Paypal Xoom helpful for buying from eBay.de

[GrahamB]

PayPal have just launched Xoom, which allows you to make payments direct to a bank account in Germany.

Why is this useful? Not for German inhabitants, but for those of us who live outside Germany:

1. German eBay is a great place to look for Playmobil sets and parts
2. EBay sellers in Germany are not required to offer PayPal for payments and many sellers (especially "smaller" sellers and those not specialising in Playmobil) only offer Bank Uberweisung, which means paying directly to the seller's bank account within 7 days. From a UK bank, this is possible but the fees are high (over £20 per transaction). Up till now, the easiest way to pay Uberweisungen was to work with a friend with a German Bank Account.
3. With Xoom, it will be possible to make such Bank Uberweisungen without relying on having a friend in Germany to do if for you. The fee will be in the order of £0.99.

However, one note of caution: many German sellers will only ship to Germany (some to the EU, some worldwide), so you will either have to negotiate with them to send the item (if you win it) to your country, or persuade someone with a German address to receive it and ship it on to you.

I have no affinity with eBay or PayPal, before you ask! And please don't bid on things I want!

UK residents: I have no idea what the effect of the cessation of the U.K. from the EU ("Brexit") may be on Xoom or international shipments from Germany. Caveat emptor, as always.

[tahra]

Careful with that "negotiation" - afaik, ebay just doesn't allow you to bid. <- period.  So an agreement with the seller is useless.

That's ebay, making it harder to do business in every way they can! 

[Hadoque]

It depends, sometimes you can bid or buy in my experience. Not sure though why one time you can after all and another time not.
Gladly I also speak German, so I always ask the seller in their own language about shipping before bidding or buying when they only ship to DE, that helps a lot.

There is another trick though, for when evil_bay blocks you from bidding on an item in Germany: Add a German address to your evil_bay-account, and temporarily(!!) set that one as your main shipping-address when you´re bidding on the item with shipping to DE only. Afterwards make sure the seller got or gets your correct shipping-address. (No one can forbid you to have a vacation-house in Germany, right?  )

[GrahamB]

I can see how a made-up German address would work to fool the eBay software, but you would still have to get the seller's agreement to send it outside Germany if they had specified sending to Germany only.
I find many sellers are "ordinary" people and if approached politely (in their own language is a good start and if you don't speak German, use Google Translate, it's not that bad!) they will often help by shipping abroad. There's no harm in asking! Sometimes, people just aren't aware that Playmobil (or other things) might have international appeal.

It's even worth asking if a seller will consider a cheaper shipping method than the one they have stated- I have had success with this and UK sellers: many Brits seem to think Royal Mail is the cheapest and most convenient way to ship goods within the UK. It is rarely cheapest, especially for anything bigger than a letter.

[Hadoque]

I can see how a made-up German address would work to fool the eBay software, but you would still have to get the seller's agreement to send it outside Germany if they had specified sending to Germany only.

Yes, and I always ask upfront if they want to ship to my country.
But even if they agree, the software sometimes blocks bidding or buying afterall. Then I temporarily switch to a German shipping-address (not necessarily a fake though, sometimes I borrow the one from someone I know in Germany  )

I find many sellers are "ordinary" people and if approached politely (in their own language is a good start and if you don't speak German, use Google Translate, it's not that bad!) they will often help by shipping abroad.

Quite so, in 90% of the cases I get a positive answer. Usually very friendly and very correct people, the "Zermans". And "Deutsche Grundlichkeit" is an unofficial trademark, so most usually transactions work out just fine. (Quite different then with a lot of French sellers, in my experience.) But there are always a few exceptions who in the 21st century still stubbornly only want to ship to their own countrymen (& -women) and not even to a neighbouring EU-country... those are "Dexit"-supporters I suppose, or maybe they still have a 70-years old membership-card from... .

[GrahamB]

I tried Xoom for real today. 
I was asked to supply the seller's address and telephone number. These details are NOT supplied by eBay when they supply the seller's bank details, so I contacted the seller, who happily supplied his address.... but no phone number, so I had to send another message!

This Xoom service is not that great, I am beginning to think.

[GrahamB]

I continue to boldly go in my exploration of Xoom and to share the pitfalls with fellow PM collectors:

... but no phone number, so I had to send another message!

Still no phone number from the seller, so I Googled their address and picked a phone number from a nearby business (a Cocktail Bar!). Xoom seemed to accept that. Pha! Perhaps the Bar staff will get strange phonecalls about a transaction of which they know nothing. Very Bart Simpson!

Xoom didn't offer to take the payment from Paypal (strange!) and my bank declined to make payment with my Credit card, but a Debit card payment (risky, I know) from a different bank went through.

Checking with my bank, the payment hadn't gone through after 20 minutes or so.

I have also contacted Xoom customer services to complain about their requirement for seller's address and telephone number (which is out of step both with the typical eBay/Paypal experience and the procedure for ordinary Bank Transfers within Germany (where only recipient's name, Bank name and IBAN number are required). I got a bland corporate-speak response about protecting people, security blah blah which totally failed to answer any of the points I had raised.

I don't think Xoom is really very useful after all. It's a wire-transfer service, not really linked to Paypal or eBay, probably no less risky than other wire-transfer services which often seem to be involved in fraud.

[tahra]

Ah, the days before the euro and paypal... there was BidPay.com, and SendMoneyOrder.com - I remember we used both to pay for ebay purchases.. Ebay was mostly american and canadian sellers, I think, and worked a lot better too.

And let's not forget the money orders from the postal services, payed in CASH...   Oh, or the actual money in an envelope - our colorful money was a very big hit in the US, with a fellow Xenite who sent us the VHS tapes with the eps!

If anyone wants to do away with EU and/or the euro, I will.. have them drawn and quartered. And fed to Xena's mare. 

[Klickteryx]

Ebay is becoming harder to use for buying smaller items like playmobil parts. They wont let you bid if the seller hasn't listed a specific postage to your country. Fortunately some sellers have a placeholder price and work out the true price at the end.

I've pretty much given up on buying parts through ebay, too many issues to overcome.