eBay UK is upping the stakes as it seeks to persuade more sellers to sell more overseas: from 7th April 14,000 UK sellers will be able to sell for free on 4 international eBay sites.
Between now and October the selected 14k will enjoy no final value fees and zero insertion fees when they directly list on ebay.de, ebay.fr, ebay.it and ebay.es. It’s a pretty tasty offer for sellers who want to get their share of cross border trade.
Also included in the deal is help with the language. You also get a free 60-day trial translation with WebInterpret.
Murray Lambell, Director of International Trade at eBay Europe says: “We are continually thinking of ways to help online merchants grow their businesses. This promotion – with no fees and free translation tools – gives micro-multinationals the opportunity to expand overseas at low cost, providing a great buying experience and even more choice for shoppers.”
How do you know if you’re invited into this promotion? You can register your interest and find out here. (On that page you’ll also find some terms and conditions.) You might have been contacted already. There will also a webinar series about the scheme. Discover more here.
What are the downsides? It’s not entirely clear exactly how participants in this promo have been chosen and you won’t be too happy if you haven’t been invited and fancied a bit of the action. The comment from eBay on how sellers has been selected is vague: “eBay is offering this to sellers who have high potential to sell their goods internationally.” But there’s currently no indication on how that potential is determined.
If you are a seller on ebay.de, ebay.fr, ebay.it and ebay.es, you’ve also just got some new competition from sellers who are flying in fee free to sell on that turf. That will annoy some.
I’m also not clear whether there are similar programmes running on European eBay sites that means that overseas sellers can sell fee free on eBay UK. I’ve asked eBay to clarify that.
But, all that said, if you are one of the happy chosen and you want to boost your international sales, this could be a really great opportunity for you to get started on some really competitive terms.
Will you be taking advantage of this offer? Have you been invited?
26 Responses
You can’t register an interest; it only accepts accounts that have received invitations. A little frustrating as a large proportion of my amazon business is in EU/US and all my ebay stats are good.
This is probably ideal for sellers who have a limited range of items but with unlimited or large supply that can be shifted quite quickly.
I had the email with the invitation to register my interest, but I will not be taking part.
My stuff is basically 1 or 2 off and already sells globally. But which one will sell to which country and when is totally unpredictable. And most of my International sales would be to countries not covered by this ‘free’ offer anyway.
I simply do not want to localise any listings together with having to understand all the local site idiosyncracies. And the thought of using any ‘translation service’ makes me very nervous too.
So my International Customers will continue to pay the fees along with the eBay tax on International postage.
I’m pretty sure we have been included within this.
We currently offer international postage within EU on ebay uk.
However, I’ve never grasped how these promotions work. How can you list on the other ebay sites (es,fr etc).
How do you post it in another language?
I just don’t get it.
Great…..but ebay need to sort out the basics first, like easily ways to list, being able to send an invoice to a buyer without having to log in to five accounts a day (if a buyer in France doesn’t pay straight away you have to log in to France to send them an invoice, same if they don’t pay too) and also the way they display the postage to customers.
Currently Germany displays estimated delivery from the UK as within one day of dispatch!
We have been invited. We are a business seller and we were looking to start selling on these sites, so it will be a good tester to see how many sales we get without the extra costs involved.
Just image in the defects this will cause. Participants will probably end up banned. You would need to be bonkers to let ebay hand hold you for this; they can’t get the UK site running smoothly, god only knows what they would do with your listings on another site!
I received a phone call from Ebay on Friday regarding this. My staggering total of 3 international sales in 7 years must have flagged up on their radar. Whilst it was nice to be asked I don’t think international sales are a good fit for us. Whilst we can be competitive on price with most, the fact that we sell large bulky items mean that that local seller will always have advantage due to very high shipping charges to the continent.
we have been graciously invited to join this program /offer,
though we declined. cant help thinking its a light bulb moment for someone sitting in an ebay office not thought thru properly ,with all sorts of traps and pitfalls for the un experienced
translation of product is one thing dealing with returns and complaints can be fun, in english never mind the indigenous lingo ,especially ebay.de, plus
ebay.nl,ebay.it and ebay.es are postal blackholes if you use the wrong postage method,
We have been invited and can see the benefits, ie, we blocked Italy from our list of countries we sell to, due to the amount of items that did not arrive (probably didn’t need to add the last bit!!), so putting the ranges that were popular to Italian Buyers directly onto ebay.it with the appropriate shipping charges for ISF mail service, something we have already done with Amazon.it.
Am I right in thinking, unlike previous int promotions, we are not obliged to use WebInterpret this time?
Are the fees refunded as a rebate or are they never charged?
Thanks
Thanks Dan.
I received a call from eBay on the 19th March about the International Acceleration Programme (I assume that this is the same thing).
It seems quite popular as the first time someone could discuss details with me is on the 14th April (stacked up with calls I am told).
It is being done in collaboration with Linnworks. I am not sure that being a Linnworks customer already had anything to do with the invite.
We already sell plenty of our product to Europe from the .co.uk site but as I was actively looking to start listing on the EU sites at the time, the offer was a godsend. In fact I had just updated my shop to a Featured from a Basic a few days before the call.
I was a previous invitee of the Ebay Accelerated Growth Programme facilitated by Pentagon Interactive. Unfortunately that one left a bitter taste in my mouth but I am much more geared up and optimistic for this one now that the good chaps (and chappesses) at Linnworks will be in the driving seat.
For those who have doubts and have been invited, do the potential downsides really outweigh the potential benefits? They don’t for me.
****USE WEBINTERPRET AT YOUR OWN RISK****
This company has to be the MOST inefficient and cumbersome company – they take your money and have no thought to the chaos they cause.
Why do I say this? Well they actually control your listings – so if there is an error, you cant change it. Then there is conversion charts – for clothing and footwear, they quite simply changed my conversions (without my authority) from the ones I supplied them to some other customers!!! Result – many returns from Germany (all at my cost – €15 per shipment…costing me £100s….) no compensation and no apologies + many “not as described cases” – how lovely.
THEY NEARLY DESTROYED MY EBAY BUSINESS….together with wasting hours of my time. I have to restock check 15,000 items and had to close my shop for 4 days at the start of December last year – losing my £1000s in lost sales pre-xmas.
The MD was supposed to call me back – he could not be bothered. Then they tried to invoice me £500. Luckily they rescinded on that.
You takes your chances….
Patrick.
I had a very bad experience too. I was trying to ask a simple question but could not speak to anyone. I tried to call but they said that they would not talk to me on the phone and I had to use the chat facility.
I explained that I had been trying to use the chat facility but I could not get through to anyone.
Their reply was ‘yes our chat facility is not working at the moment’
I asked if they would speak to me on the phone as the chat facility was not working.
They said ‘no I have to use the chat facility’
Arghhhhh!
I just cancelled.
We’ve sold overseas for many years, but as was pointed out to me by ebay, our listings were passive. With Webinterpret we get active listings in the native langauge so I would expect better search rankings on the main European eBay sites. I’m surprised at some of the negative feedback about Webinterpret, I found the whole process incredibly simple and it took no time at all.
That on its own wouldn’t be enough though. The introduction of a low cost reliable shipping model is more important, and that’s why eBay Sendit from DPD seems to fit the bill. Overcome the Royal Mail 2KG barrier and ship up to 30KG to Germany for less than a tenner. You’d be mad not to.
Finally the 6 months free listings & FVF’s will generate us more profit than passive listings (even when we have to start paying Webintrepret). It gives us a decent carrot and a long term chance to evaluate.
All in all this is a great scheme which if I read between the lines is an attempt at eBay UK to hit targets it failed to hit last year.
It’s not without its teething problems. eBay sendit consignment program is basic at best. Trying to get International Rate tables to work correctly on ebay.co.uk can be a nightmare (eBay should take a leaf out the US where these programs have been simplifed on the platform). It works with eSellerPro, but you have to manually set the postage service on Webintepret sales.
Overall I’m happy and you always get these issues in the early days. I think the effort is worthwhile and I think the eBay Sendit/ Webinterpret / ebay.co.uk platforms will mature over time with the help of all our input.