Not to get too technical about this, but I thought the policy was being rolled out starting May 1st. Is it possible your buyer (was he/she in the U.S.) was having a problem because of the poor way the US shopping cart meshes with eBay.ca? I've had exactly this scenario happen at least twice over the last few months.
In any case, my understanding was that a buyer can still use the "Request Total" button, although from my recent purchase of some items on eBay.com, I noticed that button has become much smaller and less conspicuous -- perhaps eBay's attempt to discourage people from not paying immediately. Now you really have to look for that button, even if you know it's there.
I also noticed a couple of interesting things on the eBay.com update that may or may not soon apply to eBay.ca:
(a) a complete change in the way "Best Offer" functions, starting with 3 high-end categories (interestingly, they mention this new policy may be extended to other categories), which allows multiple concurrent offers; and
(b) the ability to exclude certain buyers from Unpaid Item Assistant -- assuming the seller has opted into this -- so that those buyers can take more time to pay. I'm not sure this is much help (you have to know your buyer(s) in advance!). Personally I think the Unpaid Item Assistant will make for bad customer relations, but eBay is promoting it in conjunction with the new immediate payment policy.
For reference, here's the section regarding combined/multiple purchases, from the link Pierre noted above:
" Eligible transactions [for the new policy] are those less than $1,000, paid with PayPal or a merchant credit card, where the shipping cost is specified for the buyer.If you use the combined shipping discounts feature, your buyers must create a combined order by adding eligible items to their eBay Shopping Cart. The discount will automatically be applied to the order total.
If you don't use this tool but still offer combined shipping discounts, your buyers must add the items they want to purchase to their Shopping Cart and request a new invoice reflecting the revised shipping cost by clicking the Request Total button."
Apparently this applies to both domestic and international transactions. My view is that forcing immediate payment while leaving a purchased but unpaid item listed for sale is a very bad idea, but eBay says it's in line with other ecommerce sites, so I suppose we have to learn to live with it like other questionable "advances" by eBay.
