Paying Overseas Seller Via Bank Deposit

Ms-Money-Penny

Interested in an item on Germany ebay - seller only accepts bank deposit

Any advice on how this works as i've never paid by this method before

thanks :xmassign:

Dave_the_Ginger_Cat

Would not recommend - you have little if any redress if you do not receive the goods. It will also cost you money to get a Euro bank transfer unless you happen to work for a bank.

Amba_Gambla

smells like a scam to me.... would not accept

motorguy

Amba_Gambla wrote:

smells like a scam to me.... would not accept

so a presumably german seller selling on german ebay and taking direct bank deposits for payment sounds like a scam??

charlie12

If the seller has good feedback and the item value is not too high then it should be ok.

The transfer fee might be quite a bit though. £20-ish at a rough guess

Many German eBay sellers do not accept Paypal (do a quick search on german sellers who ship to UK). I think it's something to do with their privacy laws IIRC.

Amba_Gambla

pgilc1 wrote:

so a presumably german seller selling on german ebay and taking direct bank deposits for payment sounds like a scam??

no, but I would never go in for a direct bank transfer with someone who couldn't track down afterwards.....

Maybe i'm too suspicious, but I definately wouldn;t go in for any transaction where i was required to make a transfer

OllieLong

People in Germany nearly all use bank transfers as the norm and as a result PayPal is free within Germany as they cannot compete with the banks. You should just check out their feedback and take into the amount you are going to paying. It should be OK but take the necessary precautions as usual.

innovate

OllieLong is absolutely correct. In fact, bank transfers [with no, or very low charges] are the usual payment method throughout Euroland.

But as Dave The Ginger Cat says, it will cost a lot to do a bank transfer - £14 is the lowest I have seen, £20 the highest! UK Banks are making an absolute killing from currency transfers.

There are quite a few other threads on this subject. If you are really desperate for the item, do a search on "germany" or "euro" or "moneybookers" to find some more ideas

You could also email the seller and ask them whether they'd accept Paypal - - they might be desperate to sell and might make an exception. But be prepared that they'd ask you to add the Paypal fees to your payment (20p + 3.4% + 0.5%). Alternative could be Moneybookers, they are cheaper than Paypal for higher amounts.

innovate

BTW, about legitimacy of bank transfers:

German eBay sellers even have the option to record all their bank details (including international transfer data such as IBAN) on their eBay profile. When they set up an auction, all the data can then get automatically added to the auction. eBay recommends this payment method (alongside Payapl as another option). For those who speak german, the details are here

This is in stark difference to ebay.co.uk, where the advice is not to use bank transfers because, according to eBay, Payment is difficult to recover or cancel, and Involves sharing personal account information. The first reason is absolutely correct, the second is really poppycock because no more information than on a cheque is involved. Cheques are even covered under the UK eBay Buyer Protection, why not bank transfers? It is pretty obvious that eBay UK policy is to scare people away from bank transfers, so that they can cash in on the Paypal fees.

OllieLong

I agree with you that they want people to stay away from bank transfers because of PayPal fees but hopefully in the (near) future we in Britain will be able to use bank transfers for free and feel that it is secure and then PayPal will go downhill and have to decrease their charges or scrap them for good!

innovate

OllieLong wrote:

hopefully in the (near) future we in Britain will be able to use bank transfers for free

Do you mean free transfers to Euros? I doubt it will ever be totally free to do that. At least not until Britain adopts the Euro, and that seems a long way off, if ever. But as Moneybookers prove, there's really no reason why anybody should charge £12 - £20 per transfer transaction (or a set %age fee like Paypal do).