentioned that you will ship.
I have had this happen several times, and most of the auctions I did complete successfully. I had a buyer from the country of Reunion bid on my ebay auction. I had never heard of Reunion, which I learned is a small French island in the Indian Ocean. The flute finally got to the customer about four weeks later, after being recovered as a stolen item on the island. I did have a recent auction that was closed by someone in Belarus. I never heard from that person again. I don’t know whether you would include Belarus as being in Europe, or not.
This.
Just edit your item discription to say something like “Will ship worldwide,” somesuch thing.
Correct, Ebay will not prevent someone bidding, though the person may have to do special searches, as mentioned, if it doesn’t show in their home country’s ebay site. This has been a bone of contention for several months as EBay only recently changed their programming to have fewer search results show up on default searches.
The only time ebay will prevent someone bidding is if they do not meet the qualifications you set at the time of building an auction. For example, you can refuse to accept bids from someone who has a negative overall feedback rating.
That’s the thing to do, and you might want to add that “actual shipping will vary, depending on destination”.
I believe you can even edit the shipping info in your listing.
Also, if you are using PayPal you may want to go through and check your shipping preferences there, to be sure all the options are covered as well.
Since ebay owns paypal, it is my understanding that ebay will not allow you to pass on the paypal selling fees to the buyer. In the case of an expensive item sold to someone in another country, the fees would be at least 4% of the selling price. You would need to consider these fees as part of the selling cost.