NEW SHOPPING CART BUG ALERT TO SELLERS: FREE SHIPPING FOR SERVICE THAT DOES NOT EXIST

[momcqueen]

Head's up to sellers. Check your shopping cart postage options. This is an old bug that seems to be back for another round. 

Canada Post does not offer Air Parcel to Australia so it should neither be showing an an option nor showing as FREE. (Air Parcel is included within the listing as it is the alternative to Xpresspost for some international countries that are on my ship-to list.) Options for Australia via Canada Post include: 

Small PacketTM - International Surface -  Small PacketTM - International Air - International Parcel - Surface - Tracked PacketTM - International - 11 business days -  XpresspostTM - International - 9 business days (Guaranteed) - PriorityTM Worldwide pak -

The listing includes Calculated Canada Post rates for domestic Expedited Parcel and Xpresspost plus Tracked Packet USA and Xpresspost USA plus International Tracked Packet, International Xpresspost and International Air Parcel since I ship to 33 countries that are all served via Tracked Packet but may either be also served by Xpresspost or Air Parcel but not both.

I wonder what would happen if a buyer bought this and checked out. Would payment go through as Air Parcel for FREE or would he meet some error message that prevented him from paying for a service I cannot provide since it does not exist?

And would ebay protect me from negative feedback if the buyer was angry he won't be getting his order shipped for free? I don't do free shipping internationally unless ten or more eligible items are purchased.

[momcqueen]

The plot thickens. This is why happens when I log into ebay.ca and use the shopping cart on my items with a USA buying account. You can't send an item to the States using International Xpresspost so it should neither be shown nor offered for free.

[momcqueen]

Looking again at the first item but with a USA shipping address, none of these services are available to the USA so therefore, none should be showing never mind for free.

[momcqueen]

Finally with an item that I identified the last time as being a problem where free shipping was being offered where none existed in the listing but with the correct service available as per http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Combined-postage-Shopping-Cart-glitch-showing-free-with-2...

This item dos not ship for free to the USA via Xpresspost. I have not got it set up to do so. 

[momcqueen]

I wonder if they 'fixed' the last most recent Shopping Cart glitch with a roll-back to the previous version which also had its glitches. Something must explain the reason we're seeing this again. 

Or is anyone else? I use calculated postage rates nine times out of ten. 

[rose-dee]

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@mjwl2006 wrote:

Looking again at the first item but with a USA shipping address, none of these services are available to the USA so therefore, none should be showing never mind for free.

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I tried looking at this for you (entering a US postal address in the "Shipping" section) and I don't get the result you got (see below), just what look like ordinary shipping costs.  However, with a Canadian address, the listing shows free shipping, which I presume is correct?  I didn't check the other examples, although it would help if you could post the item #'s so anyone interested could go straight to the item -- I had to do a search for it by name. 

It's possible you may be seeing one element of eBay's new "smart display", i.e. eBay's system is picking up your IP address location and showing you the results for where you actually are, not for other information you enter in the drop-down boxes.  I think the only way you could really check this would be to ask a U.S. seller to take a look at one of these items from a U.S. location.  (I've done this before.  Just pick someone who sounds friendly and amenable on the U.S. seller boards -- if you can find one! -- and PM them). 

So you might want to ask Raphael next week if this is in fact the case before you conclude it's a serious glitch, as I haven't seen any other reports about this on the boards.  

For some reason I'm having trouble inserting the screen shot within this post -- I'll try another method. 

[pjcdn2005]

MJ's post is not about the search view it is about what happens when the item is put into the cart and a US address is used.   That would not be affected by the users ip...only which shipping address is being used.

[pjcdn2005]

Mj, if you clixjk on the free shipping option and then click on checkout, does the free choice carry through?  As long as you don't pay, clicking n checkout won't do anything. I don't have a US  address so can't try it myself.

Have you tried to see what happens in the cart with another sellers listing?

It would be interesting to see if the same thing happens on ,com......if the free option is given when buy it now is used.

[momcqueen]

Interesting question. 

When I returned to that item and went through the motions of trying to buy it, it allowed me to select a free postage option that does not exist but on the checkout page added postage to the bill.

[momcqueen]

When I went and added another seller's random item to my cart, I was also presented with postage options that don't exist for the my shipping location/destination but none showed free. Each had an actual cost attached to it. So what is that about? 

[pjcdn2005]

If you look at the listing those options are given for the US on there too. Listings with worldwide shipping often show the rate for the US AND worldwide shipping when flat rate is is used because of the way eBay has things set up.  You would need to look at a listing using calculated shipping to see if they had the same problem.  

[pjcdn2005]

This listing uses calculated shipping to the US.

191922508126

[momcqueen]

Very interesting. With that one, I get only one postage option -- and an appropriate one -- when I add it to my cart. There is no drop-down menu at all of available options that aren't really available. I wonder what the difference is between this listing and mine. 

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

So I curiously went to your store and picked a random Disney PIXAR car ($46.49 CAD) that had roughly $11 CAD shipping displayed, to see if I could replicate the issue you mentioned in your post. I tried to put it in my cart and this is what I got...

The item you've selected was not added to your cart.

• This seller will not sell to buyers that do not meet their requirements.

Tried to "buy-it-now" as well and I got...

Sorry, the seller is not accepting bids or offers from you at this time.

This is the first time I have seen this error message, but I haven't bought anything on eBay for over 6 months so I don't know if anything about my account changed.

...or did I ended up on your best buddies list at some point because we had previous disagreements? I tried to put a different seller's item (one that I have bought things from) into my cart / buy it now, and both are working properly. It would be great if you could clarify for me. I'm not going to be offended as it's unlikely I'd make purchases from your store anyway, and if you don't want me to I definitely won't bother; all I want to know is where the issue originated. 

[momcqueen]

Hi zee, thanks for trying to recreate the error.

I checked my BB list and you are not on it. Have we had disagreements in the past? None come to mind.

The second error certainly sounds like the one a buyer gets when they've been blocked but, with the first you mentioned, I'm not sure what other 'requirements' I'm using that would cause it. Maybe my settings are too stringent.

Or maybe it was a passing abnormality with one listing. Does it still show that?

[rose-dee]

As I've mentioned earlier, I do think eBay is doing some major tweaking (or maybe that's "twerking") in the background at the moment that could be affecting many areas of the site.    

I think you'll find these issues might be related to the Fall Seller Update and will suddenly resolve.  Who knows what they've got coming down the pipeline at us?  On the positive side, Raphael has now been saying "when the cart gets fixed" rather than "if the cart gets fixed", so perhaps they're also tinkering with that aspect of the site. 

I chose one of your Disney items at random (logged onto .com with my alternate ID), and got the Canadian free shipping with Canada Post options shown on the payment page.  I don't have a U.S. buying address to try and replicate the issue from that perspective.  I didn't get the bizarre messages that 'zee-chan' saw. 

BTW, I know this has been said before, but have you tried your tests using a different browser?  Not that eBay shouldn't work properly with all standard browsers, but sometimes when they are re-writing portions of the site in the background, some browsers seem to have more trouble with it. 

PJ is correct, I only looked as far as your shipping options in one of your listings (sorry, I was in a sleep-deprived fog yesterday), but at least it appears the information is correctly displayed on the listing tab, which might help you if you have to appeal to CS over a customer's complaint concerning shipping charges.  In the meantime, try getting Raphael to take a closer look at your issue.  

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

Hmm no error message today. I tried buying / add to cart the "Nickelodeon PAW PATROL MARSHALL Action Pack" and I got domestic expedited parcel for "free", or xpresspost for about $13. If I choose to get a quote with US as shipping destination, track packet is around $13 as well, and with Italy tracked packet for about $38, does that sound right? I don't have a US account so I can't try checking out with US account. Weird. 

And I don't think I'd ever get blocked as a buyer for buying (except BBL). I have paid for everything I bought so no UID opened against me at all, and I have ever only filed *one* INR claim to a chinese seller for a cheap trinket that I never received. 

The thing is, yesterday I also tried buying something from musicyouneed and I didn't get any error messages. So I don't know what's going on here.

Sorry about jumping the gun about the BBL.

[momcqueen]

The Paw Patrol item you cite does ship for free domestically via Expedited Parcel so it probably wouldn't re-create either of the errors I've found with my listings in the shopping cart. I use a little 'mental' code for my free versus paid postage listings so that I can tell at a glance whether something is priced with postage included within Canada: if the original price ends in a numeral five, it's free domestic shipping. If the original price ends in a numeral nine, it's paid postage for the buyer. This is useful to me when I do markdowns so that i can tell how much I can afford to offer as a discount without having to think too much about it. 

Thank you for trying again.

I'm sorry that you felt like you'd been blocked for no discernible reason.