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You can TRY to direct them to eBay.ca and use the Canadian cart.
I've had buyers where this clearly worked and I've had others that claimed they still didn't have the option to request a total.
I personally hate this "feature" but I can at least tell you why it's been implemented.
1 - Many sellers overreact to what is often not that big of a problem, Non payers that is, they scream and moan so much that eBay decided to help out by essentially opting sellers into immediate payment required.
2 - They want combined shipping discounts to be as automatic as possible with no need for buyers to ask for adjustments.
The conspiracy theorists among us would have you believe they only did this to collect extra 30 cent PayPal transactions fees and the extra shipping fvf. I'd like to think that while they might be happy to pocket those extra fees it was not part of the motivation. I wouldn't be surprised if the genius who proposed this concept even thought about extra fees, probably stood up one day and said he had a great plan to help sellers, everyone at the meeting agreed and that was that.
I normally don't run Fixed price listings that much so I don't run into it frequently, I have been running FP through December and it's popped up several times with the mixed results I detailed earlier.
Initially I was deducting the extra 30 cents from the over payment refund (if I refunded at all), once I found out it was not anything buyers chose or wanted to do I dropped that and now refund the full over payment.
Anyone know how to fix this?
If you can figure out how to make the combined shipping rules work for you that should eliminate the issue. I tried setting these up a few times but the results were not great, either I was not setting it up correctly or buyers were not able to do whatever it was they need to do at their end.
Yes, this is a known incompatibility that I've been complaining to the eBay.ca staff about for months.
They are well aware of the problem, but haven't yet been able to provide any assurance of when it will be fixed. Evidently it's not a top priority, which is distressing, because Canadian sellers are probably missing out on a lot of potential combined orders. I know I am, because like you, I've had a couple of seasoned buyers contact me when they couldn't load more than one item into their cart. It's the ones who don't contact me that I wonder about.
Here's the problem: it seems that when eBay introduced the cart onto .ca, they either neglected to make it fully compatible with .com, or had some problem making it compatible. As a result, U.S. buyers purchasing through .com are not able to place more than one item in the cart without paying for the first item, i.e. forced immediate payment, before they can proceed to buy the next item. Obviously is going to put off a lot of buyers.
Canadian sellers are right to complain that this is having a significant impact on their business, especially if they offer combined shipping discounts and/or automated shipping discounts on fixed price items (which I do). The fact that eBay has allowed the problem to go on unresolved for months is ludicrous. By the way, I've determined that my automated shipping rule is definitely not working for .com (U.S.) buyers, so having that set up hasn't made any difference at all. It simply isn't working the way it should.
I should note that my automated shipping discount (buy 5 items, get free shipping) was working perfectly before eBay.ca introduced the cart on .ca (which I recall was in late 2013 or early 2014), as I had a number of buyers take advantage of it. Since the cart was rolled out on .ca, I haven't had a single such multiple purchase of 5 items with the automated free shipping -- this tells me buyers are not getting through the system.
There are only two workarounds:
(a) Direct your buyer to eBay.ca to make the purchase, as 'recped' mentioned. This is what the eBay staffers have suggested. However, I was recently informed that my "free shipping for 5 items" automated rule wasn't functioning properly even using the cart on .ca, so who really knows? The trouble with this workaround is that you have to hope your buyer actually contacts you or is an experienced enough eBayer to figure it out for themselves;
(b) Hope that your buyer is savvy enough to think of using the "Commit to Buy" button, to make each purchase, one at a time, backing out to the next item, then repeating the process. A very awkward fix, and one that will in all likelihood leave you with a shipping over-payment that you then have to refund.
Either workaround is unsatisfactory, and as a consequence I'm sure many of us have lost a lot of multiple/combined purchases. I find it totally unacceptable that such a critical part of this site should just not work, and that making checkout smooth, easy and compatible throughout its sites should apparently not be a top priority for eBay. I give them a defect for this ridiculous mess. They should have held back on introducing the cart onto .ca until they knew they could make it fully seamless with .com.
I ask for an ETA for the fix to this problem on almost every Wed. discussion board -- so far nothing. Can you tell I've been pretty upset about this issue? 
There are only two workarounds:
(a) Direct your buyer to eBay.ca to make the purchase, as 'recped' mentioned. This is what the eBay staffers have suggested. However, I was recently informed that my "free shipping for 5 items" automated rule wasn't functioning properly even using the cart on .ca, so who really knows? The trouble with this workaround is that you have to hope your buyer actually contacts you or is an experienced enough eBayer to figure it out for themselves;
(b) Hope that your buyer is savvy enough to think of using the "Commit to Buy" button, to make each purchase, one at a time, backing out to the next item, then repeating the process. A very awkward fix, and one that will in all likelihood leave you with a shipping over-payment that you then have to refund.
Rose I'm not sure if even these will work, my recent buyer who was definitely savy could not make the .ca cart completely work for him. While he was able to make a single payment for 4 items he was unable to apparently to do the commit to buy and request a revised total part.
On the other hand on Friday I had a repeat buyer from Germany who was able to buy 5 FP listings (I doubt he was using the .ca cart) without paying and then request a total.
I think there is much more to this that cart incompatibility problems. now that PJ has dug up this eBay are doing with GSP (removing cheap items from the program for Canadian buyers without telling the US Sellers) I can believe just about anything when it comes to tinkering in this type of situation. Wouldn't put it past them to somewhat randomly force IPR on some buyers (perceived to be potentially a problem perhaps?) while letting others request revised totals.
@rose-dee wrote:Oh yes, I forgot to mention another workaround that was suggested - list your items on .com.
Yeah that's a non starter for me as well, shipping caps in Media on.com make that essentially impossible.
I hate "conspiracy theories"
It's only a conspiracy theory if you think they are doing this "to get rid of small sellers". I prefer to think that they might do this without any of the thinking required even for a simple conspiracy.
By the way, I love a GOOD conspiracy theory!
This all reminds me of the US boards in the pre-cart days, a lot of sellers where screaming for a cart system and a few people (not me) warned that whatever cart solution eBay came up with might be worse than no cart at all.
@recped wrote:
By the way, I love a GOOD conspiracy theory!
I take it then you have't missed the movie "Conspiracy Theory" (Mel Gibson)? 
If you have missed it, you'd like it. I won't be a spoiler, but that was one story where the conspiracy theorist was thoroughly vindicated. Not many are!
