Selling on eBay

I have a few items that I want to shift and wanted to sell on eBay. With Brexit and all, I’m quite worried about international shipping and having to do customs labels, etc. I saw the eBay Global Shipping Programme and enrolled in it, but it’s not showing up as an option for international delivery. Does anyone know how to get it to work? What’s the best way to sell things internationally?

https://pages.ebay.com/uk/help/sell/intl-ov.html#requirements

Not sure if that helps. It tells you how to do it and the requirements but could be outdated. Mostly just telling you that your account needs to be verified and payment method needs to be verified.

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Just a thought, can you use Facebook marketplace or gumtree? eBay is a shark pool for new sellers.

So this definitely isn’t a direct answer…

But I wanted to just explain how surprisingly easy I found doing international shipping the other day.

I was selling some textbooks, and had thought I’d turned on this Global Shipping but all it showed for delivery was the UK price I’d put in. Anyway, a seller buys it and asks how much to ship to Hong Kong. I look it up on ParcelForce, give them the rate. They say yes.

And at that point, I could just go onto the sold item (provided buyer hadn’t already paid) and raise an updated invoice and put in the correct amount for shipping to Hong Kong. I then just printed the ParcelForce labels off which had pre-filled all the customs stuff for me based on item type and value, and off it went!

When I sell on eBay I don’t tend to sell internationally to avoid the item “not delivered” issues.

I don’t really sell high cost goods anymore on it either after I sold a PS4, and later a graphics card, and they tried to claim it never arrived. Thankfully PayPal sided with me but it made me reevaluate the platform as I have heard numerous similar stories and the seller losing out.

I tend to sell small, low cost items on eBay now, that wouldn’t impact me too much if it went sour these days and sell pricier goods at Cex, even if I take a small hit. I should use Facebook more probably.

Thanks all.

Sadly it’s a fairly niche item that wouldn’t sell on Facebook marketplace, and even specialists in the UK would frown at it. Has somewhat of a cult following so eBay or Internet forums are the best places, but very few buyers in the UK. I thought about selling on eBay simply as they promise to sort customs paperwork if you send with the GSP as I’m not confident myself.

I’ll have to rethink how I go about this as I usually try to avoid ebay too

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Got me curious :thinking::grin:

Nothing major – it’s a fairly unique watch that tends to receive quite a bit of attention from a particular subset of watch enthusiasts when one in good condition is available. It’s not a mainstream watch brand which makes selling it that much harder

A watch that just tells the time is fairly unique in today’s environment.

Good luck in realising a decent sale :+1:

When I used to sell on eBay then for an international order (using global shipping) I just paid the usual UK postage to a UK address and then they took care of the rest.

This is 5+ years ago tho!

That’s what I’m trying to figure out how it works – they call it the Global Shipping Programme but despite having enrolled in it, there’s no option to send using that

I don’t know if you will see an option, unless you use a VPN and private browsing session to pretend you are a buyer in another country. Have you read the eBay help page on the Programme? From there:

What your buyers see

We’ll calculate the right postage cost for international buyers in non-EU countries, depending on where they live, and this is what they’ll see on your listing. We’ll calculate the estimated delivery time, including the time it takes for you to send the item to a UK Shipping Centre.

The buyer pays this postage fee to cover the cost of international tracked postage from the UK shipping centre. All you have to do is post the item to the shipping centre, and all you have to pay is the cost of that postage – just like you would if you were posting to a UK buyer.

Global Shipping Programme | eBay

That implies to me that only buyers from another country see it, and from your perspective it’s a UK sale. Above that paragraph, there’s also a section on prohibited items, which includes Jewellery, gold or any other precious metals (whether manufactured or non-manufactured) that are subject to carrier and/or customs restrictions. I don’t know whether that would apply to your watch, but it’s another possibility.

A quick update on this, the item finally sold, sadly for a lot less I was hoping for but hey ho, some money is better than no money. The GSP option became available after a while on my listing, not sure if it was a time or a listing price thing – but in the end it sold to the UK anyway

Question is – eBay don’t pay out to PayPal anymore. I presume Monzo won’t have an issue with a single, under the personal tax allowance, one off payment from an eBay sale? Even if I don’t usually use my account much? @Dan5 :money_with_wings:or :no_good_woman:?

Anecdotal ofc but I’ve sold a few things recently (including a couple of textbooks for fairly chunky sums) and haven’t had any issues receiving directly to Monzo :ok_hand:

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