Irish ebayers barred from bidding on ebay "UK Only" auctions

mossy2

Hello All
For years I've bought items from UK sellers whos P&P info for stated that they post to the UK only. I've always asked the seller beforehand if they would quote for postage to Ireland and 90% - 95% of times they would let me have a quote - sometimes they confirmed that postage wouldn't cost any extra.

Some time ago ebay changed the auction set-up so the position now appears to be if the seller ticks the "UK only" box on their auction then sellers outside the UK are barred from bidding.

I've just missed out on a nice Hilti drill that went for £70 that I would have been happy to pay over £100 for. As far as I'm concerned this new arrangement has rendered ebay almost useless to Irish ebayers. Would it be possible to get ebay to reverse or modify this change so as to allow us to ebay as I always have. What's the consesus on this issue among Irish users?

jor el

The seller has the option to sell within, or outside of the UK if they want. Some don't want to ship overseas due to the increased likelihood of scams. You can't force a seller to sell to you.

smellslikeshoes

mossy2 wrote: »

As far as I'm concerned this new arrangement has rendered ebay almost useless to Irish ebayers.
Would it be possible to get ebay to reverse or modify this change so as to allow us to ebay as I always have. What's the consesus on this issue among Irish users?

Rubbish, it just means that that people who chance their arm when they see something advertised as UK only aren't able to do it anymore. The majority of Irish people will continue to ignore auctions with the "UK only" like they have always done.

RoadKillTs

As far as I'm concerned this new arrangement has rendered ebay almost useless to Irish ebayers.

A bit of an exaggeration there!

It's totally up to the seller on where he / she will post to. Simply as.

AJ STYLES

well we're not in uk so its their choice. also its prob easier in britain to post stuff to france than it is ireland.

Judgement Day

AJ STYLES wrote: »

well we're not in uk so its their choice. also its prob easier in britain to post stuff to france than it is ireland.

It's all part of the parochial attitude by a small minority of UK sellers who think that civilisation ends somewhere north of the Watford Gap. As for being easier to post to France I doubt it - apart from language problems dealing with French buyers their postal system is positively Third World compared to the Irish one.

AJ STYLES

well some irish are like that, they think the world ends at calais so its not just british, but its an idea irish prob got from british.

PCPhoto

I've had this "problem" a number of times..... generally I try and bid during the auction .... to test if I can...if I cant then I contact the seller and ask if they can adjust the settings to include me.

nothing wrong with Ebay as far as I'm concerned ...if the seller doesnt want to sell to outside the country - its their perogative.

I've offered some sellers that if successful I would travel over and pay/collect ....some have said that would suit ..others have replied ...UK ONLY ...so f*ck 'em !!

the groutch

Royal Mail won't post anything over 2kg (except books up to 5kg) over here, so alot of the time it's the seller not wanting the hassle of organising a courier

yoshytoshy

I noticed this on some of the shoe retailers on ebay.
They only sell certain shoes to uk only ,it always seems to be goods that people might not be happy with.
Checked with toolhaus and lots of goods are sent back because of issues ,tend to be the same as the uk only goods.

JJ

With UK and sometimes US sellers who only sell within their own countries, I just send them an email asking if they'll ship to my address. If they won't ship to Ireland, I move on to the next seller. There is nothing new about this arrangement. Sellers have been able to block buyers from countries they don't ship to for quite some time.

Miaireland

To be honest this is nothing new. If there is something that you want that is UK only email the seller and if they agree to post to Ireland put a small bid on the item to see if they have the UK only box ticked. If you can't bid ask them to remove the UK only tick on that item.

rubadub

Miaireland wrote: »

put a small bid on the item to see if they have the UK only box ticked. If you can't bid ask them to remove the UK only tick on that item.

Yes nothing new. In the past I actually changed my ebay address temporarily to have a UK address at the very end, this meant the seller had no need to change his auction. Then when I paid via paypal I put a note in the box telling them about the UK address trick.

Of course ALWAYS email in advance to find out
1. if they will post here
2. what it will cost.

Red Sleeping Beauty

AJ STYLES wrote: »

well we're not in uk so its their choice. also its prob easier in britain to post stuff to france than it is ireland.

Not really no. Royal Mail views Ireland as "Europe". An Post of course views Northern Ireland separate to Ireland and then Britain separate to the island of Ireland but after that Europe is separate to all three of the former... if you get me. To Royal Mail Northern Ireland's UK and Ireland's Europe. Doubtful that it can actually cost them the same to send something to Dublin or Cyprus or Greece or whatever far off part of Europe you can find on a map.


This is probably more a case of "European" based Ebay users not being able to bid on UK only auctions.

mossy2

Miaireland wrote: »

To be honest this is nothing new. If there is something that you want that is UK only email the seller and if they agree to post to Ireland put a small bid on the item to see if they have the UK only box ticked. If you can't bid ask them to remove the UK only tick on that item.

As far as I can make out ebay has changed its setup in the past 2 months or so. I used to routinely bid on "post to UK only" auctions - having first asked the seller for a quote for postage to Ireland and was then able to bid away without the seller having to change their auction settings. This changed in (I think) early December or so when clicking the "confirm bid" button a message pops up from ebay telling me that I cannot bid on the auction because I am in a location that the seller doen't post to. It's not about sellers being awkward or not happy to sell to me, ebay changed the set up. I can not place a bid on these auctions and I used to always be able to.

jor el

mossy2 wrote: »

This changed in (I think) early December or so when clicking the "confirm bid" button a message pops up from ebay telling me that I cannot bid on the auction because I am in a location that the seller doen't post to.

No, that's been there for years too. Could be that a lot of sellers didn't pick that as an option, even when they didn't show postage to other countries. Some of the auctions would refuse to accept your bid, others wouldn't.

RasTa

There is deffo something new going on. They need to put Ireland in the postal location now to allow you to bid.

mossy2

RasTa wrote: »

There is deffo something new going on. They need to put Ireland in the postal location now to allow you to bid.

Thank You RasTa.

I had a response yesterday from ebay to an email I sent their "customer services" regarding these changes:

"Thank you for writing to us with regard to being able to bid on UK only listings.

While we have made some changes on how UK only listing works on eBay, I can assure that you can still manage to bid on these items. I'm happy to provide the available options for you.

Since foreign bidders will now be automatically blocked from UK posted items if no international postage cost is specified, if an item you are interested in don?t have any bids yet, you can politely ask your seller to revise the listing in order to include international postage.

On the other hand, if the listings has bids, you can simply ask the seller to add your User ID to their buyer exemption list. You can provide the steps below for their convenience:

1. Go to My eBay > My Account > Site Preferences.
2. Under Selling Preferences, click on the "Show" link next to "Buyer requirements".
3. Click on the "Edit" link to make changes to your Buyer Block Preferences.
4. Click the ?buyer requirements exemption list?.
5. On the ?buyer Requirements? section of the page, click ?Add a buyer to my Buyer Requirement Exemption List?
6. Click the Submit button to save your changes once you're done.

I trust this information has been useful. Please let us know if you have more concerns"


Now, as far as I'm concerned this is a complete faff for the seller and they probably won't be willing to do all this tinkering - assuming for a moment that they won't automatically assume that some type of scam is being attempted. As I said in the original post - this makes ebay a lot less useful to Irish buyers in my view.

tosh_thedude

Date or Marry somebody from Northern Ireland. They seem okay with posting stuff to Northern Ireland I've found!

RasTa

mossy2 wrote: »

Now, as far as I'm concerned this is a complete faff for the seller and they probably won't be willing to do all this tinkering - assuming for a moment that they won't automatically assume that some type of scam is being attempted. As I said in the original post - this makes ebay a lot less useful to Irish buyers in my view.

Yeah I agree with you there, I'm suprised at this because they are trying to get more people buying on eBay.

Judgement Day

Afraid eBay have become too big and having lost sight of the big picture pay no attention to complaints - especially from sellers - and between excessive fees (eBay) and (PayPal owned by eBay) they are slowly but surely throttling the life out of the goose that laid the golden egg.

RasTa

Well they must be listening to sellers as this has being a seller complaint for years.