GPSR Compliance - Even if not selling in EU?

[totally_toytastic]

This whole thing is really stressing me out, we've been told by ebay several times (after an investigation) that if we don't sell to the EU or Northern Ireland, and don't have a blanket 'Worldwide Shipping' option that we don't have to supply this.

We can get the documents but it would be thousands of emails and documents and take us months to complete when we're going into our busiest season.

Ebays own help page on this says:

Do the EU regulations on market surveillance together with the guidelines for its practical implementation apply in the UK?

These regulations and guidelines do not apply to products placed only in Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland). These will however apply to Northern Ireland pursuant to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Ebay's email from today says:

'As a reminder, the GPSR aims to ensure the sale of safe products to buyers in the European Union (EU) and Northern Ireland, and introduces specific safety-related information that all businesses must provide when selling to buyers in these markets.

This means that if you're a business seller listing new and second-hand products covered by the GPSR in the EU and Northern Ireland, you must include the following information in applicable listings.'

But we don't sell there, so we're totally confused as we've been told we don't need to do this, but have now had some items hidden.

Anyone else having this issue?

No other platforms have asked us to do this.

[socknroll]

This is the specific thing that is confusing the hell out of me.

They say items sold into the EU before the 13th are exempt, BUT, how the hell do customs or whoever is incharge of this in the EU, going to know what items we have in our parcels, and which will be exempt or not, via article 51?

I have contacted eBay 3 times about this, and everytime they are completely clueless and can't answer me.

We are almost at the point of just leaving all our listings available for the EU, and seeing what eBay do to the listings, or see if we start receiving parcels back.

EU sales are slow for us after the Xmas rush anyways, so it'll probably only be a handful of orders going into the EU when we get back on the 27th Dec.

[footballtravels]

One course of action would be to turn off all EU listings mid November and just carry on looking after the UK.

I have already blocked France and Germany over their stance on packaging etc.If ebay EU take listings down 13 Dec that are non compliant then i would not be confident of seeing them again. Would be a massive headache if that happened. 

[the_bald_orc]

Exactly this, if the listings are actually removed the chances (not to mention the hassle) of getting them reinstated aren't great. Coupled with the fact that some people are reporting listings are being removed now due to non compliance I'm not going to take any chances. It may be premature but I turned off NI and the EU last night. (Not forgetting EEA countries).

[footballtravels]

On reflection , I have just done the same. Very sad to block NI as they don't deserve this . I too have now blocked EU and EEA countries , and lets sit back and see what develops when Ebay & Global Shipping see the inevitable massive drop in sales and interest in Ebay from Europe. 

[socknroll]

It is something we are thinking about doing now. I've contacted ebay 2 more times this past week, as they are now pushing out reminders for GPSR, so I was thinking that maybe they have more information, but nope... still just as clueless as before. Something tells me their support won't be much help once this policy comes into place too, so I think we are just gonna cut off EU/NI sales and avoid the headache, sometime in November.

I don't think there would be much problem adding stock again, like 'the_bald_orc' mentioned, as I'm guessing we'd just have to relist the product and not add EU/NI shipping to it, but we do have over 1,000 listings, and I'd rather not have to deal with relisting them, especially after I basically did that a few months back when we got a company to design a template for our listings/storefront, which meant me having to add all our stock to their system, and then copy that code into the listing itself. It took bloody weeks to deal with!

If I hear anything more back from support I'll be in touch, but they've said they'll escalate our query to the tech team everytime I've contacted them, and that didn't happen a single time, so I'm honestly not expecting a response this time either.

[chipchopmod2]

From what i understood, if you dont comply then your listings are hidden from EU buyers, should effect your UK sales, my stance id that i am just going to ignore it, i have my own website and hopefully traffic will go there instead for EU orders. if need be i will also remove international shipping from my listings..i have no doubt somewhere along the way they will *bleep* this up and cause a lot of headache for business sellers

[socknroll]

If all that would be happening is making the listings hidden for EU sellers, that would be great.

I just know on Amazon they say listings can be removed and you can even get a suspension (if i remember corretly), so I thought the bare minimum for the policy would be to remove listings that don't comply, but if it's just hiding the listing for EU customers that would be much more convenient.

Something's telling me that's too easy though lol.

[footballtravels]

These are scarey times. Having removed EU NI etc last month , I will be removing (not sure why but this is how it gets you) USA and rest of the world within the next week. After nearly 20 years on ebay professionally its a bit poor how vague and worrying all this stuff is.

[4_bathrooms]

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@footballtravels wrote:

These are scarey times. Having removed EU NI etc last month , I will be removing (not sure why but this is how it gets you) USA and rest of the world within the next week.

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The EU's GPSR will only apply to the EU 27, Northern Ireland and the three non-EU EEA members (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway). I'm actually not sure if it applies to Turkey or not under their separate trade agreement with the EU. 

[gardenequipmentspares]

Hi, how do you block eu and northern ireland?

Thanks, Joe

[99p_start_7_day_deals]

Amazon have said about it. I have been getting weekly emails regarding it. 

[harry2010toys]

I have been selling worldwide and sell a wide variery of items which I would have no way of getting all the relevant information especially with vintage items.  I am totally confused and stressed as I would imagine a lot of people are over this.  I have blocked Northern Ireland now and all countries in the EU as I don't know what else to do but I have postage services set for Europe which haven't been removed during the bulk editing.  Bearing in mind we have 3000 items in our shop ifI don't go through each one and manually remove the postage costs for Europe will I be in violation of policies.  There is no way I can manually adjust 3000 items at the busiest time of year

[belindashandbags]

Where do I go in ebay for dummies talk to switch off global settings please.

[cooksongold]

Just not for the Amazon UK site.

[4_bathrooms]

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@belindashandbags wrote:

Where do I go in ebay for dummies talk to switch off global settings please.

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You need to edit your postage policies here. Under the "Actions" column you need to click the three dots for each policy then click "Edit". After clicking "Edit" scroll to the very bottom until you see the "Excluded locations (optional)" field. Click into that field and make the following changes:

In the "Domestic" section make sure "Northern Ireland" is selected.

Scroll down to the "Europe" section. You can select (exclude) all of Europe but if you want to only select (exclude) affected countries the list is:

Austria

Belgium

Bulgaria

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Denmark

Estonia

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Hungary

Iceland

Ireland

Italy

Latvia

Liechtenstein

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Malta

Netherlands

Norway

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Slovakia

Slovenia

Spain

Sweden

That's the EU 27 plus the three EEA members (Iceland, Liechtenstein & Norway). I'm currently not sure if Turkey is affected or not.

Finally, go to this page and ensure the "Override my postage exclusions for Global Shipping Programme eligible items" is not selected.

eBay certainly didn't make it easy!