eBay Germany Adds Value To Shop Subscriptions With Free Legal Consultations, Advice & Support
eBay sellers in Germany can now take advantage of free legal consultations, advice, and support as part of their existing Shop subscriptions.
The recent development taps partners in the legal and compliance industry in effort to add value for business sellers with Shops (translated by Google).
Services from Trusted Shops and exclusive legal advice for eBay Shops
We've worked closely with Trusted Shops for many years to protect you from costly cease-and-desist letters with the Basic Warning Protection Package. Trusted Shops offers you comprehensive legal security and support, allowing you to focus on growing your business.Learn more
Now new for eBay Shops: The lawyers at Föhlisch Law Firm, in collaboration with Trusted Shops, offer individual advice on contracts, data protection, intellectual property in e-commerce, and many other topics.
For you, as a shop subscriber, the consultation is free of charge. eBay covers the costs. Take advantage of this opportunity and ask your questions to our legal experts! More about our legal advice.
First, eBay's partnership with Trusted Shops gives German sellers access to Basic protection including:
- Legal texts: Legal notice-proof terms and conditions, imprint, privacy policy and cancellation policy in German and English
- Liability and update service: Including liability and regular updates via email
- Whitepapers and checklists: After registering with Trusted Shops - access to extensive resources for legal protection in the self-service area
- GDPR tool:Tool for creating a processing register according to GDPR
- Data protection training: Online data protection training for awareness and further education
- Sample contracts and reply letters: Templates for data protection matters and communication
Through that Trusted Shops partnership, eBay is also now offering Shop subscribers one free 30 minute consultation with legal experts from the Föhlisch law firm per year, giving advice on ecommerce business topics like:
- Data protection law / questions about the GDPR (including data subject rights)
- AI law
- Law of digital services
- Debt management
- Design law
- IT law
- Trademark
- law Copyright law
- Contract law
- Warranty law
- Right of withdrawal
- Competition
- law Civil law
- Product law (e.g. food law, battery law, electrical law)
- Distance selling law
- Price information law
- Social media law
- Packaging law
- Youth protection law
- E-commerce law
With AI hype still in full swing, sellers will no doubt appreciate insights on how new technologies could impact their legal liabilities - though it would appear that eBay itself may need some additional legal help in that area, since Germany privacy regulators are questioning the company's plans to train their AI on user data.
Liz Morton
How It Works
eBay German sellers can follow these steps to access their free legal consultation:
- Check eligibility: Make sure you have a store subscription.
- Book a session: Select the time that suits you best on the booking page.
- Prepare questions: Collect your legal questions before the consultation to make the best use of the consultation time
- Get advice: Discuss your legal concerns at the agreed time in the online consultation.
Per the terms and conditions of the program, legal advice is provided by the Föhlisch law firm on behalf of Trusted Shops. eBay merely facilitates the offer and does not provide any legal services in this context.
The consultation is only available to commercial (business) sellers with an active eBay Shop subscription. Bookings are made via an online platform provided by the Föhlisch law firm and appointments will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
The consultation will take place virtually via a secure online meeting platform and is limited to a maximum of 30 minutes. To make the most of the consultation time, participants are asked to prepare their legal questions in advance.
The lawyers at Föhlisch Law Firm provide guidance and recommendations based on the information provided by the merchant. This service does not include :
- the preparation or review of specific legal documents,
- representation before courts or authorities,
- further legal support beyond the session.
The move comes as eBay has focused heavily on consumer to consumer (C2C) sellers in the region in recent years with Germany being the first market where the company got rid of Final Value Fees for private sellers in 2023 and has since launched social media and marketing initiatives and special events specifically geared toward increasing C2C sales on the platform.
Liz Morton
While eBay CEO Jamie Iannone has been quick to tout the success of these C2C efforts in Germany and the UK, they've also left many business sellers in both markets feeling like they are no longer getting the same value for the fees they are paying and are in fact actually subsidizing those initiatives while also now having to compete against private sellers who are no longer paying commission fees.
That growing feeling of paying more for less has only been exacerbated by changes eBay has made to Promoted Listings ad attribution, first in Germany and now also in the UK, Australia, France, Spain and Italy, which hit business sellers hardest with policies that exponentially increase the number of sales that will incur ad fees.
Liz Morton
In response, eBay appears to be trying to find ways to differentiate services and features between private and business sellers - but much of what they've done so far has either been removing certain existing features from private sellers while keeping them for business sellers (which provides no new value to businesses) or introducing new services or features that come at a cost.
For example, eBay Germany offers multiple levels of growth support for commercial/business sellers starting with an entry level program for new accounts which offers perks including 3 months of 0% commission fees, a mid-level program with 1:1 consulting on the basics of eBay selling for those who have been on the platform for more than a year but have sold less than €100,000, and a more advanced Pro Trader program for select businesses over €100,000 which appears to be roughly equivalent to the Pro Seller program in the US - all of which are at no cost to the seller.
And for those sellers looking for longer-term access to elevated support and consulting with eBay Advisors, there's an Account Management option for €199 per month
Legal and compliance advice and support could be a valuable perk particularly in the EU where online commercial sellers are faced with a more complex and heavily enforced regulatory environment than in the US.
What do you think of eBay's latest service offering for business sellers in Germany and would you sign up for a legal consultation if they expanded the program to other markets? Let us know in the comments below!
