Reply from PCB company in China..
Hi Chris，
Thank you very much for your inquiry. May I ask if you are selling your boards on Amazon? I have checked the article and have a general understanding of that new regulation. It seems to affect Amazon sellers the most.
These new regulations do create complications for many companies, and we very much understand the impact they may have on your sales and the open source community as a whole. At the moment we are able to sell our boards normally to Northern Europe, mainly the Netherlands, France and other countries (normal declaration).
While the situation is still somewhat unclear, we will actively review how best to comply with the new requirements in order to continue to serve our European customers.
Have you tried to improve some fundamental information in accordance with the regulations?
Best Regards,
So I don't think they even knew about and and don't understand it either.
I watched a lot of videos last night on it all. Even people who have had face to face meetings with ebay reps. Odd thing so far, is ebay private sellers don't need to comply (which makes no sense). Someone else reported private sellers are being forced over to business sellers. One said the "EU overseas responsible person" is optional, which makes no sense. I don't think ebay even understand what's going on.
Overall, there has been a HUGE number of sellers who have already stopped selling to EU. A lot are simply giving up as the information they want is stupid, the costs of a EU rep is insane. Its totally impossible for people to trade in the EU under the current law.
I still have not seen any chatter on what people INSIDE the EU are doing. They only difference they seem to have , is they can represent themselves. But it still basically wipes out a lot of the small sellers market due to all the work involved anyway. It seems to be nobody in the EU seems to know this is even happening yet. Mostly its been the focus on the UK side of it all. There's no chatter from USA people (from what I have seen so far) about how they are going to send stuff to EU either. I can only assume, people are simply unaware of it all.
Ebay people saying it takes long enough to fill information out on ebay listings as it is. They not going to spend all day looking for more information to sell the odd one-off item. Problem being for old items there is no manufactures contacts as they don't exist anymore. Currently people saying they tried putting in "zeros" into the information boxes and ebay accepted the info, but god knows how that's going to end, likely not well.
From what I understand, ebay will hide listings within the EU which does not have the proper information. So I would imagine a lot of sellers are not even aware that their sales could possibly crash in about a weeks time. Peoples EU sales could drop significantly for UK sellers for example, if the sellers are unaware of what is going on there will be left slightly confused as to why their sales have significantly dropped for no apparent reason.
Also a lot of platforms will ban you if you do not comply with the new regulations.. So I think is going to be a lot of angry people very soon.. While there is normally a bit of a boom towards Christmas for a lot of sellers, things generally go quiet after Christmas anyway. So I think people just assume it seems unusually quieter than previous years not really understand why it has happened. It could take some people at least two months to figure out something is even wrong!
In 2023, the United Kingdom exported approximately £356 billion worth of goods and services to the European Union, accounting for 42% of all UK exports. Imports from the EU during the same period amounted to about £466 billion, representing 52% of the UK's total imports.
These figures highlight the significant role the EU plays in the UK's trade landscape, with a substantial portion of both exports and imports linked to EU member states.
UK's Export Composition:
Small Businesses: According to the UK's Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for about 30% of all UK exports. While not all of this is to the EU, a substantial portion is likely tied to EU markets due to their proximity and economic ties.
Large Firms: The remaining 70% of exports are dominated by large corporations.
It is unclear how much of that is down to small sellers but is probably some the insignificant amount which the European Union seem happy to write off as collateral damage. It also begs the question of what the UK government is doing about all this.. Likely nothing.. But this affects everyone in the world not just the UK.. Something seriously does not add up with all this...... Nobody should have the power to write off the entire small business market like this! But in this day and age, I am really not surprised about anything anymore.
There has been a small number of people who said they are just going to battle it out. But there was talks of fines up to £20,000 and up to 15 years imprisonment depending on the offence. A lot of people read this is as extremely threatening behaviour and of course simply don't want to get involved with the risks. Seems to be a rising trend of companies basically threatening people and getting away with it all the time. We all might as well be in martial law at this point.. Always "do as we say or else" . Those who think I'm talking crap, for starters just go look at the videos of what threatening letters the BBC send out people continuously over the TV licencing. I personally have had many threatening letters from companies over the years. But that that's all another problem anyway...
Again there is nothing of what people inside the EU are going to do about all the additional paperwork and time involved with all this. The only saving grace to me personally is that thank God we are not in the EU, as even without the representative problem I just could not deal with all the additional administration work. I would be shutting down my store permanently on Monday and it would literally be game over. I just hope to God that the UK doesn't start implementing the same laws as we could all be going through all this again.
Some people remain hopeful that the EU recognise the damage what they are doing will correct it later on. But the problem is, the damage is already in motion and already causing people to shut down. The bulk of sellers sapping shutting down over the past month already. So for a lot of people it's kind of irrelevant if they fix this problem in weeks months or years down the line. Its going to be simply too late. One person suggested finding out what person created this law and putting their address in as the responsible person. Sounds like a good thing to do to me!!
TL;DR
The whole thing is just simply ludicrous and companies really need to start treating citizens and small sellers better. The amount of stress this has caused me alone and a huge volume of sellers on eBay and other platforms have seriously caused a lot of distress for a lot of people. People already suffering and there only trying to make a living doing what they can and they just see it like me, the "powers that be" just continuously pull the rug out from under them. I mean these people are willing to work in trying to "go it alone" , should really be supported not penalised for their efforts!
:mad: :mad: :mad: