One of the things I’m often looking for on eBay is obscure classical music recordings. Often these are on sale from Germany, although I’ve no idea why this is. The annoying thing is that German sellers never seem to accept Paypal, making payment from the UK problematic. Is there any particular reason that this is the case? Do German sellers who only accept wire transfers ever manage to sell abroad? (I’m not posting this in GQ because I’m guessing there’s no definitive answer, but ideas and speculation would be welcome)
Couldnt tell you offhand, maybe because paypal is US oriented? I know in Germany they do funky interbank transfers instead of checks, maybe that is part of it?
Now if this was in Feb, or later this fall I could possibly have been helpful as I was in Germany for 3 weeks then, and will be there for about 10 weeks this fall and I have no problem doing paypal…I could have done the transaction for you=\
Do we have any German dopers?
I don’t know the answer to your question, but I have certainly noticed the trend; most German eBayers seem to prefer bank transfer; I tried doing this once from the UK and it seems there just isn’t an inexpensive way to do it; in the end I had to change some cash to Euros at the travel agent and mail it.
Aren’t intereuropean bank transfers much cheaper these days? I thought there was a recent EU regulation that made this mandatory.
Nahhh, fat chance. Getting all these banks to get their act together to do something that costs them money and doesn’t earn them money in return won’t happen for a long chance. OTOH, they might be cheaper for large-scale business transactions.
aruvqan: Paypal is the most common way to deal on eBay here in the UK, despite the US leaning, and despite personal bank transfers being simple and free for most accounts.
In the past, I’ve ended up doing as mangetout did, and send cash ( :eek: ) - except the guy who was willing to accept the face value in interesting and unusual postage stamps, which was actually much more convenient.
I am dealing with this right now, I “won” an auction on Ebay Germany and the seller wants an International Postal Money Order, bank transfer or cash.
The lady at the local post office tells me that her computer won’t let her sell an IPMO for Germany.
My bank charges $30.00 for international transfers (the amount is only 16,50 Euros).
None of the local banks have Euro’s in cash.
I am just going to pass on this deal and eat the bad feedback.
Unclviny
This has mostly two reasons:
There is no real German subsidiary of paypal. They have a German front end page for the UK paypal (At least they had the last time I checked.) So Germans can sign up but most won’t see the need to sign up with a random foreign payment service that is rarely used here. Of course this is a vicious circle but unless paypal gets some external promotion this won’t change.
The second reason is, generalizing a bit, Germans don’t like or use credit cards. Of course they exist and many people have one. However there is hardly any real use for them domestically. Many shops, including most supermarkets, don’t accept them. There are two (for practical purposes compatible) systems of EC-Card (ATM/quasi debit card) based electronic payments. The transaction fees are much cheaper and those cards are preferred by the stores. Of those credit cards in circulation in Germany most aren’t even set up as a true “credit” cards but linked directly to a “Girokonto”, the standard personal checking account. Those accounts offer a built-in credit of usually 3 month’s salaries. Those accounts also allow cheap (in my case free) money transfers, nowadays also web-based.