SO frustrated with combined shipping problems

[triber]

This problem never ends. I had 2 buyers who asked for combined shipping last week, very smooth and easy.

Today I get a buyer saying they have 13 items in their cart, and every time they ask for a combined shipping invoice they are told that I don't do combined shipping.

I have phoned eBay many times about this, I thought I'd give it one more try. The rep was hard to understand, but came up with the suggestion that the buyer purchases each item and then I work out the combined shipping and send the refund for the overpayment. NO! That is not the answer. I explained that I have to pay fees on each shipping cost paid for and then when I refund I will be losing money. She just didn't seem to understand that. I kept at it, and then she said to ask the buyer to call eBay. I am not going to do that either, my buyers shouldn't have to do that.

She finally said she would forward it to the technical bods, I explained that that had been done many times before, still a problem! Why can't eBay get this fixed. The rep checked my options and I clearly support combined shipping.

I just got an email to leave feedback to the call, I hate to say what I really think without being rude. eBay needs to have reps that are easy to understand and that understand eBay.

I now have to ask my buyer to send numbers of all the things she wants, she shouldn't have to go to that trouble, if she decides not to bother, I am losing 13 sales.

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

I totally hear you. There is no excuse for this problem not to have been fixed by now. I can remember this has been going on for years.  Sometimes buyers can request combined shipping & sometimes they can't.  I have ended up refunding buyers the overcharge, but like you said, you get charged fees on it all.  If a buyer asks me ahead of time about combining different items, then I have manually gone in & changed the shipping details on each one. But we shouldn't have to do that.

[marnotom!]

Is your buyer using the cart on the .ca site or the .com site?  Any idea what your two other buyers used?

[hlmacdon]

Do you have any promotional or flate rate shipping options on any of your listings? From what I recall if you have those in place it disables the request total function if even just one listing in the cart has those set as you are effectively already offering a shipping discount.  There used to be some issues with the mobile app but I haven't looked at that in a long while and it may have been addressed. 

One work  around is to set a maxium shipping amount through a promotional shipping rule. This at least confines it to one refund and limits how much you lose in non-refunded fees. It's not a great alternative but if you sell mainly smaller lightweight items and package weights don't exceed a given amount it reduces the amount of work you have to do.

[recped]

One issue that seems to be true....the Request Total function is NOT available to mobile users. last I heard way over 50% of all eBay transactions are now done using the App or the mobile version of the website.

I totally agree with you on the hassle this involves, I spend more time creating custom listings for buyer than almost anything else eBay related. It's really annoying when I make one up for a buyer and they never follow through (doesn't happen very often).

eBays answer is to use Combined Shipping Rules, I've tried, many times but I've failed to ever get them to work to my satisfaction. eBay's other answer is to use "free" shipping, doesn't work for my many customers who expect to save money by combining.

This whole issue has been my number one complaint about eBay since 2012 when the original "Forced IPR" policy started.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@recped wrote:

One issue that seems to be true....the Request Total function is NOT available to mobile users. last I heard way over 50% of all eBay transactions are now done using the App or the mobile version of the website.

I totally agree with you on the hassle this involves, I spend more time creating custom listings for buyer than almost anything else eBay related. It's really annoying when I make one up for a buyer and they never follow through (doesn't happen very often).

eBays answer is to use Combined Shipping Rules, I've tried, many times but I've failed to ever get them to work to my satisfaction. eBay's other answer is to use "free" shipping, doesn't work for my many customers who expect to save money by combining.

This whole issue has been my number one complaint about eBay since 2012 when the original "Forced IPR" policy started.

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Add to cart still doesn't work on PC. These are features that should work for one and all no matter what device you are on.

-Lotz

[triber]

She was using the cart on the .com site, but she is in Canada. One was US one AU. Is it just Canadians that can't ask for combined shipping?

[triber]

That doesn't work for me. My shipping varies so much because of many categories I sell in.

[triber]

I agree, I have spent a couple of hours just on this transaction.

[esclyons]

can you just not ask them, to send you offers, or use buy it now and wait for an invoice, then you can adjust the invoice, to what you agreed on.. I have never had an issue, with request total. so i am only trying to guess here.. i have had usa, and canadian buyers, buy multible items, then request total, and then i send invoice..

[femmefan1946]

Are all the listings in a single currency?

If they were listed on dotCOM in USD and dotCA in loonies, the Cart may be unable to handle a dual currency transaction.

And the buyer may not notice the original currency in a smaller font on the page she is looking at, which is perfectly understandable.

[triber]

I only sell on .com in USD

[triber]

They are all buy it now, how can they send offers, they have no idea what the shipping will be. They can't send an invoice, eBay is telling them I don't combine shipping

[hlmacdon]

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@triber wrote:

She was using the cart on the .com site, but she is in Canada. One was US one AU. Is it just Canadians that can't ask for combined shipping?

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I've seen it with buyers from multiple countries and multiple currencies.  It was always a huge pain with international customers outside of NA due to the very high costs of shipping and all the fees that would generate when they checked out one by one. Money lost and time wasted. Capping it with promo rules limited my losses there, but for sellers like you that sell all kinds of differently sized items it is a nightmare.

In the past there was no incentive for ebay to fix this since they profitted off of the extra fees that weren't refunded when you refund and most people wouldn't call in to try to get manual FVF credits. Not sure how managed payments changes this, when you refund partial amounts there do you get FVF credits? There also seemed to be reluctance as I've seen multiple comments from ebay representatives about cart abandonment when items aren't paid for immediately but when I can't recall a single transaction in the past where a buyer didn't pay.

[femmefan1946]

I ran into that once.

The solution was to make a counter offer in which the shipping remained fixed, but my counteroffer was less than his offer  by the difference in the shipping.

As in (I forget the details) five items @ $10 each with $5 each shipping (total $75), his offer was $9 each or $45 plus  free  shipping. My counter offer was $45 shipping and five items for $3 each for a total of $60.

He accepted.

He was smart enough to look at the bottom line and not the details.

[marnotom!]

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@triber wrote:

She was using the cart on the .com site, but she is in Canada. One was US one AU. Is it just Canadians that can't ask for combined shipping?

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My understanding is that the eBay.ca shopping cart is more--uh--buggy than the one on the .com site.  I was wondering if your buyer was actually trying to do her purchasing on the Canadian site (being that she's Canadian and all) rather than on the .com site, but you say she wasn't.  Hmm.

[regs43]

Like esclyons said, have them "buy it now" EACH item, and make sure to tell them NOT to pay for any of them (this is important becasue people don't listen lol), and then you can issue an invoice manually. I do this all the time for people who have issues. This generally needs to be done on the computer and NOT the app (which is a piece of **bleep**)

If you have immediate payment required that would be an issue on its own

Hope it works out for you.

[pjcdn2005]

Did she actually tell you that she was using the cart on .com or are you assuming that she is since your items are listed on .com?  However...other than marnotom mentioning it, I don't recall anyone else saying that the .ca cart has more problems.   As far as I know they are equally unreliable.  😞

I'm sorry I don't have a solution to your problem though...it is frustrating that this keeps coming up.

[pjcdn2005]

Add to cart still doesn't work on PC. These are features that should work for one and all no matter what device you are on.

What do you mean? I don't have a problem adding your items or any other items to my cart and I'm on my PC. 

[pjcdn2005]

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@regs43 wrote:

Like esclyons said, have them "buy it now" EACH item, and make sure to tell them NOT to pay for any of them (this is important becasue people don't listen lol), and then you can issue an invoice manually. I do this all the time for people who have issues. This generally needs to be done on the computer and NOT the app (which is a piece of **bleep**)

If you have immediate payment required that would be an issue on its own

Hope it works out for you.

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I don't know how your customers are able to do that. When I click on buy it now on your items, I am taken to the payment screen, I'm not able to 'commit to buy' which is what I would have to do in order to buy your items without paying right away.  Ebay has some sort of 'immediate payment' required on most items, even if the seller doesn't have it set up on their listing.