US purchases still not possible! Packaging ordinance excludes buyers in Germany!
Hello community
This topic has already come up here a few times and has since been archived without a satisfactory solution having been found!
The problem: private sellers from the USA offer worldwide shipping and you can assume that you can buy the listings in Germany too.
Unfortunately, depending on the category, that is not possible. Although Germany is expressly not among the defined locations with shipping exclusions, the listing is blocked here! That’s due to a ridiculous regulation called the Packaging Act of 2019, which - as luck would have it - only stupid Germany complies with. It can’t have anything to do with some mysterious EU law, because all neighboring EU countries can have exactly these items delivered, while they’re blocked for Germany! You can test it by entering the countries as the destination, and it works everywhere except in D!
The crazy thing is that the regulation is actually only supposed to apply to commercial sellers, but private ones get blocked too just like that!
The packaging regulation would therefore force private sellers of used goods to buy some certificates for "eco" packaging, and they don’t even know about it because they think the listings are available worldwide, since that’s how they set it up!
Years ago I used to like buying older speakers to tinker with because you could sometimes get them pretty fairly in the States. Those purchases have now dropped to ZERO because ONLY German eBay customers are being harassed with regulations that make no sense whatsoever!
I don’t want to hear any stupid lecturing or excuses anymore, and I’m so fed up now that I will turn massively to forums, the press, and politics if these abuses are not finally fixed!!! eBay should actually be big enough to positively influence such bad developments!
georgem.
·11 months agoI can't say that, I'm assuming it's the eBay global shipping program. After all, the seller assumes that if they offer global sales, that is indeed the case. Apparently he isn't informed of this exception anywhere - even if the product affects the category.
Try a "relay station" with it, which doesn't exactly make the process easier - organizing a recipient address in a neighboring country really strains your circle of friends and family…
I'll report whether this way works
miriam@ebay
Hello @georgem. - I’ve gladly taken another look at it. The item in question is shipped from the US with the eBay International Shipping program. As you already know, there are limitations, especially in the auto parts area, which mean that shipping to Germany via this program is not possible.
Shipping therefore has to be handled outside of this program, which means that the other person would have to add a new international shipping service to the offer via the shipping settings in order to handle customs clearance themselves and send the item directly to you.
Maybe one more note that could help with the communication: In the edit listing view go to shipping policy if you use them > edit policy > scroll down to International shipping > then there is an option 'Add shipping services'
I hope you’ll find a solution! 🙂
Kind regards
Miriam
miriam@ebay
Hello @lasse_reinboeng, @petersmodellbahnstuebchen and @katzenjogi! I followed up on this behind the scenes, and it’s understandable that it’s annoying for buyers in Germany when offers from the USA appear on eBay.com as "shippable worldwide" but then aren’t available.
As you correctly recognized, in many cases this is due to legal requirements (Correction 13.08.2025)
We are continuing to review how we can handle such cases better. At the same time, we recommend that you contact the sellers directly with important shipping questions – sometimes a manual solution is possible.
Kind regards
Miriam
katzenjogi
·1 year agoHello @miriam@ebay
But isn’t eBay Germany then basically violating this law, since private sellers are explicitly exempt from it?
I also have to be honest, there really shouldn’t be any technical software issue with teaching the system that shipping restrictions should be lifted for privately registered sellers; that would be a simple "if....then" algorithm.
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·1 year agoHi @katzenjogi
I don't think that Ebay is violating the packaging ordinance with its decision to apply the packaging ordinance to all sellers in certain countries. Because it only says to whom it must be applied. Ebay is going too far here, in my opinion. However, I'm not a lawyer who could judge this definitively.
However, Ebay is contradicting itself here, because if this were enforced consistently, private sellers in Germany would also not be allowed to offer shipping within Germany without LUCID registration.
My guess is rather that Ebay.com initiated this approach and Ebay.de is simply following suit.
But I do agree with you that a simple technical solution could be implemented without system problems if they wanted to.
miriam@ebay
Hello @lasse_reinboeng - I need to get back to you on this once more, as a recheck has shown that the information I shared here on 8/08/2025 was unfortunately not correct.
The actual reason why, for example, item number 357020930885 cannot be shipped from the USA to Germany via the eBay International Shipping Programme is German customs restrictions. For certain product groups, product safety labels are required and since eBay cannot individually review all items sold on our platform, it was decided to block these goods from shipping to certain countries - including Germany.
However, you can still clarify directly with the seller whether the item can perhaps be shipped to your address after all. In this case, the listing would need to be adjusted accordingly and an additional international shipping option for Germany would need to be added. We cannot confirm a block due to a missing LUCID number. not confirm. It was important to me to clarify that once again.
Thanks for your exchange in this topic and best regards
Miriam
georgem.
·11 months agoHi,
Well, it's already helpful that it has to do with a missing LUCID number…
However, I have the same problem with a different item in the audio category.
These are used audio transformers from the 60s/70s that were made in Germany and therefore cannot have any "product safety labels" .
Following your advice, I asked the seller to adjust the listing accordingly.
Their response:
"I tried to edit it, but I couldn't add Germany so I could ship to you. I apologize."
So the problem can't be solved that way, and it still exists.
The blanket approach:
"For certain product groups, product safety labels are required, and since eBay can't individually check all items sold on our platform, it has been decided to block these goods from shipping to certain countries - including Germany"
…isn't particularly customer-friendly, and no alternative is offered (or am I overlooking something - apart from using a delivery address with a friend abroad as a forwarding address or "relay station")
seeking help (and a little disappointed)
geo
katzenjogi
·11 months agoHello @georgem.
Does the seller ship via the eBay Global Shipping Program, or do they use another shipping provider?
The main problem here is actually the GSP, which is quite inflexible.
katzenjogi
·1 year agoHello @lasse_reinboeng
what you can clearly see in your linked article, though, is the fact that Germany simply doesn’t appear in the countries where the seller wants to deliver. Whether that’s intentional or due to the eBay algorithms, I can’t say.
Although honestly I can’t believe that eBay Germany has so much influence in the world that, because of that, Germany doesn’t show up in a listing in the US on eBay US, even if the seller had specifically enabled it in their shipping locations.
As I understand it, that would only be handled that way on eBay Germany, meaning that certain items are not shown here due to German laws, but that eBay US takes German sensitivities into account when you’re logged in there directly - so on ebay.com and not ebay.de - I can’t imagine that.
But you never stop learning, and since the Toyota ad we know that nothing is impossible.
lasse_reinboeng
OP1 year agoHi Katzenjogi
You can be sure that I’ve already contacted the sellers more than once because of these restrictions and none of them ever knew anything about the fact that their offer wasn’t being offered in Germany because apparently regulations are being implemented incorrectly. They simply offered worldwide through global shipping and assume that their offers would also be deliverable here.
Only after a lot of research do you find out that this clearly comes down to this amendment to the Packaging Act and that it is also being implemented incorrectly because it is not supposed to affect private sellers at all!
So again: the requirement that since around 2020 commercial sellers of, for example, electronic items have had to buy so-called LUCID certificates from dubious eco foundations for a lot of money in order to be allowed to package and ship their goods - these restrictions do not affect private sellers!
For the items where I’ve been wondering for a long time why worldwide shipping is offered but, strangely enough, they supposedly can’t be delivered only to Germany - these items are private listings and no seller ever excluded Germany!
So with virtually 100% certainty, this is a regulation that has been interpreted incorrectly, which apparently only eBay Germany has programmed in this way and for which there is no legal justification.
It wasn’t easy to figure all of this out, and because of the nature of the matter you don’t learn anything from the clueless sellers nor from eBay
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·1 year agoHi @lasse_reinboeng
as far as the packaging regulation in Germany, but also in other EU countries, is concerned, eBay is the wrong contact.
In Germany, the law is simply regulated so that a commercial seller who ships goods in Germany must register with LUCID (central packaging register). To do this, the seller must join a system operator for a fee. And then report the annual packaging materials (paper, cardboard, plastic film, metal, glass, etc.) to them. Without fulfilling these requirements, a commercial trader simply may not ship to Germany. This also applies to foreign merchants. If they do not meet these requirements, they may not deliver to Germany.
Other EU countries are also affected by this. If I were to deliver to Austria, for example, I would also have to fulfill similar requirements for this country and report planned and actual quantities there as well and pay for them. In addition, Austria requires that an authorized representative be named there who confirms the correct processing (of course for a fee)
Similar rules also apply to France.
So please don't always complain about eBay, because in the end they have to take responsibility for ensuring that such rules are complied with.
This and other factors have contributed to me no longer shipping abroad at all.
I think many other sellers abroad have similar considerations. After all, why should someone from the USA register in Germany just to possibly sell 10 - 100 shipments per year to Germany?
I also think it is questionable whether eBay-DE checks this for private sellers as well. Perhaps @miriam@ebay could comment on this again tomorrow.
lasse_reinboeng
OP1 year agoHi Peter
By now I actually think that eBay is more likely at fault here. As I said, I’m talking about private listings, mostly used hi-fi gear. Because of the green packaging-regulation madness with LUCID & Co, that really shouldn’t be affected at all!
As an example, let’s take a look at https://www.ebay.com/itm/357020930885
The speakers are offered by a private seller. Shipping to Germany is missing not because the seller doesn’t want to ship here, but now it gets mysterious: if you click on the few excluded crisis regions worldwide under shipping, Germany isn’t listed there. However, Germany is also missing from the extremely long list of countries to which delivery is possible!
For that reason, the sellers you contact about this are always pretty clueless and can’t help any further.
And now, for the countries mentioned last where delivery isn’t a problem, you can just search for Germany’s EU neighbors for fun — and look, they’re all there! The item can be shipped to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Denmark — ONLY NOT TO GERMANY!
This example is absolutely not an isolated case. There are hundreds! As far as I remember, it started in 2023, when suddenly in categories where people used to buy often, there were no more listings with shipping to Germany.
So it seems pretty obvious that, through a rigid interpretation of new regulations for goods and also for private sellers who shouldn’t even be affected, many listings have been excluded from sales to Germany, which of course creates a competitive disadvantage, because Germany is hardly the smallest market on the continent or even worldwide.
Most likely, once again, people here wanted to be the eco role model and are doing things on a scale that would be unthinkable elsewhere. In the process, the packaging rules are being applied to goods and especially to sellers who, as already explained, aren’t actually affected at all! Since today even warning-letter law firms are already making stupid amounts of money by finding minor errors in the wording of legal notices, this case should probably be “reported” to good lawyers specialized in international trade law! They’ll surely find a way to put an end to the mistaken application of packaging regulations to private sellers.... together with not insignificant fines for years of legal violations
flamme887
·1 year agoDoes what you're describing apply only to commercial sellers and not to private ones? But the poster is talking about private sellers and not commercial ones, or am I misunderstanding something here?
It works on other platforms too 🙂
petersmodellbahnstuebchen
·1 year agoHi @flamme887
please read the reply from yesterday by @miriam@ebay again:
"Although the law is generally not aimed at private sellers, eBay has to build in technical protective measures to ensure deliveries comply with the law. In certain categories, this can lead to a system-side restriction on shipping to Germany - even if the affected sellers* themselves know nothing about it."
If eBay interprets the regulation that way, then that’s just how it is. However, eBay seems to have only applied this to international shipments to Germany so far.
My addition to that was that eBay should also apply this to sales within Germany.
And what other platforms do doesn’t matter if you want to buy and sell here.
flamme887
·1 year agoIn my opinion, eBay simply doesn’t put enough thought into making it suitable for both commercial and private sellers. They just take the easy way out. Such a shame.
hasjana
·1 year agothe seller ships via eBay International Shipping, there are always restrictions that certain items cannot be shipped to country xy through it
bootyooty
·1 year agoAnyone who, as a private seller, offers new goods over 100 times should be instructed by eBay immediately to register as a business seller; THAT would be fair and appropriate