Combined Shipping Doesn't Calculate Volume Only Weight
Summary: seekers_cove is experiencing issues with eBay's shipping cost calculation as it only combines weight and not volume when multiple items are ordered. They can't find any settings to adjust this. flipistics suggests that you can't adjust for volume and shares their approach of turning off combined shipping, offering custom bundles, or refunds for buyers. pjcdn2005 adds that the issue partially stems from eBay not knowing which box size will be used and suggests charging shipping per item or using a rates table for large items, though they are unsure how that table works.
Recently got an order for 5 of the same item. When I saw my shipping cost I realized that ebay had only combined weight, but had not added volume to the shipping calculation. I checked the combined shipping rules and there was no option to combined volume or to adjust the volume when multiple items are ordered, so only weight is combined, but volume is as if it's only 1 item.
I can't imagine this is how it works, so maybe I'm missing something, but so far not able to see any setting to determing how volume should be calculated on multiple item orders. Any help would be appreciated.
pjcdn2005
·2 years agoThat's always been a problem and part of it may be that eBay doesn't know what size of box you are going to use when combining items or even if there will be a change.
You can turn off your combined shipping rule for that listing so that it charges shipping for each item separately. I've seen people suggest using a rates table for large items but I have NO ideaifor how that works.
flipistics
·2 years agoAs far as I know, the short answer is that you can't.
If you're only shipping within Canada you can sort of fudge it by entering the weight as the greater of the actual and volumetric weights and then do combined shipping based on weight. That will typically get it pretty close since most items go out volumetric anyway. You're going to hate your life choices if someone in a remote location buys something like a golf club and a teddy bear though.
Most people seem to deal with it by not requiring immediate payment and sending invoices, but there's a ton of complaints regarding problems with that right now too so I don't really recommend that either.
For myself, I've just turned off combined shipping. It's a very low percentage of my orders anyway. I note that I'm happy to do so and to contact me if it isn't automatically calculated. I then tell a prospective buyer that I'm happy to either refund the difference or create a custom bundle for them. Most choose a custom bundle.