Sending an invoice

[grannio204]

More help please.

Sold an item to a US bidder who did not contact me about shipping outside Canada prior to bidding. I want to issue invoice with revised shipping cost. Checked eBay help. It said to check ‘sold’ under ‘My eBay’. First of all, there is no such heading under My eBay, and secondly when I click on the item that sold, it offers no ‘send an invoice’ option.

So, am I heading towards another resolution centre claim to have this resolved? And, why is it such a hassle to sell stuff on eBay ...

[grannio204]

Thanks again femmefan - you are the most patient and helpful person here.

As I stated in another thread, I am not about to go out and buy a scale and packing materials for the few items I want to move out of my small home. This is not a business for me - I would just end up trying to sell the scale here, but please, ask for shipping rates prior to bidding.

Besides, I wouldn’t trust eBay to calculate anything for me ...

[momcqueen]

Calculated shipping works flawlessly through ebay. I've been using it successfully for 4.5 years.

If you are unwilling to buy a $20 kitchen scale to use to weigh your items in order to provide actual, accurate shipping costs to your buyers, then online sales are probably not for you. You can't cut corners on ebay. It leads to bad experiences not only for you as a seller but for your buyers which poisons the well for everyone buying and selling here.

[grannio204]

Thanks pjcdn2005 - you win the kewpie doll. The PayPal address on this listing is not mine! I have no idea how this happened, but a lesson learned. No more PayPal for me.

Can I request the buyer pay by money order rather than PayPal, or does the almighty eBay not allow this? When I was buying and selling stuff all over the world before the advent of on-line malls like eBay, we used money orders and never had to deal with nonsense like this.

And, I thought my listings were accessable worldwide on eBay. If this isn’t true, then Kijii may be a better option for me.

And eBay should stop telling people that our market is worldwide.

[grannio204]

I just tried to cancel all of my listings. eBay acknowledged this, yet they still appear on My eBay. They would not allow me to cancel three of them because they are, ahem, ‘auctions’ (on an auction site?). Hope nobody bids on this stuff.

Bye now.

[pjcdn2005]

No you can't tell the buyer that you want a money order, ebay doesn't allow you to ask that. One thing that you could do is to open a gmail account at the email address that was written in your listings and then link it to your paypal account. I would think then that you would have access to the current buyer's payment. 

You must offer a form of electronic payment so unless you open your own merchant credit card account, you have to accept Paypal. In over 10 years of selling I have never had a problem with PP. All you need to do is to correct your email address on your current listings so that the next time a buyer pays, there isn't a problem.  

Your listings don't show up in other countries because you don't have your shipping set up for anywhere else. There are millions of listings on Ebay so people don't want to see a listing unless the seller specifies that they will ship to the buyer's country.  If you set up shipping for both Canada and the US, all of your listings will be visible on both .com and .ca. In some cases they will also show on other eBay sites when you specify shipping to those countries.

In most cases the system works how it is supposed to but it is up to the user to input the correct information and to understand how the system works. There is usually someone around here to answer questions but you have to be open minded when you read the replies. eBay is more complicated today then it was years ago and there is a learning curve here if you are willing to learn. But if you assume that the buyers are stupid and that you have done everything correctly and get offended when someone suggests that you made a mistake..as you do did the last time I asked you to check your payment address...it's impossible to help you.  There are going to be cases when you have done everything correctly but since we can't go into your listings and look...we have to ask you to check things first before we can guess what the problem is. We are just users like you are and are simply trying to help another seller

[pjcdn2005]

Sigh. Why didn't you just try fixing your mistake instead of cancelling your listings?  You may not be able to make changes on the auction that had a bid but you could have changed other ones. Plus, I have a feeling that the PP address was wrong only on the .com listings yet you cancelled your .ca listings as well.

Anyway, maybe eBay isn't going to work for you. To cancel your auctions go to the following link and enter your auction number. There is another way to do that as well but I can't think of it right now.

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

[grannio204]

I think I may have recovered the two buyers that sent funds to the mysterious PayPal account. I emailed them and gave them my right account, and both have responded positively. No extra shipping to either.

Still don’t know how the wrong account id got on to the US site, but thanks to the help from you folks, it won’t happen again.

[grannio204]

Ok, not quite done yet. The buyer of one of the  items asked me to use the invoice option, which I did. I included my PayPal id in the comments section. Buyer just emailed me, got his first payment back from the wrong account, tried to pay it from my invoice, and it went to the wrong account again!

So tell me again pierre about all these intelligent buyers on eBay. I have spent at least an hour on this item. At the minimum wage, I have I have already ‘spent’ 15 bucks trying to sell a 99 cent item.

I know my brain has slowed down in the last 70 years, but really!!!

[grannio204]

Ok, not quite done yet. The buyer of one of the  items asked me to use the invoice option, which I did. I included my PayPal id in the comments section. Buyer just emailed me, got his first payment back from the wrong account, tried to pay it from my invoice, and it went to the wrong account again!

I have spent at least an hour on this item. At the minimum wage, I have I have already ‘spent’ 15 bucks trying to sell a 99 cent item.

I know my brain has slowed down in the last 70 years, but really!!

(edited by eBay?)

[pierrelebel]

I am 72.  I understand about the brain slowing down as we get older.

"So tell me again pierre about all these intelligent buyers on eBay"

The problem is not the buyer, it is you.

Your listings give the wrong PayPal email address.  It is as simple as that.  Buyers cannot change it from your eBay invoice, regardless of any comment you may include with it.

You can solve the problem, temporarily, by you sending your buyers an invoice directly from your PayPal account.

However, for a permanent solution, you should "revise" all your listings to make sure your correct current PayPal account is shown in the payment section when preparing your listings.

[grannio204]

I have done that with 50% success (see above)

I have corrected the information on the US site. My questions are where did the incorrect id come from, and why did this happen on the .com site only (.ca site is correct)?

Until today, I didn’t even realize that I could specify my PayPal address in a listing. Up until the US buyers starting buying items, everything was automatic - I never specified a PayPal address on any of my listings.

Ah, the mysteries of eBay. 

[lady.stark]

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@grannio204 wrote:

The buyer of one of the  items asked me to use the invoice option, which I did. I included my PayPal id in the comments section. Buyer just emailed me, got his first payment back from the wrong account, tried to pay it from my invoice, and it went to the wrong account again!

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Unfortunately, the fact that you indicated your email address in the message won't solve the problem. The problem was with the listing, and even if you send another invoice, the problem is still there.

I would suggest to cancel the transaction - BUT advise the buyer first of what you will do and wait for their OK - and relist with the right PayPal account at the original selling price. You can even write in the listing title "Private listing for xxx", just to be sure nobody else buys it. Then the buyer will be able to buy it and the payment will go to the right PP account.

[lady.stark]

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@grannio204 wrote:

I have corrected the information on the US site. My questions are where did the incorrect id come from, and why did this happen on the .com site only (.ca site is correct)?

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Is it possible that it is a former email address not used in a long time? Or is it possible that someone from your entourage used your ID at some point in the past (like a wife, partner, child)?

[femmefan1946]

Then why have a description at all if buyers don’t read them?

Most buyers do read them. The ones that don't are the ones you will have problems with.

For example, that MAD magazine is a collection of spoofs.

The description is where you list some of the movies etc they are parodying.

And you can also use up to 12 pictures free. Scanning is best for books.

Why have the eBay touted feedback system when it is meaningless?

It's a legacy from the long lost days of the 20th century.

Way back in the mists of time, 23 years ago, few people were on the internet at home and online buying was a mystery.

Feedback was a comfort for those buyers (and sellers).

I only started selling a couple of months ago, and it has become a major hasslle.

EBay tells newbies that selling on eBay is easy.

No job is easy.

If you have ever worked retail, every single problem you ever had on the floor and in the stockroom you will have on eBay.

If you have ever written ad copy, every single problem, double entendre, and grammatical error you will have on eBay

If you have ever shipped a parcel to your nonna in Milano, every problem you ever ran into you will have on eBay.

If you've ever paid taxes, every problem you have ever run into you will have on eBay. 

My listings DO offer specific charges for Canadian buyers, and they state, NOT in the fine print, what buyers outside Canada are supposed to do before placing a bid.

And none of that is relevant.

Because it's in the wrong place.

That MAD magazine will only be seen in Canada, because it is listed on dotCA and there is no shipping price given for any other country.

That's under the Shipping Details-> International Shipping

Which is where customers will look for it and is the only information that eBay considers.

You say:

Excellent condition.

Comics and books are graded. Excellent has very specific meanings. Are you sure your book meets that grade?

Is it boarded and bagged?

I sell used books and rarely use any grade higher than Very Good.

Shipping to Canada.

Yep . That's there.

Have you actually looked at the cost of shipping to Canada?

$4 seems high for something that could go LetterPost/Light Packet.

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpotools/apps/far/business/findARate?execution=e1s1

Do you have a digital scale and a tape measure?

Other countries and rural areas, please ask for rates prior to bidding (Postal or ZIP Code).

Because you don't offer shipping anywhere but Canada, no one in any other country will ever see your listing.

Click on Revise.

Scoot down the Sell Your Item form to International Shipping, and enter a few numbers.

[femmefan1946]

Can I request the buyer pay by money order rather than PayPal

No.

This is a Buyer Protection, since the buyer has no recourse if the seller cashes the MO and sends nothing.

What is required is electronically visible proof of payment.

If you have a merchant credit card account, you can use that and there are a few other online payment systems, none of which, except perhaps PaisaPal* have much acceptance from the buying public.

*From India and works in rupees.

[grannio204]

I have removed the MAD magazine listing to eliminate picky buyers.

I have about 2500 mint comic books from the Silver Age collected over a lifetime, bagged and boarded at purchase, plus a few hundred TPBs that I read once (instead of their individual books). I know about the grading process from watching shows like Pawn Stars. I can’t see the point of sending my comics to some ‘expert’, have them do their thing, put it in a bag with numbers on it, send it back and charge me a bunch of dough just to tell me what I already know.

Let the buyer do that to prove it to him/herself that there is no crease on page 12.

For that reason, and the complexity of eBay, I would never try to sell these here.

[lady.stark]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

Have you actually looked at the cost of shipping to Canada?

$4 seems high for something that could go LetterPost/Light Packet.

 

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I agree with most of the post, except this point. Magazines weight between 200 and 300 grams when shipped in a bubble envelope with at least one cardboard. That's $4.10 + taxes right there if you don't have access to a Meter or Postal Indicia. That's without any handling cost.

I know that mint, discounted stamps exist here on eBay, but not everyone has the money to buy a $30 bundle. Or the patience to apply them on an envelope. 😉