New Hoops To Jump Through For Germany

My company had to knuckle under back in 2009 when a lot of countries implemented WEEE and RoHS. When it comes to new regulatory costs about the only thing you can do is belly up to the bar, increase your prices to cover these added costs, and prepared a short explanation to send to customers who push back. For our electronic devices it increased the average cost a few percentage points (including RoHS testing during development, the compliance registrations, and things like having to add little trash can symbols to all the device labels).

The folks who are really carrying the additional financial burden are the end customers since the majority of businesses pass all costs along. So no need for sellers to get heartburn, raise your prices; everyone should understand that new regulatory costs get passed along and it is not the seller's fault.
Don

So here's an interesting thing to be mindful of. When this thread was created, I added Germany to my exclusion list. Today, someone from Germany just purchased a bunch of my items. Their profile lists them in Germany. Their shipping address is Germany. I went back and checked and it still shows Germany as an exclusion. Of course I talked to ebay front line who essentially shrugged their shoulders at why that would happen. Odd.

One reason for canceling a sale without incurring a defect is "Problem with address" I'm pretty sure this would qualify.

I too excluded shipping to Germany based on this conversation. My final customer from Germany turned out to be one of these guys that insists I pay for his customs fees. In fact he told me if I didn't refund his customs payment he'd return the intem as "Not as described". I won't miss Germany.

For what's it worth, my sales to customers in Germany (mostly on Delcampe) have been quite good lately, no issues encountered.

I assume anything sent by regular first class "letter" mail will continue unhindered and that, assuming a buyer is able to actually make a purchase in the first place, this will only affect anything sent as a package. Being that the majority of my sales are under $20 and thus sent via regular, un-tracked letter mail, I don't think I'm going to bother changing anything.

I'm curious if anyone has had luck registering if they don't have a business tax number of some kind. They seem to assume anyone selling, even if they pay taxes on it as a small business, has some magical number. That is not the case in Canada, at least.

Whether I agree or not, I understand rules, fees, and tariffs - but often even when trying to comply, they become impossible for "the little guy (or gal)" for one reason or another. I can only imagine other countries may follow suit eventually.

Artful - from what I have read (which may or may not be accurate), even regular envelopes are affected, although I don't know how the authorities wuold intercept such a shipment if it were made.
I've been under the assumption that ebay would simply block non-enrollees from being able to sell to Germany.(presumably not showing our listings to anyone with an address there).

Interestingly it does say that in various things I've read. But I am assuming it is for those with an ebay business account, as that is the only account where you can enter a Lucid registration number. What. A. Mess.

Grated it has been a long time since I signed up on ebay, but I do not recall having to choose from a business and non-business account.