Problem with special listings

[triber]

For the second time I needed to do a special listing for a US buyer, and again the charge come up with the Canadian shipping amount. You have to put in a shipping amount, and I have always made in higher in case someone in Canada is tempted to purchase the item. Has anyone else had this problem?

This happened a few weeks ago, and the buyer was so frustated with the combined shipping listing that she gave up. She had tried to combine her items and that didn't work, so I sent a special listing, she was clearly a US buyer, so I don't understand why she was given Canadian shipping cost.

[recped]

When I make a special order/listing for a non-Canadian buyer I always make the Canadian Shipping FREE, that's because eBay will be charging me fees on the FREE instead of the actual shipping charged. Makes a SUBSTANTIAL difference if it's an overseas sale and relatively heavy.

If the shipping was actually $50 that is an extra $8 in MY pocket. Even for a US shipment it's a few extra bucks NOT in eBay's pocket.

[reallynicestamps]

When you are making a special order, are you making a new listing?

At this point it is unimportant which site you are on.

Remember your US customer sees your prices in US dollars, as well as loonies.

So you can list on dotCA for her and use Calculated Shipping.

More simply, when you fill in the selling form on dotCOM you just have to make sure that you have the US (domestic) shipping filled. You can decide not to use any other Custom Location or not to use International Shipping at all.

When you- here in Canada- look at the shipping cost on dotCA, you will see the cost of shipping in loonies to you in Canada.

You can change that destination on the shipping page. I use United States 90210 to see what a California customer would see.

If you list on dotCA , all the shipping choices will be Canada -based.

Currency will also be Canadian dollars.

If you list on dotCOM, all the shipping choices will be US -based.

Currency will also be US dollars.

This means you have to use Flat Rate Shipping, based on your Canadian costs.

The Shipping will be seen by a customer in US dollars.

You seem to list mostly on dotCOM.

Or you could use Calculated Shipping on dotCA and your charge will always be exactly what your customer will pay to her doorstep.

You cannot do this on dotCOM.

Unless......

If you are using chitchat or stallion as a forwarder, you can use Calculated Shipping, since they will be taking your items to the USA for delivery by USPS.

[pjcdn2005]

Is this for the mohair mix? That listing shows $7.30US for shipping for both shipping to the US and to Canada.  What did you want to charge them?  Is it possible that you may have made a mistake when doing the listing??

[triber]

Yes, I am making a new listing. I do it in exactly the same way as all my listings. Sometimes the listing is for several items, and I don't want Canadian buyers to see a low shipping cost of purchasing the lot. My buyers each time have contacted me and said that when they try to purchase, there is a high shipping cost, not the one I quoted. I then realize that the one coming up is the cost of shipping I had put for the Canadian shipping. If I put zero shipping cost for Canadian, I can't prevent a Canadian buyer from purchasing it.

It must be something to do with me putting "special listing", I can't see any other reason for the US shipping cost not coming up.

[vintagenorth]

@triber 

Hi triber, I don't think it has anything to do with the title of special listing. When I do a special listing I also put in the buyers name (eBay ID). I've noticed that there have been some changes recently in my shipping policies that I have had to correct. You may want to check and see that they are correct after you set up the listing. You can quickly check your listing by going to it and clicking on revise and then just backing out of it after checking that everything looks correct. Don't forget, it could take a while to show up if you do need to revise but you can give your buyer the item number and they can find it that way. (You probably know all this anyway).

[msau4301]

I do this re-checking of my policies this same way also! Sometimes after I make a change to one (or more) it still manages to jump back to the default setting (which somehow changed not by me). While defaults are handy in someways they can be a pain in the butt others!

[msau4301]

I have often had a nightmare with trying to "combine shipping" for buyers. I do mostly auctions, which can always have an adjusted invoice sent, but Buy it Now is another story. I tried to understand how and why some people could request total and others couldn't. (Several calls to customer service way back always turned out the same, telling me I was set up correctly and it should work - but didn't). I know if they chose Buy it Now instead of Add to Cart would be a problem. The app version usually (maybe never?) worked and I would try and explain this to the buyer but would often get the dreaded "never mind".

What I have done in the past a couple of times is when someone had already bought (paid) for one Buy it Now item, and started asking if they could add more stuff, I changed the other listings he/she was interested in (not a new listing but change to other items wanted). On those items I put the first line of description as "Special Listing for..(name)...." and under shipping option I changed to "Local Pickup". The buyer was obviously not going to pick it up but if any of the other watchers of the item or my "followers" happened to see it, they would assume it was for someone who wanted to pick it up, and the shipping amount was zero. This of course only works if they already paid for one item with shipping.

[vintagenorth]

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@msau4301 wrote:

I do this re-checking of my policies this same way also! Sometimes after I make a change to one (or more) it still manages to jump back to the default setting (which somehow changed not by me). While defaults are handy in someways they can be a pain in the butt others!

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Yes, I found some of mine had changed recently and not by me. May not have been eBay since I use a third party service to list my items.

[triber]

Thank you vintagenorth, I did check and revise several times, everything looked fine. But the shipping for the US buyers would only come up for the Canadian shipping amount  when the buyers tried to purchase, I just don't understand why. I clearly had the shipping in the US section. I am very reluctant to put zero shipping in the Canadian box, the way it's going now it will come up for no shipping for the US buyer. The only way to get around it was to put the same shipping cost in both boxes.

I am hoping this won't happen in all my listings.

[triber]

Where do I find Shipping Policies, still not completely adapted to Hub?

[msau4301]

I go to Shipping Policies (not from Hub, I can't see it there?!), I go to My Ebay, Summary, My Account, Selling, Business Policies. I have set up a couple of random policies (ie if I want to include international) other than the defaulted one and more used ones, so maybe you could set one that is just for this combined stuff and call it "Combined shipping policy"? Even if it's for a one-off large sale it might be easier?

[vintagenorth · Accepted solution]

@triber 

If you make the Special Listing on eBay.com then you should be able to put in the shipping cost to the US only. You won't have to put in anything for Canada or anywhere else. I checked and that's what I did. I called my shipping policy Ship to US Only. Hope this works for you.

[pjcdn2005]

Are you using shipping polices? I get the impression that you are just entering in a price rather than using 'policies'.  

@vintagenorth makes a good point.  There is no need to even specify a shipping cost for Canada if the listing is specifically for  a US customer.  

As far as using free shipping for Canadian buyers,that wouldn't affect your fvf when you have a US customer because you are listing on .com. 

[reallynicestamps]

About using "private listing" in the title.

I just looked for those words and found 563 listings. (At least one was not at all private since it was a variation listing from China).

Using the buyer's name as the title is not likely to be Searched.

Using private or custom or special listing in the title is a boon to sneaky people searching for other customer's  deals.

Or I'm having a moment of paranoia.

[reallynicestamps]

Silly addendum-- I just noticed that the Search I did for "private listing" has a suggested related Search.

"worn panties".

Gosh.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

Silly addendum-- I just noticed that the Search I did for "private listing" has a suggested related Search.

"worn panties".

Gosh.

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The only concern I would have with private listings is someone or the bots getting their ummm panties in knot over 1 word or another. Apologies. Couldn't resist!!

-Lotz

[triber]

The problem with that would be that the shipping coming up as the Canadian shipping would mean it would come up free to the buyer.

[pjcdn2005]

Since you list on .com listing free Canadian shipping wouldn't save you anything on fvf because your fees would be based on the US (domestic ) amount.

As far as I can tell your US buyer is seeing the shipping cost to the US. As I mentioned earlier that listing shows the same shipping cost to both Canada and the US so it may have been an error when listing.

[triber]

The only way I could get the shipping for the US buyer was to put the same amount in for US and Canada, if I made Canada a different amount, that is what the buyer said they were asked to pay.