Why?? Please upgrade your account to business i to continue listing on the German site

[uk197]

Hi all! 

Today I got following popup

We recently reached out to you about a change in German VAT law and your need to identify as a business seller. Please upgrade your account to business in order to continue listing on the German site or items located in Germany.

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I'm not from Germany, don't have Germany VAT Nr., registered in ebay.com, and many years don't use German site ebay.de,  not selling anything in German site, and not interested to sell in future too. Do you have any ideas, why I received this message, and how to resolve it without Germany VAT?

P.S. Answer "contact support" I know 🙂

[baltic_collectibles]

Write to eBay customer service. The more people write, the faster the problem will be solved.

[ali-aamedia]

Anyone got it solved? On my side the problem continues.

[lacemaker3]

It appears that eBay may be increasing reviews of private seller accounts in Europe, to be sure that they are not being used by businesses who should be using business seller accounts instead.

Going back through old forum posts, it appears that eBay did the same thing for some sellers in the UK and Germany 2 to 4 years ago. eBay has now removed all selling fees for private sellers on the eBay UK and Germany websites, which may have been some of the motivation for ensuring that private accounts are not being used by businesses.

[ittybitnot]

. eBay has now removed all selling fees for private sellers on the eBay UK and Germany websites,...

@lacemaker3 

I was thinking the same thing, after thinking through some monetary incentives for eBay's motivation this idea won the prize. 

eBay needs LESS private sellers.    It appears either due to lousy tech, or soft forced compliance by eBay or both) is unknown.  I will stay tuned to hear more from those involved. 

[dmcvax3]

Hi, 

I write to ebay today, and they told me that there are an issue that they trying to solve with this problem. They say that we can continue use private account and it´s not necessary to upgrade to business account.

I think the problem are the ebay policies!!we just need to change them and excluding countries, but at moment it´s impossible to do this i get an error doing this.

I really don´t know what´s happening , and what will be the solution. We can´t sell, we can´t list, we can´t relist, just because we can exclude our listings from Ebay.de !!! Strange think. Ebay is loosing lot´s of money with this issue.

[howe1850]

Same issue here.

I was getting an error in the past month or so saying I can't set the item location to the US (I am located in Sweden). I had done nothing new or differently thus I was baffled. I had to go to "location" in bulksell and confirm the location (which was already set to Sweden) and that solved it. Very strange and possibly related to this.

eBay - Another day, another problem

[sergo7sergo]

Hello everyone, just did some experiment, manage to list an item, but i mentioned location outside EU, so was successfully listed.  If i mention my country ( Cyprus ), from where i sell my products and where i located, then still does not allows to list.

Thank you

[xenon-europe]

You can change location if you select any Country outside European Union, but your account is still blocked and you can't sell. So changing location outside European Union does not help and also doesn't make sense since then European Union buyers will be charged VAT.

I'm in contact with ebay support team since Thursday, they still don't have solution 😞

[33313121991]

Been writing to ebay support for 4 days now. Today they said they are expecting to receive any info in 24-72 hours.

[lacemaker3]

It appears that some private sellers' accounts who live in the European Union are being reviewed, and if eBay determines that they are actually operating as a business, then they are being required to upgrade their accounts to business accounts in order to continue to sell on eBay. If you feel this assessment is not correct, you can appeal the decision by contacting eBay customer service.

This is because of the Digital Services Act (DSA), a law in the EU, which eBay is required to comply with. Here is the information from eBay.com about this. eBay has until the end of this year (2024) to ensure that businesses selling in or to the EU comply with the DSA and provide the required information about their businesses.

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https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling/selling?id=4081#section1

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The best explanation I can find about how eBay determines if a seller is acting as a private seller or a business seller is on eBay Germany (see below). They apparently began to comply with this (and/or a similar German legislation) early, but the DSA is now being implemented for all of Europe. So this applies to all sellers who live in or sell to Europe, as it says in the link above.

For those who don't speak/read German, the screenshots show a gisted translation provided by Firefox. In the translation, "commercial" means "business", and "mark"  means "upgrade" (referring to a selling account).

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https://pages.ebay.de/rechtsportal/allg_1.html

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[vintage_and_more-5]

Nothing has to do with private or business. 

I have business account and have the same problem. 

I think that the problem is for the users who sold in the past in ebay.de site. 

For some reason it shows as there. 

[lacemaker3]

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@vintage_and_more-5 wrote:

Nothing has to do with private or business. 

I have business account and have the same problem. 

I think that the problem is for the users who sold in the past in ebay.de site. 

For some reason it shows as there. 

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@vintage_and_more-5 

No, you are registered as a private seller.

[vintage_and_more-5]

This is for the Germany site. 

No one here is from Germany or have items there. 

The problem is that it shows us there. 

It is ebays system problem and they must fix that. 

[cdgcdg_3]

I start thinking this is not bug or Issue with system... Ebay support will leave private seller hang.. Until they quit or force change to business account..

We will check..we will contact.. We send email.. Etc... All this for passing time... 

[nifat-16]

Has anyone tried the business account? What is the downside for switching to business?