My input is a bit contrary to "improving" intl trading. My wife (the seller) doesn't ship overseas due to the low cost of her items vs the high overseas shipping costs, and the hassle of dealing with customs. She indicates clearly on all of her items that she doesn't ship overseas, yet she still occasionally gets winning bidders who don't understand this (language barrier?), resulting in the hassle of rejecting the winner, getting the eBay fee back, etc if they can't supply a North American address. My suggestion is that eBay prevent such bids - they have the buyer's shipping address and they have the "Ships to" information. They could cut off these bids with little trouble.

I do offer PayPal for international payments, but since i have a personal account (and won't upgrade since i rarely sell and even more rarely sell international), i can't accept credit card payments by PayPal

I recently had an auction where i was offering PP and shipping worldwide.
If i logged on from ebay.de, everything was fine


However, if i logged on from ebay.com, the credit card logos were also shown


That's quite irritating for non-German buyers and it's circular to explain that i have to deny his PP credit card payment, although he saw the big logos in the auction.
Please harmonize it.

FIVE ITEMS for all sellers, but especially for International sellers.

1. SHIPPING TIMES
We now have multiple choices for shipping methods - they give us a shipping method name and cost, plus selectable regions for that method & cost.
BUT THEY DON'T GIVE US A CUSTOMISABLE INPUT FOR TRANSIT TIMES.
The majority of delivery disputes are due to the BUYER's perception of how long it should take - these do not take into account the reality of the service, or the warnings posted in descriptions and emails by the sellers.
Turbo Lister should include this with a defaults option.

Please add fields for adding the transit time for shipping services offered.

2. SHIPPING SERVICE - CUSTOMISABLE NAMES
I live and trade in Thailand - the post office here is excellent and offers three primary services - Express and Economy Airmail, and Surface / Sea Mail. The shipping methods window only allows me to offer express, which is expensive and makes me uncompetitive if I don't use an ad hoc method of showing the other services.
Turbo Lister should include this with a defaults option.

3. SHIPPING SERVICE - BUYER CHOICE AT BID
In the buyer bidding window, the shipping options from the seller should be displayed, and the buyer allowed to choose the one they want, this way they can balance the carriage cost against the price they are bidding for the item and see the total they will pay.

This will also reduce fee avoidance through overcharging on carriage as buyers will not bid on carriage that is too expensive.

This is also the perfect opportunity to remind buyers of how long it will take for the carriage they are buying (as per item 1 above).

4. PAYMENT METHODS ACCEPTED in BIDDING WINDOW
A reminder panel to the buyer in the place-bid window, showing the payment services accepted - this is especially important regarding requiring a minimum payment for certain services (see below).

5. MINIMUM LEVEL OF PAYMENT PER SERVICE
Some online services (no names mentioned) are increasingly prohibitive to use for small payments, despite their original purpose being for micro-payments (anyone remember the concept of those?)
As an example, I do not accept PayPal or NoChex under GBP 5.00 due to the fees they charge - this policy is similar to bricks and mortar stores applying similar rules and is becoming increasingly common online in the UK.
During the auction construction, in the payment methods window, there should be a field for the minimum payment accepted for each service offered (business bank account holders, for example, may want to set a minimum cheque value due to bank charges for receiving cheques).

That minimu8m can then automatically be used at both the bidding screen and the invoicing stage to display only those services that are accepted for the bid/final total (as above).
During the time the auction is open, the full range of services offered (and their minimums) can be displayed in the auction description page, and this will encourage bidding higher to meet those minimums (thus higher FVF fee income for eBay, but also higher sales prices for sellers).
Within Turbo Lister, the setting of this can be set as a default for all items.


FIVE RELATED BUT MUCH NEEDED OPTIONS that would drastically reduce post-auction disputes and tantrums - even more relevant if the new 7-day INR system is to be implemented.

Have you not been reading the boards EBAY!!!!!!!!!!!Do you not see where your problems lie? Read the thread NEW ITEM NOT RECIEVED PROCESS/POLICY - Especially detrimental to International Sellers

International trade is going to die due to all of your new and improved regulations.

If you want to fix a problem then extend the ammount of days you have to file a dispute with Paypal.

You guys just amaze me!!!!!!

i think to make international buying safer, paypal needs to rethink its "30 day" complaint policy..

im going thru hell at the moment, because a seller in Las Vegas (i have all his details) took 7 days to ship my item via air mail.. i wait 2 -3 weeks for it to arrive (a reasonable time frame) and then when i file a complaint with ebay, i am told they will not help me because i am 1 or 2 days over the 30 day period..

my point is, if i filed a fraud charge every time an item got near the 30 days marker, i would look like a right fool apologising when it arrives a few days later (and nobody would take the complaint seriously)

Somehow, I don't think they are listening.

I think you might need to ask this on the listing board or Seller central. Is there a board for people with stores? You might try there.

I list thru an auction service and I would just change my profile in the service. I don't know how Ebay does it.

I haven't read this whole thread, but it seems to me that eBay and PayPal actively discourage International sales. Perhaps that is not their intention, but that's what they do.
They put in blocks for International sales, make Paypal more expensive and risky for those that do sell Internationally, restrict the time limits for delivery that are more geared to domestic U.S. sales and unrealistic for International. They put in restrictions on PayPal benefits to International sellers that offer other payment options because PayPal won't serve them if they do. You offer PayPal icons and special bonuses to those that only take PayPal. You allow buyers to search for only PayPal auctions, yet you don't have PayPal all over the world. You have checkout, which only caters to domestic sales. ( last I checked ).

If you want to increase International sales, then you have to stop discriminating against International sellers. Give them something too. I like laurie's suggestion. How about an Icon for International sellers. It took you 2 seconds to put a PayPal icon up there. This world globe icon is something that would cost you little, save International buyers from searching and increase International buyers sales. That's because they could actually find the auctions.

And yes, I am fully aware that you can go to advanced search and go thru a few screens and eventually get your tailored search. But most don't, especially newbies.

I also get the impression from your first response Tim that eBay is only interested in getting more ebayers to use PayPal. I would think that will come naturally if you get more eBay members to sell Internationally first.

I too, get the impression that the upper brass at ebay doesn't really listen. Don't blame Tim at all. He just passes on the messages.

Les