Tired of German Postal Service and Customs

[threeneurons]

I'm seriously considering not allowing any purchases from Germany. An eBay dispute was opened, yesterday, by a German buyer, for not receiving two spinner kits, I shipped on January 3. When I tried to respond, it sent me to German eBay (eBay.de), and of course everything is in German. It took me a while to log onto the German version, since it kept rejecting my log on data. It finally took, on the 4th or 5th try. I guess it takes a while to transfer that database info, or they just timeout prematurely. When I got to the page to respond, its in German, so I have the browser translate that to English, but I can proceed, because that process seems to alter the links, too. So I have to go back an proceed, by looking at the order, and assume they are both ordered the same way. Then I proceeded without translation. I entered my response in English. then its waiting for his response, before I need to take further action. Today, the dispute window showed that I needed to take action again. I expect to find a page, with the buyer's response, but its blank, like a whole new dispute was opened. I call eBay, and the agent can read back, my response from yesterday, but can't tell me how to view it, myself. I also sent an email to the buyer, by looking at his registered Paypal email. He has yet to respond.

The parcel hit Germany on January 7. The Postal Service or Customs Agency contacted the buyer on January, to pay charges. VAT I presume. Parcel was released on January 19. This made me think that he paid for it, and picked it up.

I don't get these problems from any other country, including places like Italy, Serbia, or Brazil. In the future, if you want something from me, have it shipped to France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, or other nearby country. I'm getting tired of Germany. Or revolt !

 

[SWISSNIXIE - Jonathan F.]

Yes germany is bit special, i know that from friends.

Usually if a package arrives from a non EU-Country, the package will stay a few days in the customs warehouse, then they will get a small piece of paper with an invitation to you (can easily be lost). Depending on location and carrier, the next customs warehouse can be 45Minutes or more of drive from you away! They will not call you or anything else, you just get that small invitaiton to your post-box, if you don't have one, the will stick it on your door! If you not pick up the parcel in a reasonable time, it will be returned to the sender (of course, at the cheapest and therefor slowest service). Its the same thing with in country parcels, they get lost or stuck a lot.
Its an awful process!!
Like here in switzerland its much easier, if the sender indicates the value on the package, the postman will collect the tax at your door, or will place the package at your LOCAL post office if your not home. If there is no indicated value, they will open the package in the customs ware house and guess the value - in some rare cases they will call you and you have to fax the receipt, but usually they guess a low value since they not know the value (i got 6 IN-18 without custom tax because they guessed it as "used electronic parts").

Anyway, if you would need help with german, i'm happy to help :)

But ebay can have a very bug-like behaviour sometimes - like not showing products is one of the things i hate. If i log on with my swiss ebay account at ebay USA it still will not let me see items that only ship to us! I have to log out, then run a search, note the acution number, then log in and paste the auction number to ask the seller or watch. Also if you make changes to delivery adressses (have one in Germany), some parts on my watch-list magically dissapear instead of displaying "NOT SHIPPING TO YOUR COUNTRY" etc....

[Roddy Scott]

If you think you have some issues with Germany, try buying from the UK when you live next door to it!

I live in Ireland and even though there is a border with the UK as in N.I. it can be a real pain as if I want items from the UK mainland, I get the same notification from a lot of Ebay sellers - Does not ship to your country. Then I have to go through Email and most of them don't even reply and those that do slap extortionate P&P charges on the cheapest of items.

I wanted a selection of springs for making brass push buttons for my clocks that cost £2.95 and they wanted £8.40 for P&P! They offer post free for the UK so I got my daughter who lives in Glasgow to order 3 packs and send them to me for less as me buying 1 from them would have been.

I have had a couple of Dekatron Spinners from Mike and do not object to the P&P as it is coming from the States, I get quite a few clock kits from Pete Virica sent signed for but I get really pissed off with other UK sellers ripping me off. I mean, a Jiffy bag and a £1.75 stamp suddenly becomes £8.40?

I get parts and tubes from everywhere and a lot of the sellers from the likes of the Ukraine, Bulgaria etc have free P&P included. It just shows that some people just love ripping you off.

 

[taylorjpt]

The problem I had with the whole situation is that I NEVER had a disputed package returned from Germany, telling me that they eventually got their package but never fessed up to it.  Either way it was no longer worth the effort of annoyance so I cut them off a couple years ago.  I tried to block Germany on Paypal buy they kept tunneling in, and even set up a $10,000 fee/4999 day delivery for all German orders to try to dissuade them but had to refund $10,000 twice last July which is going to wreck havoc on my taxes for last year because Paypal reported an extra $20K on my 1099K!!! :-(

And you're right about the German Ebay:  It is set up to thwart non-German users trying to clear opened cases!