Combined shipping - Buyer didn't do it right.
Summary: musicyouneed shared an issue about a buyer who ordered CDs from different e-commerce platforms but didn't pay combined shipping, resulting in extra costs. kawartha-ephemera suggested canceling the problematic order or swallowing the cost, while musicyouneed decided to absorb the shipping loss due to the buyer's positive purchase history and feedback. They also plan to remove the pickup option to avoid future issues. reallynicestamps and kawartha-ephemera further discuss the practicality of pickup options and sales across different platforms.
Buyer bought 2 CD's from me. One from .ca and one from .com. He paid for shipping on the .com but did pickup on .ca so didn't pay shipping. He lives in Ontario and I am in BC, so pick up is quite impossible.
I have this on my listings:
To take advantage of combined shipping savings, you must use the shopping cart to combine items and pay for them. eBay automatically calculates the combined shipping savings. There will be no combined shipping refunds for individual payments. Note that Canadian$ and US$ purchases have to be combined separately.
As a seller there is not much of a savings sending 2 CD's as opposed to 1. I charge 2.50 more for the 2nd CD because of weight, if they do combined shipping on one platform. Now they can't do that on both platforms. So any savings for the seller disappear.
So my buyer only paid for one shipping, not the other. What would you do? I am out about $3.00 in shipping and fees the way he did it. Now that is not much but when you are dealing with cheap CD's it makes a difference.
transtraders
·2 weeks agoCan't you cancel the .com order and relist the item on .ca and tell the buyer to purchase there with reduced (or no) shipping?
kawartha-ephemera
·1 month agoEasy solution would be to cancel the second order, and inform the buyer of the reason for that course of action. Fulfill the first order as normal. The buyer probably won't be too impressed which invites payback.
Some would consider cancelling both orders, then block the user I'd.
Personally, I would just swallow the medicine this particular buyer has provided, then combine and ship the orders without complaint. Then I would look at eliminating pickup as an option until a suitable solution is settled upon.
reallynicestamps
·1 month ago...I would look at eliminating pickup as an option...
How often do your customers actually pick up? If you have a B&M store it's not really a problem, but if you work from home, pickups are a constraint on your time.
musicyouneed
OP1 month agoI probably have 3 to 5 pickups a year. I am retired and am home 95% of the time. I have also done pickup myself once or twice.
musicyouneed
OP1 month agoI think I like your personally response. This person lives in Taiwan so is using a freight forwarding service. They have purchased a lot of CD's this year, over 500 and they have given good feedback. So I am going to eat the couple of $ on shipping and remove the pickup option on my listings. If someone is interested in picking up they can always email me.
kawartha-ephemera
·1 month agoPickup at the door can work fine, but I like the buyer to provide me with an ebay QR code to scan. Obviously that cannot happen if your buyer doesn't lives on the opposite side of the Pacific.
Listing on both sites has its pitfalls, I guess this is another one to add to the list. I've been slowly reducing the few old dot com listings that are left. I figure the last 100 or so should sell by 2136!!!
musicyouneed
OP1 month agoI find that US buyers primarily buy on .com. Very few US buyers will venture to .ca and pay in Canadian $. I am just going through my solds last 90 days and US buyers stick to .com and purchase in US $.
Regarding my buyer that didn't pay for combined shipping. I managed to get it under 200 grams so shipping will be fine now. But I have taken off pick up for future. I sell other items on marketplace too and every day I have someone coming by.