Hi
I started responding yesterday and found just before i posted it, that something has changed on Google Base, so i didn't post the info until i knew all the info. It appears that many people from about the 1st of march have started having issues with Google Base, with feeds being declined that were OK before, and other issues such as characters that were being allowed before, now being rejected. I have a consultant who specialises in Google base looking at this feed at the moment, to see if it is a fault of the feed, or the way Google accepts it.
You have to remember though, that Google Base is still in a beta form, and also free, whihc means there is very little i can do to push it along accept hope it starts working again.
There are a few emails and questions asking about why feeds arnt showing all their products, i think it may be usually because the feed has duplicate item IDs because the user has added the same product to more than one category. This is then causing Google to think that the feed is sending duplicated info up and declining the feed.
http://groups.google.com/group/base-help-bulk/browse_thread/thread/f5fefe427dc9d59f/4f36b8198279bce6#4f36b8198279bce6
The issue with German Characters is because they are special characters, so they need to be converted into a format that the XML will accept, which is what the feed should be doing anyway. The problem is Google must not be accepting them still, or somethign has changed, as i know i could upload greek charactors before and so can other clients.
http://groups.google.com/group/base-help-bulk/browse_thread/thread/3d2b4d97aa599004/acfd44a1c2100eb0?lnk=gst&q=characters#acfd44a1c2100eb0
This explains that Google doesn't like simple encoded special characters, and the way we got around it with the most common character is simple filtering them out to remove them completely.
I am looking into a solution for this, but haven't replied yet, as i have no new info to give over.
Ill keep you informed.
Regards
Ian