An eBay moderator confirmed the company has been enrolling sellers into its “Cross Border Listing Program” that is powered by third-party vendor WebInterpret. It is an ongoing program that is presented to some sellers as an opt-in promotion and to other sellers as a promotion they must opt-out of if they choose not to participate.
A seller started a discussion today on the eBay boards looking for answers after they received an email this week informing them they had been enrolled in the program. They said when they contacted eBay, its customer service reps were unable to provide information or even confirm the validity of the email.
The eBay moderator responding on the thread wrote, “This service is free and something we are happy to provide to our sellers to increase their visibility and ultimately boost their sales.”
The moderator said the program translates eligible listings and posts them to 6 major eBay sites. He said the listings would not create duplicate listings, nor would they incur insertion fees. And he said listings where sellers use eBay’s Global Shipping Program would not be included.
However, some sellers were concerned that fees would apply after the promotion duration.
Sellers posted screenshots of various permutations of the notice from eBay about the program. There was lots of back-and-forth between the moderator and sellers concerned about the program. We’ve documented numerous instances where sellers have felt they have been burned by being enrolled in the program just by clicking on a link in the email looking for more information.
The takeaways from today’s discussion: be alert to emails that look like marketing emails to make sure they aren’t actually notifications; and if you have questions about eBay’s Cross Border Listing Program powered by WebInterpret, take a look at the thread, it may be helpful.
Over on our Facebook page, a reader noted, “thought we were supposed to have 24/7 worldwide exposure since 1995? This explains why all my international sales were always just Australia I guess?”
I tried it briefly.
I could not view what they were actually doing to my listings which I found a real turn-off. Next instead of getting 5,000 listings I was restricted to something like 100 or less listings per site. So I figured it was not worth my time and promptly cancel service with them which they did handle without a hassle.
With all the issues they have had with WebInterpret charging excessive amounts and making it impossible to unsubscribe from their program, Ebay had better not automatically EVER enroll me in their program. They suddenly have your items listed in all these different markets and each of those listings count against your limits, even though its the same item. You know at some point in time Ebay is going to be getting money from this arrangement whether a sale happens or not as that is their entire scheme to increase revenues now, suck more money from current sellers without necessitating a sale to have occurred and heaven forbid you do make a sale through this program I am sure that WebInterpret is going to have their hand out for a piece of the pie in addition to Ebay. Heck for all anybody knows, Ebay may own WebInterpret and this is just another way to dig deeper into the sellers pockets as they are getting more and more desperate while waiting to throw everybody into Mangled Payments where they can really start stealing everybodys’ money.
I’ve been enrolled in this program since December 2018. It has resulted in $1000s of dollars in international sales with NO FEES whatsoever other than normal eBay fees. No out of stock problems as webinterpret revises each listing quantity whenever something is sold. I have about 2900 items in my eBay store and another 12,000 or so on other sites, UK, France, Germany, and Australia. Just this weekend I’ve had over $120 in sales due to webinterpret listings. I keep PayPal balances in USD, GBP, Euros, and AUD, and convert to USD whenever I want. I generally keep a healthy balance in Euros so I can buy from European sites without incurring losses due to currency conversion.