OT: Paying Germans for Ebay

No, bank transfer is on the contrary very easy and for payments in Europe it is free. I am not sure however if you can pay in UKP.

You have to ask the IBAN-number (International Bank Account Number) and the BIC-code (Bank Intervantional Code). It takes about 2 days for the transfer to be realised. It is safe, conveniant and it is one of the most stimulating measures that have been taken in order to increase the e-commerce.

5 years ago every international payment -even for 1 Eur- had automatically 13 Eur Banc costs, now that transfer is free.

Tom De Moor

It's interesting how few Germans take PayPal because over there bank transfers are quick and free. You should be able to put money into your paypal account and send that but I've never actually done it.

It's quite expensive to do from the UK to Germany. Last time the bank fees were almost as much as the item.

XETrade service is easy, cheap and efficient. Ball ache to sign up though as they have loads of super-paranoid checks they need to do, being an American company and all that. I've got an account, I could find out how much it's going to cost, then you could paypal me the money.

Last time I used it it cost about =A37 to send $11,000 and a really good exchange rate. Should cost less with a small amount. Money takes about a week to arrive, maybe quicker if it's EU to EU.

If you can't find a better way of doing it, email me at the spamtrap address and I'll sort you out.

Yeah, just set your debit card up in the same was as you do a credit card. I've only ever used debit cards on Paypal.

That was what I was thinking. Apparently banks are slapping hefty charges on (working lunch yesterday).

Hurray for England! Bank transfer costs £20, international bankers draft, £15. Or in other words, pretty much what the item costs. And that'll be plus the bank's s**te exchange rate.

Send him a wedge of Euros in the post, or write him a cheque.

I didn't know it was on over the weekend.

Err no, there's a £25 fee.

You can but you have to suffer a fecking awful exchange rate. It's one instance where PayPal actually works well.

If the seller only has a Paypal personal account (free) then they can't accept payment from debit or credit cards, they can only accept money held in your account. To accept credit card payments they have to upgrade to a Premier/Business account and pay the associated Paypal fees.

Which you can put into your account with a debit or credit card or direct from your bank account.

I send funds. Paypal pulls funds direct from my card. Then after it is sure it has them, it then sends the reciever the funds. The reciever don't see the credit card details.

I've only, until recently only ever used my credit card. And I've bought stuff from all over the world.

It's more to do with the fees paypal charge the recipient when you send funds from a credit card. (They also IIRC need a minimum before they can take them out and get charged for that as well).

That's unfortunately only true if you make transfers within the Eurozone. From here, they charge an arm and a leg. Cheapest bank I could find to do these transfers (which I used to do quite often) is the Co-Operative Bank and even they charge (I think) GBP 8 for a transfer to Germany.

Oh, and it takes a week for the money to get there, too.

For the OP - I'd send Euro cash in a padded envelope.