Cross-border trading policy stops French sellers selling in France

Yes, it’s true, it’s crazy, and it’s just happened to me.

As most of you know, I live in France, though I’m English and my original selling account was registered in the UK. I re-registered it in France when I moved here (essentially, that just means putting in a change of address) – though I still mainly list with that account on eBay UK. The tag on my feedback page says “registered in France”.

So this afternoon, I was uploading some listings with Turbo Lister, some to eBay UK and some to eBay France. Back comes the TL results: eBay UK items uploaded successfully, eBay France items blocked because I have reached my international selling limit. Let me stress: this is an account that was registered more than seven years ago, it’s about to hit a shooting star and it’s been regularly listing on eBay France for a year now. If upping the qualifying feedback from 25 to 50 for Irish sellers to sell internationally was crazy, how much more crazy is this?

According to TL’s error message, I have to send a list of my eBay IDs into the black hole that is eBay customer support, and await further instruction. There is no indication of how long this will take, or indeed if the restriction will be lifted.

So, in order to preserve the safety of the international marketplace, it seems I should abandont the ID with the proven track record and start listing on the always-been-French one that I wasn’t going to list on until nearer Xmas. This new ID barely has enough feedback to open an eBay shop – and why would it, it’s brand new – but I have a living to earn, and these kind of out-of-the-blue restrictions are not helping me do that, not one little bit.

I apologise for the rant – but no doubt this will happen to other people too. I’ll post updates if/when I hear back from eBay. My account manager is, of course, out of the office.

Update Friday: Have been able to contact a very nice lady who is standing in for my AM. Her advice was to send an email to the same email address that came up when I tried to list. The problem with trying to resolve anything with eBay is that the people you can get to speak to (Powerseller Support and Account Managers) are *not* the people with any power to do anything. Although she can see that my account is in good standing and should have the trading limit removed, she can’t do anything about it. Her only option is to chase it up through eBay’s system, while I wait for her to get back to me.

In the meantime, I’ve been busy buying things from sellers who leave feedback on receipt of payment, so that I’ll have (10) and can open my new, French shop.

Update Friday night: I’ve just had an email from PayPal to say I can list on .fr again – and they’re right!

I started off this little saga very worried that the problem might last indefinitely – other sellers told me it took “ages” to get their accounts sorted, and there is a serious lack of information from eBay on just what needs to be done. But I’m very impressed with how quickly eBay sorted this out. Whether this means their systems are now efficient, or just that AuctionBytes shamed them in to action, I guess I’ll never know.