How does a an international buyer manage to make a purchase from a seller on eBay UK who has blocked orders from their country?
That’s the question Tamebay reader Simon set out to answer when it happened to him. He told us that he blocks international buyers from his eBay UK listings. Instead he is quite happy to sell and ship via eBay local sites – DE, FR, IT – it makes it easier to set correct shipping and transit times.
Simon noticed that some buyers were managing to purchase our items from him on the eBay UK site even though they were from outside the UK. Eventually eBay support found the answer saying that it was zero feedback users that newly registered.
It appears that when a new user signs up, if they have already selected the item they want then it bypasses all the blocks. It’s a pain for Simon as it means the buyer will message him and say how much for shipping and we have to tell them about eBay’s bug and direct them to the relevant international eBay site.
Have you seen international buyers bypass your buyer requirements? This was a new one for me and not one I’m able to test without knowing exactly what buyer preferences a particular seller had set.
3 Responses
Yes, this happens in 2 other ways.
1. When you block a country in your postal settings then for the change to settings to take effect you must bulk edit all your listings. Otherwise it doesn’t recognise the change. You must select and click Edit for all your listings and then just go through the confirmation procedure . You don’t need to actually change or edit any field. Ebay just picks up the new setting automatically.
2. If you block Puerto Rico but ship to USA, because Puerto Rico it is a US protectorate, buyers use the PR state code, and then give the country as USA, thereby avoiding the Puerto Rico country block. Low value items not worth tracking have approx a 50% failed delivery rate to PR.
Why eBay compulsory demands a domestic shipping maximum for international sellers or international located items is beyond me. This often leads to sellers allocating more than 50% of the shipping price because there are some dumb limits for most categories. Listing on local ebays has many downsides (waay less views and reach, shorter listing durations, dealing with currency convertions, etc).
Amazon is even worst.
I had this exact problem earlier this week when a Singapore registered user bought an item, even though I don’t ship to Singapore.
I’m not convinced by ebay’s ‘new user’ explanation as this particular user has been a member for over 5 years with 500+ feedback.