Thread: foreign ebays

is there any reason not to surf the foreign ebays and bid? does paypal work on say ebay-france? seems the french razors are mostly on ebay france (whereas there seem to be plenty of german sellers listing on US ebay.

Paypal works everywhere. The only issues are that the product descriptions may not be in English and the seller may not be able to communicate with you in English, if you have a question or there is a problem.

Originally Posted by loueedacat

is there any reason not to surf the foreign ebays and bid? does paypal work on say ebay-france? seems the french razors are mostly on ebay france (whereas there seem to be plenty of german sellers listing on US ebay.

I've bought quite a few things over the past years on ebay Germany, France, Italy and other places. The thing I've noticed is that a high percentage of sellers in these countries does not accept Paypal as a means of payment. Germans often want wire transfers and the French checks. If you're in the US and dont want to cover the ridiculous fees you'd incur for these payment methods, make sure that you see a P logo in the auction before you bid. Also read the descriptions carefully: sometimes people say in the descriptions that they dont accept Paypal (Paypal is inserted as a means of payment by default in a lot of countries and takes several clicks to deactivate - sometimes people dont find out how to do that, so they will not accept Paypal even though the auction Payment options say they do).

thanks for the tips. The language barrier is no joke - I couldn't even figure out how to aks a swedish seller a question - I figured if I got that sorted I'd be all set since they all speak english.

sounds like only US ebay requires sellers to take paypal?

I agree with Cornelius.
I have bought from France & Germany
Although a lot of the time its not worth it when taking postage into account
Some postal charges are horrendous, you can translate your questions in bablefish Yahoo! Babel Fish - Text Translation and Web Page Translation
I send the question in English as well in case they can speak it.
Use a currency converter & give it a go
XE - Universal Currency Converter
Tony

I won some auctions on the French Ebay.

I use Google translator. It seems to work well.

The last auction I won on the French Fleabay was for a razor and some ancillary items

I won the auction for 1 Euro.

Shipping was around $35.


The blade needed some work to get it close to being shave ready ... but I havent found a blade here in America that was mabe by the same maker. I am sure they exist here .. I just havent found it. The ancillary items are pretty neat as well.

As far as uniqueness, it could be considered to be worth the purchase... but here in the states, I limit myself on Ebay to around 1/2 the aforementioned total price.