I've now opened a shop at DaWanda, a German owned shopping website for handmade gifts and craft items, so will be listing my jewellery in euros there as well as in dollars on Etsy. Have yet to decide which UK site to go for but feel occupied enough with listing on those two for now. DaWanda has versions of their website in English, French and German and you can buy or sell on any one of these, although selling on the non-English ones really does require language skills if you are to interact with customers, sort out queries etc. I'm told that the German one is the most successful one to sell on, but as I have zero German I'll only venture as far as the French one once I've listed enough in English.
Having said that I thought I would buy some jewellery supplies on the German DaWanda in order to start off my feedback score, as it is hard to start selling as a newbie with zero feedback on any website of this sort. Some items I also bought from Singapore and Turkey, but I could happily pay via Paypal for those using my credit card. Most people in Europe pay by bank transfer rather than by credit card when buying goods online, so as I use online banking I bought some coin charms from a lady in Austria for 2.70 euros. What I hadn't anticipated was the £9.50 in bank charges that my bank added on for this transaction. Rather than confirm and complete the transaction today, I'm having to phone my bank tomorrow to find out how I can pay such a small amount without such hefty charges.
And to make matters even more ridiculous, when I set up this international bank transfer I had to wait for an automatic phone call from my bank and type in a special code before they would allow me to proceed with transferring the sum of 2.70 euros. Give me Paypal any day, and fortunately most sellers on DaWanda accept Paypal. You do have to check the payment methods accepted by each seller though, as they vary. It makes me wonder whether I should scrap bank transfer as an accepted payment method from my own customers, although I don't recall ever having this sort of problem when I was selling on eBay a few years ago.
You are given up to 7 days to pay on DaWanda and I emailed the seller to tell her what had happened (in English) although I'm sure she thought I was talking about the currency exchange rate rather than my bank charges. Hopefully this will get sorted out somehow or other, but it does go to show how important it is to become familiar with a new website as a buyer first.
Having said that I thought I would buy some jewellery supplies on the German DaWanda in order to start off my feedback score, as it is hard to start selling as a newbie with zero feedback on any website of this sort. Some items I also bought from Singapore and Turkey, but I could happily pay via Paypal for those using my credit card. Most people in Europe pay by bank transfer rather than by credit card when buying goods online, so as I use online banking I bought some coin charms from a lady in Austria for 2.70 euros. What I hadn't anticipated was the £9.50 in bank charges that my bank added on for this transaction. Rather than confirm and complete the transaction today, I'm having to phone my bank tomorrow to find out how I can pay such a small amount without such hefty charges.
And to make matters even more ridiculous, when I set up this international bank transfer I had to wait for an automatic phone call from my bank and type in a special code before they would allow me to proceed with transferring the sum of 2.70 euros. Give me Paypal any day, and fortunately most sellers on DaWanda accept Paypal. You do have to check the payment methods accepted by each seller though, as they vary. It makes me wonder whether I should scrap bank transfer as an accepted payment method from my own customers, although I don't recall ever having this sort of problem when I was selling on eBay a few years ago.
You are given up to 7 days to pay on DaWanda and I emailed the seller to tell her what had happened (in English) although I'm sure she thought I was talking about the currency exchange rate rather than my bank charges. Hopefully this will get sorted out somehow or other, but it does go to show how important it is to become familiar with a new website as a buyer first.
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