I have a prospective buyer, who has asked me to send an invoice for what is in his cart.

[ddesabrais]

He says that other sellers have told him to put the items in his cart, and they would send an invoice. 

Can I as a seller do that without him requesting an invoice? I've never seen how to do that if it is possible. Is there a way for me to see his cart?

Thanks

[ricarmic]

No we can't wee what is in their cart. This happens to me all the time.

The only way for this to be accomlished as far as I know is to ask them to let you know the items they are interested in via an ebay message so you can advise of the combined shipping (Im presuming thats the reason they're asking).

Some of my buyers can, some can't purchase without paying immediately, plus I have stuff they've often picked from both .COM and .CA.

[pjcdn2005]

As ricarmic said, there is no way for you to see what is in their cart right now.

If they are on a pc rather than on a mobile, they may be able to click on request total on the top right of the cart.  That does not always work for various reasons but it is worth a try. 

[recped]

Follow up to @pjcdn2005 

The Request Total button is NOT available in the App (ever!)

It is sporadically available via the regular desktop version of eBay.

Without getting into the minutia, in 2012 (yup 10 years ago this month) eBay designed and implemented an algorithm that decides if the Request Total button is enabled or not. In the original announcement there were SOME details about what would trigger a disabling. It became quickly clear that there were many factors that were never disclosed and a few of the ones that were given actually didn't have any effect (listings with Local Pickup were supposed to be exempt).

Later most traces of the original announcement and the few details in the Help files were removed and/or moved to very obscure locations. As time passed, due to turnover at eBay fewer and fewer people even knew the program existed and would deny there was anything like the "forced IPR" that buyers and sellers would encounter.

The one positive is that as of a month ago fees on partial refunds are refunded as well as US Sales Tax and and in 10 days the same will apply to GST/HST.

At least now we can make shipping charge reductions without penalty to the seller. The buyer also gets refunds of the full amount although the refund process can in many cases mean they would have to wait for a few days to have the funds credited to the source of the original payment.

A lot of this could be avoided if eBay made improvements to the Flat Rate Combined Shipping Rules system, as it currently is (and always has) it just doesn't work for me and I have a generally very easy product line.

About a third of my multiple item buyers are able to figure out the Request Total thing, the rest seem to have either given up even trying or even after following my bullet point instructions find the option is disabled. It's a significant annoyance given about 20% of my sales involve multiple items.

[femmefan1946]

Perhaps velvet@ebay   could draw this to the attention of the Powers That Be.

[pjcdn2005]

I doubt that they care. The problem about the request total fuction has been pointed out for years.

Their answer..'it is working as it was intended to'

[busybeas_books]

FWIW: if a buyer asks me for an invoice for multiple items, I ask them for for a list of what they want. Then I'll make up a single sale listing with those items. You can adjust the total price (to give a multile-item discount) and show the combined postage. You'll save on the 30c fee on each item too. I delete the original listings. If the buyer ends up not buying the lot then it's easy to relist each. Though in some cases it might be better to leave the combined listing running. A week ago I had a buyer want 4 Peugeot road test articles from the 1960s that were individual. Something like that might sell better combined.

[velvet@ebay]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

Perhaps velvet@ebay   could draw this to the attention of the Powers That Be.

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Hey @femmefan1946, thanks for the tag! I'm not aware of any plans to make requesting an invoice available in the app but the mobile team is aware of this desire.

I don't believe we'll ever provide sellers the ability to see into a buyers cart. That would seem to be a violation of privacy, among other concerns. I can definitely pass the feedback/request on and have done so. 😊

For now you've all provided helpful info as to where invoices can be requested, including the option that @busybeas_books suggested about finding out what listings they want, and creating one that will include all the items for the buyer to purchase. 

[reallynicestamps]

Another problem is that eBay is an international site, and many sellers list on two or more sites.

EBay cannot combine two lots, one purchased on dotCA and one on dotCOM.

Among other problems, currency exchange fluctuations.