Why can't a buyer in France make payment? eBay tells buyer I don't send to his address

[imbuzzy]

They always could in the past - many happy French buyers, but now I have one whose payment is refused by eBay saying that I don't accept his address.

Why does eBay insist on lying on my behalf?

Why does eBay block France when the listing only blocked Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, and Macedonia?

Why does eBay block Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, and Macedonia when I gladly will sell to those countries and have my settings set up for "Worldwide"?

Why does eBay wish to micro-manage my affairs to a ridiculous detailed level?

Why do I have to waste my valued time trying to navigate this convoluted site to confirm my preferences are in order when I have not changed anything in years?

I can't invoice the buyer.

I can't call the buyer.

All I could do was tell the buyer to contact CSR - because I sure the heck am not wasting my time with the "professionals" over a few bucks.

Just pacifying the buyer with advice regarding this micro-managing screw-up kills all profit from the sale.

Why eBay, why do you sometimes make selling suck so much on your site?

[marnotom!]

I checked your recently sold items to see if I could get a sense of what could be going on.  I changed my shipping location to "France" on the first one on the list and it seemed to send the site into a tizzy, directing me to another seller's listing, and that seller definitely didn't ship to France.

I clicked on a couple more of your listings and it listed shipping rates to France just fine, so I went back to that first listing and--Presto!--your shipping rate to France showed up on it and I didn't get redirected to another seller's listing.

I'd chalk this up to a glitch and suggest to your buyer that they try again later in the day.

[femmefan1946]

Your French buyer has made a purchase?

But he is unable to pay you?

Since you are shipping from Hamilton ON, is it possible that your claim to be shipping by USPS is part of the problem?

I note you are selling on dotCOM, and that Hamilton is very close to the border.

[marnotom!]

FF, I only see .ca listings from the OP. Could you have been redirected to another seller’s listings the way I was?

[pjcdn2005]

That is really odd.  All of your listings have a shipping cost to France so the problem must be on ebays end.  You could check your buyer requirement activity log and if the buyer is on there, try putting them on your buyer requirement exception.  My activity log appears to be blank and exception log is grayed out so I don't even know they are working but it should only take a minute for you to check.

https://www.ebay.com/bmgt/blockedbuyeractivities

[pjcdn2005]

Op is listing on both sites.
If you change your search preferences and uncheck the option to show all items in $C it is easier to see which site the item was listed on when you are on the search page.

eBay is really goofy sometimes when looking at sold items.  It will let you look at the original item but if you try to change your shipping location it takes you to another listing which usually doesn't even ship to the country you just changed to.  If you scroll up there will be a link to look at 'the original listing'   Although eBay often redirects me to an active listing vs a sold item, this particular redirect seems fairly new and is totally useless.

[imbuzzy]

Auction Item 265057824419 won Feb27 on dotCA

I sent him a payment reminder on March 8th.  Supposedly the buyer has tried to message me twice before but I never received anything.  His response to my payment reminder was my first message received from him.

I sent him my pacifying response last night before heading to this forum.  I just checked my message history both on eBay and my copies emailed to me and my last response doesn't exist - just gone - vaporized...

So  I sent him another response today - twice - one as a continuation of our message thread, and a cc as a new message.  I told him to try making payment on different sites.  I also told him that I was willing to ship the postcard with payment instructions included to his French address - since that is the only one I have.

The buyer has both a Canadian address and a French address.  That is all the info I have been able to ascertain from this disjointed messaging system.  The sale is of such little value that I am willling to ship it using the honour system and avoiding an angry customer and negative feedback.

And yes, I sell on both sites.  Canadian postcards on dotCA and American ones on dotCOM.

I use Canada Post lettermail but, as has been noted by femmefan1946,  I  state USPS on my dotCOM listings.  I have been doing that for many years without a hitch.  It gives me the best delivery standards* (ie expected arrival date) and thus keeps me competitive with my American counterparts selling the same postcard.  Rarely do I get stung with late shipments and once customers realize that it's coming from Canada, most are quite accomodating.  I'm blessed that Hamilton is part of a major international shipping hub and mail travels very fast.

I also checked my blocked buyers activity log as requested by pjcdn2005:

10 in last 60 days for too many unpaid item strikes - all from other members.

At least I can verify that feature still works.

*At least that was the case many years ago when I set up my shipping parameters in my Business Policies section.  I really don't pay myself enough to keep up on any miniscule changes that some button pusher might have imposed on my behalf - especially if sales aren't affected.  I should note that it gives poorer delivery standards for my Canadian customers buying US postcards,  but that is of very little concern since most postcards go back home.

[rodrigueg]

The issue is stille pending and no one can have a clear answer from Ebay. All european countries are possible but France which is not in the exclusion list.

[marnotom!]

Did you end up mailing the postcard off anyway, as you suggested you might?

[pjcdn2005]

This thread is over a year old so unless you are the original poster but using under another ID,  it may not be the same exact issue.   They will probably close this thread since it is older so if you want to give more details about your problem, please start a new thread.  I haven't heard of anyone else with this issue so it may be something new.

[marnotom!]

---

---

@pjcdn2005 wrote:

This thread is over a year old so unless you are the original poster but using under another ID,  it may not be the same exact issue.  

---

Oops, good catch.  I saw "2021" but was thinking "2022" and was too sleepy to absorb the different user ID being used.

[shallow_karl]

It's supposed to be set at "foreign buyers contact seller for shipping costs" and the seller should be able to just send an invoice once the "Buy it now" is pressed or "auction" has ended.  Easy.  Being Canadian and using a dot.com does prevent using a calculated rate shipping (since we do not use USPS, obviously) though you   choose a set rate for each product going to the U.S., and you can do that for the entire world, but obviously costs vary so you wouldn't.