eBay Italy has announced that from the 9th of January, in some categories, items from the UK and Germany will be displayed on the Italian site.
This isn’t a surprise – eBay tested visibility from UK and German sellers to Italy six months ago, the main difference from the test however appears to be that only items from .
Of course the item also has to offer shipping to Italy to qualify, and that’s where many sellers will miss out. Italy still has a low reputation for delivery reliability, although anecdotally couriers appear to have a higher success rate than trusting to the postal services.
Do you have items listed on eBay UK or DE available for sale to Italy, if so let us know if you see any uplift in Italian sales over the next few weeks.
10 Responses
Just a word of warning we turned off our block to Italy a while back just to see if the INR flood had been stemmed, it had not. I would strongly advise courier/signed for to Italy, the place is just a huge black hole for parcels, I am pretty sure they do not get lost or stolen most of the time, it is just the amount of time it takes from entering the country to being delivered. One understanding customer waited and received her parcel 42 days after posting, by that point most of us would have refunded and written it off.
Just curious but how did you block Italy?
Surely eBay UK should alter their list of countries that sellers ship to. To have a blanket “Europe” or “European Union” may have been OK a few years ago but with items now automatically listed on overseas sites times have changed.
The list should enable you to exclude countries where you do not want your listing to appear.
I’d agree with Clarky. Don’t do it. Even International Signed For items take forever to be delivered – if they ever do.
Even Amazon now have a Zone for just Italy & Spain (who have the same issues on a slightly smaller scale) so its easy to block those two countries.
If you want low DSR’s and loads of INR claims go ahead and enjoy the extra sales. Let me know how long you last. 🙂
It doesn’t help that the Italian Postal service change the tracking number on ISF upon entry into the country
I agree with the other posters – send by Royal Mail / Italia Post at great risk. However couriers like DPD or Interlink offer a 3 day service to Italy which has always arrived whenever I have used them.
I’ve had Italy blocked for some time now, since I sent a buyer an untracked item which went INR, then a tracked replacement which said ‘item has arrived in Milan and is being processed for delivery’ and stayed like that forever.
I have had better service sending things to Africa than Italy, it really is a nightmare and so far I’m on a loss for the items I’ve sold there.
If eBay override my block and start showing my items to Italy because I’m a TRS, I’ll cancel any sales that do come through.
Chris, what’s your email address at tamebay ?
I got an interesting problem with ebay you might want to blog about