eBay’s Global Marketplace Shrinks With New Restrictions On Some Overseas Sellers

eBay is tightening restrictions on international sales to the US with blocks on shipping from overseas warehouses and lower maximum item value limits for many overseas sellers without a dedicated account rep.

First, in April 2025, eBay instituted an overseas warehouse blocking policy, requiring explicit authorization requirements for forward-deployed inventory.

This policy applies to items shipped by a seller from a warehouse in a country different from the seller’s registered address with eBay.

Overseas Warehouse Block Policy: Authorization Requirements for Forward-Deployed Inventory

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What you need to know
Effective April 1, 2025, new sellers with their eBay account registered address in the countries listed below will be required to eBay apply for approval to ship items from an overseas warehouse.

Existing Sellers: eBay has automatically examined to see if existing seller accounts have good forward-deployment selling history. Those with good forward-deployment selling history have been permitted to continue forward deployment.

New Sellers: New sellers, who do not have any forward-deployment selling history, need to apply for eBay approval.

The policy initially applied to a long list of countries, strangely also including Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands which are domestic territories, with India, Israel, Ukraine, Turkey, Singapore also added in July.

eBay has also instituted item value limitations for these same countries, initially setting the maximum at $2500 but dropping that to $500, including shipping, on August 27, 2025.

If affected sellers don't have shipping to the US voluntarily blocked for items over $500, eBay will end the listings completely and the only exception to the policy is for sellers who have a dedicated account manager.

eBay Seller Listing Policy Update for Sales to the United States

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Starting from August 27, 2025, sellers with their eBay account registered address in the countries listed below and without a dedicated account manager will be restricted from listing items that ship to the United States and have a value of US$500 or above (including shipping fee).

While, sellers will not be able to list items valued at or above US$500 on www.ebay.com, they can still list items that (a) ship to US and are valued at less than US$500 and (b) ship to non-US regions on other sites (except www.ebay.com), irrespective of price.

On other sites, sellers should ensure United States is an excluded shipping region for items valued at US$500 or above.

From the effective date of the policy, all existing listings that violate this policy will be ended.

eBay says the policy has been put in place to provide a better buyer experience, but some sellers suspect the fact the limit was lowered just days before the end of the de minimis exemption for items being imported into the US is likely not a coincidence.

Others have pointed out that it's unlikely solely related to de minimis changes as items in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands would be treated as domestic shipments that don't require formal customs clearance, and the UK and many other European countries are not on the list and don't have these restrictions applied.

Their list doesn't make any sense. Why they make these differences between these European countries? EU has one border and there is not much difference which countries you ship from EU as the import duty is the same. Also from Europe we also can use USP and Fedex, it takes care of the import of the item as well just like before over the minimis limit change.

Also this $500 doesn't make any sense and I can't see how it is related to the minimis change, as some European countries can still send over $500 and others not.

They should have only restriced seller acounts with many bad ratings, not older ones with good ratings...This decision was terrible, they basically banned people from these countries to sell to the US even if you are trusted seller with many years on the site.