eBay

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎11-18-2016

Buyer purchases multiple items and pays for them with one payment. Not used to this happening, the reason I am curious should I still be getting charged final value fees on shipping for each individual item??? I could have sworn it was only on one item with the lowest domestic shipping cost??? Was an overseas buyer.

rose-dee · ‎11-18-2016

You'll be charged FVFs on the lowest domestic shipping cost for every individual item in a multi-item purchase. This happens to me a lot, since I often sell more than one item per order.

For example, if the buyer purchases 3 items at once and just pays for the whole lot (including the total of the shipping costs), then I get charged FVFs on shipping x3. Out of fairness to the buyer I usually refund the excess shipping if I'm able to combine the items and save the buyer money. This means lost FVFs on the excess shipping -- unless I'm willing to do battle with eBay CS to get those FVFs refunded. Apparently some sellers have had luck getting their FVFs back in these situations, but honestly, unless the FVFs are more than about $5.00, I feel my time is wasted on the phone for what could be hours trying to get the right person at CS who understands the concept and will make the refund.

The exception to this is if you have listed $0 (free) shipping domestically on some or all of the items. Then you will only pay FVFs on the items that actually had a domestic (Canada) shipping cost if you list on .ca. But -- and this is important -- if you're listing on .com, then of course "domestic" shipping will be what you charge to the U.S.

So if you had free shipping stipulated for Canada or U.S., regardless of which of the two sites you list on, if you sold overseas but were charged FVFs, then I'd say you should fight it out with CS to get those FVFs back.

I don't know about you, but I can't afford to provide free shipping to the U.S. even though I list mostly on .com these days. This was, incidentally, one of my biggest gripes about the .ca change to $CDN-only listings -- I had to move to .com to get around the "cart disconnect", but after my move I paid FVFs on shipping on just about every sale.

So how the FVFs get attributed depends on: 1) where you listed the items; and 2) what you set as the domestic shipping cost on those items; and 3) where you sold to.

One last note: now that the .com cart (and apparently also the U.K. cart) have been fixed, if you're listing on .com it's worth it to try to set up automated shipping rules (under your "Preferences" tab). It's a bit of a challenge if you have items of various sizes and weights and sell multiple-item orders frequently, since you really never know in advance how buyers are going to mix items in one order. If you're listing on .ca, you might find those rules somewhat easier because you can use calculated shipping. However, I've always used flat shipping so I can directly control my shipping costs.

By the way, the excess FVFs I've been paying over the last year or so since I moved to .com are one reason I'm considering --possibly -- moving back to .ca, now that the ".com cart disconnect" has been fixed. Never a dull moment on eBay!

merritt-motorcycle-salvage · ‎11-18-2016

Thanks for the answer, kinda what I thought, but it has been awhile. Never clued into the increase in shipping FVF because domestic is US listing on .com.

It is beyond frustrating constantly doubling guessing yourself and listing practices, should I do this or this, what if I did this is or this... Long gone are the days when you could list your items and focus on listing more, now its an uphill battle revising listings, and then revising them again, and then again after you revise those, revise them again along with glitch after glitch.

With various sizes and weights I have left out shipping rules for now for various reasons. Without calculated shipping on .com for canada post it is a headache coming up with flat rates etc. All these changes are unnecessary, causing more damage than good, but what do we know.

femmefan1946 · ‎11-18-2016

Wellllll---- about Free Shipping.

I love it and use it, BUT

If we are doing FS right, we are including the cost of shipping in our asking price, so we are still paying a fee on that part of the payment.

However, we do get a break on shipments to non-domestic addresses that may have higher shipping fees, because our domestic shipping shows as '$0.00".

That is if domestic shipping is $5 and the product is $10- we charge $15 for the item and pay fees on that.

If International shipping is $10 and the product is $10- we charge $15 for the item and $5 for shipping and pay NO shipping fees because our domestic shipping shows as $0.00.

I wonder why people thing shipping is the most complicated part of selling by mail?

silverpinups · ‎11-18-2016

Refund each transaction separately via PayPal and give the "transaction numbers" for each refund to eBay Customer Service and they will refund your FVF's for the extra shipping.

rose-dee · ‎11-18-2016

@silverpinups wrote:
Refund each transaction separately via PayPal and give the "transaction numbers" for each refund to eBay Customer Service and they will refund your FVF's for the extra shipping.

Yes, as I said, I think I'd do this too, but probably only if the dollar value is worth spending the time on the phone to CS. It can take several tries (and a lot of time) to get through to someone who not only speaks English but understands the concept of FVFs on excess shipping.

rose-dee · ‎11-18-2016

@femmefan1946 wrote:
Wellllll---- about Free Shipping.
I love it and use it, BUT
If we are doing FS right, we are including the cost of shipping in our asking price, so we are still paying a fee on that part of the payment.
However, we do get a break on shipments to non-domestic addresses that may have higher shipping fees, because our domestic shipping shows as '$0.00".

You know, I had a really good thing going on .ca for years as long as I was able to list in $USD. Since over 90% of my customers have historically been Americans, I was able to offer free shipping domestically (i.e. within Canada on .ca) on the majority of items and benefit from greatly reduced FVFs on items sent to the U.S. which had, for the most part, the highest shipping costs. First the .com "cart disconnect", then the $CDN-only listing on .ca wrecked that model.

Now that they've fixed the .com cart, I'm in a quandary. Do I cut costs by moving back to .ca and hope the weird and foreign-looking currency won't turn off my U.S. buyers, or continue to rely on the fact that I'll make more sales to my U.S. buyers by listing in $USD? The two occasions in the last few years on which I experimented for a few months listing in $CDN resulted in poorer sales, but I can't be completely certain that the currency was the cause.

I'm one who believes that free shipping is a customer service, and shouldn't be hidden in the asking price, but that's just my personal viewpoint. The fact that I gave the occasional Canadian buyer truly free shipping in order to get several weeks' or months' worth of reduction on FVFs for U.S. sales was fine with me.

musicyouneed · ‎11-18-2016

I just did this a few hours ago. I have one buyer buy 11 CD's and another buyer buy 2 CD's a few hours before my 10% sale kicked in. I decided that I would let them know about the sale and that I would give them the 10% off. I did that and called ebay and got the fees back off the 10% I refunded.

rose-dee · ‎11-19-2016

@musicyouneed wrote:
I just did this a few hours ago. I have one buyer buy 11 CD's and another buyer buy 2 CD's a few hours before my 10% sale kicked in. I decided that I would let them know about the sale and that I would give them the 10% off. I did that and called ebay and got the fees back off the 10% I refunded.

That's good to hear! Maybe the message has finally got through to CS that this sort of fee gouging on their part is wrong (whether it's FVFs on a sale, or on shipping), and that they need to refund sellers put in this position without a lot of argument.

femmefan1946 · ‎11-19-2016

rose-dee:

Your patterns are not one-offs are they? If you have multiples it should be possible to use both sites, with careful wording of titles to prevent Duplicate Listing violations.

That would also give you something to compare.

rose-dee · ‎11-20-2016

@femmefan1946 wrote:
rose-dee:
Your patterns are not one-offs are they? If you have multiples it should be possible to use both sites, with careful wording of titles to prevent Duplicate Listing violations.
That would also give you something to compare.

Hmm, yes, this ruse has occurred to me too, but I've been too wary (read: chicken) of the heavy hammer of eBay descending upon my head to try it. All I need now is a down-grading by eBay to practically finish me off.

The thing is, with sales as slow as they are, really since about June/July, I've only been able to carry inventory of about 2 to 3 copies of each of my designs. It would cost a lot to have them all reprinted to give me enough to sell on both sites. The larger my catalogue gets, the bigger the cost.

If things were going as well as they were earlier in the year, it wouldn't be a problem, but I'm trying to restrict my expenses at this point. It's the old story, isn't it? How much do you invest in attempting to do better and hoping it will pay off?

I have a personal theory, which I suppose will be proven or disproved by sometime around March, 2017. That is, that all my usual potential customers (who are nearly all in the U.S.) are terrified, worried and stressed about what is going on in America right now, and waiting to see if the situation settles down before they do any discretionary spending on what are, strictly speaking, non-essentials. I'm wondering about this because I have the usual large numbers of watchers on items that normally sell like hotcakes, but no actual sales. At least I'm hoping my theory is right, which is why I think I'm going to put off moving back to .ca until early in 2017.

femmefan1946 · ‎11-20-2016

Well Hilary is now 1.5 million ahead in the popular vote. So there's that.

Americans seem convinced that their economy has not improved since the crash of '08. I don't know how anyone can change that mindset.

I think it must be in pockets and those pockets are pulling down the good news from other parts of the country. Canadians would be ecstatic if our unemployment rate dropped to only 4.9%. As long as I can remember, we've hovered nationally around 7% unemployment. Higher in some places of course.

rose-dee · ‎11-21-2016

@femmefan1946 wrote:
Well Hilary is now 1.5 million ahead in the popular vote. So there's that.

But then there is that Trump-whisperer Bannon who pretty much tips the scales on the other side and cancels out any good news.

The fact that Trump got away with the most egregious, outrageous, shocking and insulting behaviour I can ever recall seeing in a political campaign, and still managed to win may be a dark harbinger of the future. And I think that's what the 51% who didn't for him and the 46% who didn't vote at all are scared of. I guess you can add most of the rest of the western world to that sum too. And here we little mice are, stuck in the mud as the elephant rolls over (remember Trudeau's -- the elder's -- favourite saw?).

Well, as the Chinese say, "may you live in interesting times". Yup.

Anyway, I'm waaaayyyy off topic now.