Why does my summary show a shipping cost when everything before bidding said "Free Shipping"?

[chromlea]

So, I found an item today that I was interested in and placed a bid. Note how it shows "Free Shipping".

Now imagine my shock when I open up my eBay Summary page and see an added $2 shipping charge:

I thought, maybe I had read something wrong... or maybe the free shipping wasn't available worldwide, but looking on the actual listing it shows right on the page that there's free shipping to Canada. I also distinctly remember it saying free shipping on the final popup when I placed the bid.

What's going on here? I wouldn't have placed the bid if I knew there was going to be $2 in added shipping costs. I feel somehow cheated here... Is there something I can do?

Thanks for any advice/wisdom/comments you have on the subject.

[i*m-still-here]

It sounds like the seller sent you a revised invoice and decided to add $2 to your total.

I had the same experience a few weeks ago.

It's very uncommon for a seller to revise a shipping cost which appears in the listing unless it's in the other direction.

Very few increase a quoted shipping cost.

The first thing I'd do is contact the seller and ask that the invoice be revised back to Free Shipping.

If the seller refuses (as mine did), then ................ 

If you still want the item you can pay.

If you don't want it at that price you can ask the seller to cancel the transaction and just walk away.

Then, you have the option of leaving any FB you wish but don't threaten the seller or use FB as leverage because any NFB could be removed if you do that.

(If the seller refuses to cancel the transaction, and If you don't pay there is still the possibility that you'll get a strike but if that happens call eBay and they will remove it for you.)

[chromlea]

Thanks for your reply. I not sure though if this is a revised invoice by the seller, however, because I have not yet won this item, so I don't yet have an invoice. I've only placed a bid on it and immediately after placing this bid, I'm seeing this added shipping cost in my summary page that lists the auctions that I'm currently involved in.

I thought you were probably right, that this must be a very rare occurance, so I placed another bid on a second item from a different user. It too said Free Shipping on every page leading up to the bid, but once again, there's a shipping cost that I wasn't informed about added to my summary bids page.

This is making me very leary about bidding on anymore items, because I'm now scared that I'll always be slapped with a hidden shipping cost...

[pjcdn2005]

You can cancel your bid as long as the auction has more than 12 hours before it ends.

This link will help you to do that   http://pages.ebay.ca/help/buy/questions/retract-bid.html

[femmefan1946]

Lotta angst over a toonie.

However.

http://offer.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?RetractBidShow

or you can ask the seller to cancel your bid, but since he is in China and the weekend is upon us, I doubt there is time.

[pjcdn2005]

As I'm mentioned, it isn't something that happens a lot as the seller can not change the shipping charge of a listing once a bid has been made. If the other item is the same type of thing, it could be the same seller....many have different ID's

Would you mind giving us the item number of the 2nd item that you bid on that added $2?

That particular seller states free shipping and handling in many of their descriptions so it's possible that they made a mistake on this one. But I'm not sure how it can show free shipping and then change...if they had the $2 as a handling charge then I would think that the shipping would have said $2.

[pjcdn2005]

Lotta angst over a toonie.

It's the principle and yes I already know what minimum wage is per minute in Quebec (teasing you)

It would bug me as well..it's dishonest.

[chromlea]

Thank you for the information about retracting bids. I'll certainly consider this as the 12 hour mark approaches.

[chromlea]

The item number for the second item I bid on is 200965833372. 

And yes, I realise $2 is a small amount... it's not going to break the bank so to speak, but when I make a bid on item which clearly says in multiple places "free shipping" then later find a shipping charge listed with the bid, it's a little unnerving to me. What if next time I make a free shipping bid and find a $5 or $25 shipping charge?

Sure I understand now I can retract the bid... but I'm guessing eBay doesn't want you to do something like this on a regular basis... but so far today, I'm two for two in getting surprise shipping costs added to my free shipping bids.

[chromlea]

Looking at both lots again, I guess I should have realized that they were posted by the same seller (despite their names being different). The titles and descriptions are all but identical. I made sure to check that the seller name wasn't the same before I made my second bid, but I guess I should also have compared the descriptions.

Don't get me wrong, I read the descriptions carefully when I originally decided to bid on the items, but that description kind of fades away after reading several others in the mean time... I guess I'll have to be careful about buying anything where the description matches these two and hopefully that will be the end of the mystery shipping fees.

[chromlea]

Just thought I'd update my situation...

So, I thought it might be safer only to bid on items where it shows a shipping price... so I bid on one that showed $2 shipping. Then, in my summary bids, it showed $3 shipping. I was thinking... what the heck? Maybe it's a Chrome thing? So I checked it in Internet Explorer and saw the same thing.

Then, I won the item and the correct $2 shipping price was given during checkout, so I'm happy about that. Perhaps if I win those two which said free shipping, it will go back to being free during checkout too. I'll have to wait and see though, because there's many hours before those lots close and I'm not sure I'll be the winning bidder on them.

But this does give me more faith to bid again 🙂