eBay's Invoice system

[shooger]

I frequently sell several items to the same buyer. They often don't understand how to pay. (How hard is "$2 for the first and $0.50 for the each of the rest, if you pay in a single payment"?) Anyway, this buyer paid in two payments. One for the first two items, and one for the next several. Why, I have no idea. Anyway, I refunded both payments, and I'm trying to send an invoice for the whole thing. It'll only let me send an invoice for the first two together, or the last several together, or each item one by one.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH LETTING SELLERS JUST SELECT WHICH ITEMS THEY WANT TO GO ON AN INVOICE?!?!?!?

If I want to invoice him on all the items he purchased, let me!

This is an ongoing problem and not a glitch. What a horrible system. I'm so sick of it. Basic functions don't even work right!

[shooger]

The invoice system has gotten worse. I can't belive nobody else has had any problems with it!

The "send another invoice" link does nothing.
It is not possible to send an invoice once the buyer has made a payment. For example, if the payment was wrong, you refund it, and then you can't send an invoice. Ebay considers the item(s) paid, so no invoice is necessary.
The invoices don't use the right shipping charges. It is not properly reducing shipping fees for items beyond the first.
It is not recognizing that Canadian buyers are with the "US and Canada" region. It considers them international buyers and charges them the international shipping rate.

It's one huge glitch.

[muminlaw]

Shooger, you're NOT the only one having problems with it! The only time I even try to use eBay's invoice system is when my own invoices bounce (like with AOL users, among others). Even then, I often just use eBay's "contact a member" form and detail their amount owing that way. Using the invoice system only sends my blood pressure through the roof and it's high enough already!

I don't know if checkout ever worked correctly, but I do know it's had a lot of problems since eBay rolled out the "new and improved" My eBay.

Glenda

[ospreylinks]

I am running a test to see if I can get buyers (when they infrequently pop up) pay direct to us with a credit card instead of Paypal.

I am going to start to offer a 1% discount if they allow us to process the payment internally on our terminal, thus I will still be about 1% ahead after considering Paypal's 3.5% discount rate less our 1.5% discount rate. In addition, I will be able to use a more equitable exchange rate when converting from US to Cdn$'s thus netting me another 1.5% to 2% on sales.

The customer will get an email payment authorization form with details of the transaction asking them to print off the form and forward their credit card information via fax back to us....

It is a little low tech I realize, but does anyone else out there do anything like this?

Jeff

[scouttech-outfitters]

Here's what I've resorted to...

Thank you for your purchase. Below is your total is USD:

$54.00 Speakers
$16.00 Shipping
$ 4.90 GST
$ 5.60 PST
--------------
$80.50 USD TOTAL

Not the most stylish invoicing system but it has worked well and hassle free...not to mention most of the time I receive payments before I am even able to send an invoice!

[shoplineca]

I have 3 templates that I created, One for Ontario residents that must pay GST and PST, one for the rest of Canada and one for US residents. I email customers immediately afer an auction and for Cdn residents give them a choice of paying in US or Cdn funds setting out all costs in both denominations.

As well I set out all the ways they can pay me but request that they contact me for further instructions.

I then get to generate a PayPal invoice or provide instructions for them to email payment or mail a money order or Bidpay or whatever but I have now controlled the message/invoice getting to the customer and taken control of invoicing them correctly in their choice of currency.

Within the email, it tells them the type of shipping method for the cost they are paying and anticipated number of days for delivery. I tell them when my next shipping day is to encourage immediate payment.

There is very little distinct info that I have to input into the template so it takes me about 20 seconds to get one of these off to a winning bidder.

I usually receive an email within 2 minutes and payment that same day.

Its a simple copy and paste and input about 6 distinct items ($ costsamount and next shipping day)

Malcolm

[recped]

We accept credit cards direct as well through our own merchant account and terminal basically for the reasons you mention. Up until recently we did not accept PayPal at all but finally gave in last Spring. Initially we only had a personal account and would deny any credit card payments, since the big reduction in receiving limits we had to "upgrade", we still indicate in our listings and notices that we do not accept credit cards via PayPal but of course if someone uses one we would never know anymore since you no longer get the "you must upgrade to receive this credit card payment" (so that we can burn you severely on cash transfers).

We suggest in our notices that buyers call in their credit card information on our 24 hour toll free line, Fax the info or email (broken into a couple of messages). The methods our buyers seem to choose most often is email followed closely by telephone with only a handful of faxes out of thousands of transactions.

For buyers who don't want to give us cc info we suggest BidPay or of course money orders and cash.

I'm not sure how popular a faxback form would be, to much grief for a lot of buyers I would think. I'm also not sure if 1% is enough to convince buyers to see it your way unless you "force" the issue by restricting 3rd party methods (PayPal) of using credit cards.

The biggest downside to our method is that when browsing your listings don't indicate PayPal and you can't display the PayPal (with cc logos) logo in your listings. Some newbies don't even know how to send "cash" via PayPal.

As always your product mix determines how much control you can exercise over buyers. Over all the savings can be as much as your FVF depending on your merchant account charges, that 1.5% rate is very good, does it come with a per transaction fee?

Ben

[sunset_sports_cards]

When I have trouble with invoicing I just go into Paypal and do it manually, form there you can itemize each item and quantity and send the invoice to the buyer.

[barriemetals]

We use the same system that modern_tech uses but what gets me sometimes is that we pay for Seller Manager Pro and it will not allow us a place to enter tax information. It seems that ebay has made this for US customers but to get a few extra bucks they provide it to Canadian Sellers. I have brought this to their attention several times but as usual... bupkis.

Thanks Ebay for keeping in touch with the people who pay your way.

Steve

[shooger]

Most of the methods mentioned in this thread won't work for me, because I only accept PayPal, and because I deal in many smaller items - sometimes dozens of unique buyers and a hundred or more auction items per day. I can't fill out an individual email for each buyer who doesn't automatically pay. Besides, emails don't help lazy buyers pay, they just remind them, which isn't enough. Buyers need a clickable button that sends them directly to a PayPal screen where they can enter their password and click "pay". My buyers are teens, or parents of kids. Half are lazy, have aren't too bright, and the other half can't add.

That said, I'm going to try the PayPal invoice system when eBay fails me next (which will likely be the next time I go to use it... in other words later today).

I just wish eBay would provide a functioning invoice system. It seems like it would be SO easy to program. Other websites have them just fine. Ebay's has more glitches than functioning parts.

[betterthanstore]

Ok, Shooger, you are going to pay us for this tip. Here is the trick: Uncombine the first combined invoice for the first 2 (or 3 or 4) items, "View Payment Status", then "Uncombine". It will show up a warning, just click OK. Now after you go back to your "Items waiting for payment" page, you can generate a new invoice for those 2 items plus the new ones for the same buyer. Voila!

[shooger]

"Uncombine" does indeed uncombine the first invoice, but lately the invoice system isn't working, and you can't form a new invoice. Thanks though.

[magicpixiedust]

shooger - i know the feeling - send him a paypal "request for payment" you can then add all the items by including each item number and fill in the shipping yourself

[ospreylinks]

Our 1.5% rate is because of our volume with our main business - golf course(and our membership in the C.F.I.B.). Our volume is not generated solely because of our Ebay sales, actually this is a very small portion of our overall business.

If I went for a merchant account based on our Ebay transactions, the discount rate would be 99%....

Jeff

[vesivus]

It seems nobody has installed this tool...

Outlook PayPal Payment Request Wizard

This hooks right into Outlook (if you use this email program), and you can generate an email easily with a payment request. Unfortunately, the link is broken in PayPal to download it. It now goes to "quickbooks" payment wizard page.

I've noticed this link is broken as well. It seems to have a "hook" into quickbooks to send a payment right from an invoice. This will ROCK when they fix the link. Heh.

https://www.paypal.com/row/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/sell/payment_wizard_intro

Hopefully these will work for some of you?

John