Sending Invoice BEFORE a purchase

Summary: 4topnotes raised a concern about eBay customers frequently requesting invoices for items in their cart before completing a purchase. lotzofuniquegoodies and others shared similar frustrations, noting that the 'Request Total' feature is difficult for buyers to find or doesn't work properly. recped pointed out that this issue has persisted since 2012, and there seems to be a lack of awareness or action from eBay staff to address it. Several participants, including hansatrade and tuckhouse2021, noted losing sales due to this issue and expressed frustration over eBay's lack of effective solutions for managing combined purchases and invoices. reel_to_reel_plus mentioned how this problem has affected sellers, as they have to issue partial refunds after shipping. Despite the issue's long history and known presence, little progress has been made in resolving it, leading to continued dissatisfaction among sellers.

I get endless daily messages from customers asking me to send them an invoice for the items they have in their cart, and i always reply that i cant see their cart or their purchases till after they commit.

I also ask them to use the REQUEST TOTAL button but very few seems to be able to find this option..

Any insights here?

4topnotes

24838 View listings

Posted 3 years ago·Last reply 2 years ago

12 comments

intimewithmusic

·2 years ago

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This is another 2 year old post and it's creating a ZOMBIE THREAD. I wonder why this is happening over and over and over and, well you know...OVER?

byto253

·2 years ago

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Halloween is still a ways off... I wonder if threads are popping up in search engines more these days???

lotzofuniquegoodies

·2 years ago

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@intimewithmusic

@byto253

Answer for that still is the default when you do a search is best match vs most recent. Change the default....easy fix.

reel_to_reel_plus

·2 years ago

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Good day,

We sell reel parts and tackle on line, and get a lot of combined orders (basically lower cost items).

Formerly, there was an option for a seller to combine the orders into one, recalculate shipping, and send the buyer an invoice. There was also an option for the buyer to request an invoice as well. I can vouch it worked until probably February/March this year. Then gone.

The title of the help page was "Sending invoices to buyers"

It would recalculate all costs, shipping, fees, one posting label, buyer would agree and it was all simple and quick.

Now we have to buy the label, ship the combined order and issue the buyer a partial refund.

Way more work, much more error prone, and simply annoying. It was still available on the help pages when we ran across it so the software help documentation is not keeping up with the actual application.

It well may be that the application has been changed, and the options you are looking for are disabled.

lotzofuniquegoodies

·2 years ago

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@reel_to_reel_plus wrote:
Good day,
We sell reel parts and tackle on line, and get a lot of combined orders (basically lower cost items).

Formerly, there was an option for a seller to combine the orders into one, recalculate shipping, and send the buyer an invoice. There was also an option for the buyer to request an invoice as well. I can vouch it worked until probably February/March this year. Then gone.
The title of the help page was "Sending invoices to buyers"

It would recalculate all costs, shipping, fees, one posting label, buyer would agree and it was all simple and quick.

Now we have to buy the label, ship the combined order and issue the buyer a partial refund.

Way more work, much more error prone, and simply annoying. It was still available on the help pages when we ran across it so the software help documentation is not keeping up with the actual application.

It well may be that the application has been changed, and the options you are looking for are disabled.

@reel_to_reel_plus

FWIW there is a known issue on dot com with the following alert. If you get in touch with ebay via facebook or twitter you can get yourself added to the ticket. By doing so it speeds up the problem. Unsure if this is connected or related to your problem.

Sellers unable to send invoice to buyer for their unpaid orders they are ending up with error "Something went wrong, Please try again later"

Unfortunately with the new format of the technical issues page they no longer show closed tickets so difficult to know if you have stumbled across a closed issue that was not fully resolved. Reference ID: ALERT15067

From a personal perspective the concept of sending combined invoice has been a longstanding neverending ongoing issue that eBay does not seem to really want to properly address. From a Canadian perspective it is a major problem for anyone trying to buy multiple items using eIS and just as difficult to find any US sellers not using eIS that are willing....meaning able to combine.

-Lotz

Full list of known technical issues attached. Last update June 20, 2024

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/Current-and-resolved-technical-issues-updated-as-of-06-11-2024/m-p/33786064#M112408

tuckhouse2021

·3 years ago

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Hi-This happened to me already today. I wrote back nicely explaining it all and told the potential buyer how to proceed and no answer. Pretty sure I lost that sale for three items plus a potential new customer who probably won't bother looking at any of my other items in the future as well.

Please can we get this fixed.

hansatrade

·3 years ago

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I recently lost a 100 USD sale because of that. A buyer sent me numerous messages, asking for an invoice, and complaining the combined shipping doesn't work. Even after I promised him any overcharge will be immediately refunded, he abandoned the transaction. 🙄

mrdutch1001

·3 years ago

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having lost any faith in eBay's ability to "fix" anything and/or provide proper ability to combine purchases for our customers, I mainly use auctiuon format now for my listings to avoid losing my customers over the inability to invoice for multiple purchases. Yes, buyers get as frustrated as us sellers and they just throw in the towel because what is so simple eBay cannot be bothered to provide its sellers with the needed tools to conduct a simple transaction of combining multiple purchases. Any other selling site, large or small can do it, but not eBay.CA!!

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

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@4topnotes wrote:
I get endless daily messages from customers asking me to send them an invoice for the items they have in their cart, and i always reply that i cant see their cart or their purchases till after they commit.
I also ask them to use the REQUEST TOTAL button but very few seems to be able to find this option..

Any insights here?

@devon@ebay

Please address. This is a major concern for many sellers and buyers. And as noted in this thread it has not worked properly for ages.

Thanks,

-Lotz
@

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

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@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:
@4topnotes wrote:
I get endless daily messages from customers asking me to send them an invoice for the items they have in their cart, and i always reply that i cant see their cart or their purchases till after they commit.
I also ask them to use the REQUEST TOTAL button but very few seems to be able to find this option..

Any insights here?

@devon@ebay

Please address. This is a major concern for many sellers and buyers. And as noted in this thread it has not worked properly for ages.

Thanks,

-Lotz
@

@devon@ebay

@triber

Due to a helpful notification this was an issue back in June 2022/before and is still an issue.

-Lotz

recped

·3 years ago

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It's been an issue since 2012, most of the eBay "blues" have not been around that long, the details have been scrubbed from the help files, the original announcement is no longer available (I've looked through the Internet Archive and other places*).

None of the front line staff eBay really knows about this now hidden policy and most deny it exists or state they have passed it on to the right department where nothing changes (because it's INTENTIONAL).

I've been able to find the Spring 2012 Seller Update but not the Fall 2012 which I belive is the one that had this information.

lotzofuniquegoodies

·3 years ago

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@recped wrote:
It's been an issue since 2012, most of the eBay "blues" have not been around that long, the details have been scrubbed from the help files, the original announcement is no longer available (I've looked through the Internet Archive and other places*).

None of the front line staff eBay really knows about this now hidden policy and most deny it exists or state they have passed it on to the right department where nothing changes (because it's INTENTIONAL).

I've been able to find the Spring 2012 Seller Update but not the Fall 2012 which I belive is the one that had this information.

Kinda sad we can point out these long standing issues but there is little done to address them. There was never any follow up with this post. It should momentarily do a Get Smart and self destruct as soon as mod pops by and sees it. I've seen that before with previous announcements being difficult to either locate or have been scrubbed of the original improvement. Good example was the listing increase for Canadian sellers with basic stores. Was announced (testing my memory) Winter 2020/Spring 2021. Was implemented substantially later than promised. Thanks for clarification. Maybe the creedo should be let the frustration fester until everyone gives out hope of an actual solution.

-Lotz