eBay

rose-dee · ‎05-26-2017

Some may recall I've been making a nuisance of myself harping for months about "Request Total" not working, initially with Raphael (one of the eBay Canada reps, who left in December, 2016).

For the past few days, I've been corresponding back and forth with one of the new eBay Canada people, and after many messages and a number of screen shots describing what I've been seeing both as buyer and seller, it appears my original conclusion -- that using eBay's "Automated Shipping Discount Rules" (and turning on "Combined Shipping") in your "Preferences" has been knocking out the "Request Total" feature -- is basically true.

Here is the eBay rep's most recent explanation [my emphasis in bold typeface]. It's not good news for many of us:

"a.depour wrote:

[...] I just got confirmation about Request Total and how it relates to Automated Shipping Discount:

At the moment, they work in a mutually exclusive way. That is, if you offer Automated Shipping Discount, the Request Total becomes disabled. The reason I was able to submit a Request Total on the Canadian site was because the shipping discount doesn't apply to that site (since you set it up for USD).

If you want Request Total to work for your US customers, you have to disable Automated Shipping Discount. "

Presumably the reverse is also true, i.e. that if you choose $CDN as the currency for your Automated Shipping Discounts, buyers on the U.S. (.com) site won't be able to use "Request Total".

So be aware that if you want all your customers, regardless of eBay site, to be able to use "Request Total" to ask for an adjusted invoice (for combined shipping), do NOT set up any Automated Shipping Discount Rules.

Conversely, if you have Automated Shipping Discount rules set up, be aware that buyers using the site handling the currency you've chosen for your automated discounts will not have access to "Request Total" (even if the button itself appears on the cart checkout screen). This is obviously why I've been getting those weird dead-end messages when trying to use "Request Total" as a buyer.

All this time, those of us believed our buyers could benefit from our automated discounts have actually unwittingly been barring buyers from being able to ask for a total on a multi-item purchase. Yikes. I knew something was wrong, since I haven't had one such request from a buyer since I set up my automated shipping discounts a couple of years ago.

So it seems as if a lot of us will have a d===d if you do, d===d if you don't decision to make with respect to shipping discounts/combined shipping. Are you more likely to lose potential multi-item purchasers because they give up in frustration, being unable to use "Request Total", and not wanting to trust that you'll refund the excess shipping to them?

Or are you more likely to lose buyers because shipping discounts won't be applied automatically to their carts on checkout? All I can say is that it's going to be a tough choice for me at least, now that I know the reality of the situation.

If you sell more or less evenly to .com and .ca buyers, it may be wiser to forget about automated discounts altogether, since you must choose one currency or the other for the discounts. At least then all your buyers will be able to access "Request Total", at least according to eBay's most recent explanation.

Why would eBay do this? Clearly many Canadian sellers will be listing and selling in both currencies and may not want to have to choose one currency over the other when setting up automated discounts, knocking out an entire market from using "Request Total". Well, I expect this is likely another change that eBay made with only the U.S. market in mind.

This news also raises other questions. I thought that maybe it's possible to experiment with the automated "Flat Shipping Rules" to see if I can make those rules resemble the sort of combined shipping discounts that might come up in an order. But how to reasonably predict most possible scenarios of combinations? That still wouldn't apply to my Canadian buyers, since I have $USD set as my option in the automated discounts. What happens if a buyer chooses items with mixed $USD/$CDN currency? In that situation, will neither "Request Total" nor the automated discount work? Maybe I should stop listing on .ca entirely (which I really don't want to do).

As it stands right now, for my own set-up (I have Automated Shipping Discounts set up), my Canadian buyers can use "Request Total", but not my U.S. buyers. Both my U.S. and Canadian buyers can get my automated "Buy 4, get free shipping" discount -- but only if the listing is in $USD (i.e. on .com). If the listing(s) are in $CDN, my U.S. buyers can't request an adjusted total.

If this sounds complicated and confusing, it is. It's taken me over 6 months to get to this point of understanding, but I wanted to report it to other sellers, since I don't think eBay did a very good job at all of making it clear to sellers at the time this "either-or" was introduced.

We really didn't need another silent sales killer like this, did we?

momcqueen · ‎05-27-2017

I think that Buy It Now button should be dumped. We don't need it now that the Shopping Cart functions. Is there any other online shopping site that lets you avoid adding something to the Shopping Cart in order to buy it? I cannot think of one but I shop from the same ten places all the time.

dutchman48 · ‎05-27-2017

.com has immediate payment required on their site which we don't have here.

Ebay has far too many idiosyncrises between all their different sites.

They need to develop a checkout system that is generic and will work on every site. Only thing that should change is the currency.

But because they are so concerned about .com, every one else pays for it.

Actually, their whole site needs an overhaul so it is consistent everywhere. Only thing that needs to change might be policies and procedures, but the actual sites should not be unique to each country.

I know, wishful thinking!

momcqueen · ‎05-27-2017

Do you mean to say that sellers who list on eBay.com with Buy It Now NEVER get Unpaids?

hlmacdon · ‎05-27-2017

@mjwl2006 wrote:
Do you mean to say that sellers who list on eBay.com with Buy It Now NEVER get Unpaids?

Hah I wish.

momcqueen · ‎05-27-2017

Then what does dutchman mean when he says this: ".com has immediate payment required on their site which we don't have here."

ebay Canada also has the option to set your listing as Immediate Payment Required but you cannot use it with features such as Best Offer or Local Pickup.

hlmacdon · ‎05-27-2017

@mjwl2006 wrote:
Then what does dutchman mean when he says this: ".com has immediate payment required on their site which we don't have here."

ebay Canada also has the option to set your listing as Immediate Payment Required but you cannot use it with features such as Best Offer or Local Pickup.

I haven't delved into it. I only list on .com with BIN listings, have immediate payment required not set and still have buyers from both US domestic and abroad able to "buy" without paying. It is possible there are some differences in how the mobile/app side handles things versus the non-tinker toy device side.

pjcdn2005 · ‎05-28-2017

He means that ebay.com will put ipr on certain listings even if the seller doesn't set up ipr. They don't do that on this site. For example I checked one of your items and on .ca I can commit to buy and not pay right away but on .com if I use buy it now I would have to pay right now.

momcqueen · ‎05-28-2017

I have IPR setup on some where UIs were a problem. What listing(s) does this apply to? What are you looking at?

rose-dee · ‎05-28-2017

@hlmacdon wrote:
Sounds like a multi-currency handling issue if I am understanding your post correctly. It seems that as currently coded, the request total feature can't factor in mixed currency values (ie your item prices are in CAD but a USD discount applies). Presumably there was some concern over double conversion. Not hard to account for this when coding, but whatever.

The whole way the cart handles totals frankly sucks, is behind the times, and things like this need to be properly documented on site. I have a similar conundrum with handling mixed item sizes and use a combination of flat rate shipping rules and promotional shipping rules as a bandaid. I list in single currency however and the products I sell are somewhat uniform and fall into one of two general size categories, so I don't face the same issue you have.

I'm not sure it's a mixed currency handling issue, at least not where the problem of the automated discounts knocking out "Request Total" is concerned.

For example, I sell primarily in $USD on .com, and the one automated discount that I do have in place (free shipping for 4 items of a particular type) works perfectly for my U.S. (.com) buyers. On the other hand, if a Canadian buyer chooses 4 of the specified items, they won't get the automatic free shipping, but they can use "Request Total" (as the eBay Canada rep's test the other day discovered, which is what led him to the final explanation).

This is apparently because a Canadian seller must specify, when setting up automated discounts, which currency ($USD or $CDN) applies. Once the automation is set in that currency, no buyers using that site's currency will be able to use "Request Total". I think 'dutchman' is right, that our ability as Canadian sellers to list on either site will probably be phased out soon.

Still, this doesn't explain to me why (as a buyer) I was unable to use "Request Total" when purchasing from both a U.K. seller and a seller in France. Perhaps the checkout flow is set up quite differently there.

Prior to automated discounts being introduced, "Request Total" worked perfectly, even with mixed currencies -- of course then there was the .com cart for quite some time that couldn't handle mixed currency.

I agree with you completely, that eBay has never really been able to get their checkout system to work reliably and flawlessly. I can recall that 10 or 12 years ago, long before checkout "carts" were developed, sellers would plead in their listings that buyers not use the eBay checkout system. Even then it was a mess. Now it's just a bigger, more complicated mess.

rose-dee · ‎05-28-2017

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
He means that ebay.com will put ipr on certain listings even if the seller doesn't set up ipr. They don't do that on this site. For example I checked one of your items and on .ca I can commit to buy and not pay right away but on .com if I use buy it now I would have to pay right now.

Yes, if I recall, there is a dollar value for automatic IPR on .com -- is it $100 or $1000, I can never remember, Raphael said both on different occasions and I've never bothered to look it up.

rose-dee · ‎05-28-2017

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
To focus for a second on buyers who pay separately..... I've been wondering lately if the buy it now button only adds to these types of problems. If they had to add to the cart I doubt that they would pay for each one separately. If the cart worked flawlessly than perhaps removing the bin button on fixed price listings would be a good thing. Just a thought...

The problem with removing BIN is that the cart actually still doesn't work flawlessly for all buyers on all sites because of the conflict between automated discounts and Request Total. If anything, the "Request Total" button should be masked out completely where it doesn't function, to avoid leading buyers to the "dead-end" screen -- and possibly to cart abandonment.

The worst part is that that "dead-end" screen tells buyers, in lovely bright red text: "This seller has disallowed combined discounts"! Yikes. I wouldn't blame the buyer for running to another seller (or site).

If the BIN button were removed, then buyers faced with not being able to use the "Request Total" feature would have only two choices: either pay the multiple shipping and hope the seller is honest enough to provide a refund of the excess shipping, or abandon the cart (and eBay too perhaps).

This is precisely what I had to do recently on 3 occasions as a buyer -- use the BIN feature -- in order to back out of the cart, purchase each item I wanted one by one without paying, then send a personal email to the seller asking them to forward an invoice with an adjusted total.

Without the BIN button, they would likely have lost my sale, because the accumulated total of shipping shown on the cart in one of order was over $80 US, almost as much as the total of the items themselves. The actual shipping on the adjusted invoice was around $15 US. Quite a difference, and not every buyer will be willing (or able) to pay that up front, trusting they'll get a refund from the seller. Not every seller is going to want to pay shipping FVFs on that excess and either lose the FVFs or do battle with eBay CS to get them back.

I've had quite a number of my U.S. buyers in the past few months purchasing one item at a time, paying for it, then buying the next, and I now know why: the conflicting actions of the cart/automated discounts and "Request Now" feature are preventing them from asking me for a revised total.

I expect these may be new eBay users who aren't aware of how BIN works (i.e. that they can make their purchases, send me a personal message, then pay once they get my invoice). Old-timers on eBay like me remember the BIN feature and use it as an alternative if necessary.

In short, until eBay really fixes their cart checkout system, it's a good idea not to remove the BIN feature.

rose-dee · ‎05-28-2017

As a case in point, what seller wants their buyers to see this when they click on the "Request Total" button in their checkout cart, hoping to get a total with adjusted shipping?

What's worse is that many of us advertise in our listings that we offer combined shipping discounts, and direct our buyers to use the "Request Total" feature if they're making a multiple purchase and would like a break on the shipping cost.

This result makes us look like we're a bunch of liars. I reiterate that the only reason I knew about this was because I do occasional multi-item buying on eBay. Doubtless this has been going on in the background for my own buyers for months.

All I can say is that if you are in my situation, listing on .com with one or more automated discounts set up for $USD, your U.S. buyers will see the screen below if they do click on "Request Total".

Short of trying to design automated discounts to cover every possible situation on .com (which as I said, can be a nightmare for sellers with items of a wide variety of sizes and weights), it might be better to remove your automated discounts altogether until eBay confirms they will at least mask out the "Request Total" feature whenever it's unavailable. That isn't a "fix" per se of the cart system, but at a minimum may avoid sending frustrated buyers away.

brettjet38 · ‎05-30-2017

"Workarounds"

When that is the only Word that comes out of the mouths of the eBay "Nymphs" over and over and over again.....

You know what the "Priorities" are for eBay, and it's not "Full Site Cohesion"

It's an international shopping site and the most fundamental thing used "the shopping cart" has never worked correctly and here we are at the end of May 2017 and it still is not resolved!!

dutchman48 · ‎05-31-2017

Hi Rose-Dee

Some one posted this on the US chat.

I wonder if it is true? I think I will see what chat says.

To use the cart feature and request a total it will only work if IPR is not checked on the listings and if they are not "free shipping" listings.

momcqueen · ‎05-31-2017

Free Shipping eliminates Request Total.

rose-dee · ‎05-31-2017

@dutchman48 wrote:

Some one posted this on the US chat.
I wonder if it is true? I think I will see what chat says.

To use the cart feature and request a total it will only work if IPR is not checked on the listings and if they are not "free shipping" listings.

This sounds like it makes sense, but may be an assumption on the U.S. boards. It wasn't mentioned by the eBay rep I was communicating with last week, so I don't know. I agree, we certainly need to clarify this whole situation on today's Wed. chat.

All I can say is what I saw from my experience in buying in February of this year (and in earlier months). None of the items I wanted had IPR, because after the "Request Total" wouldn't work, I emptied my cart contents, went back and used "BIN" for each of the 14 items I wanted (without paying). Then I sent a personal message to the seller, asking for a combined shipping invoice. None of the items had free shipping either.

Granted, all of those items were under $100, which would not have triggered IPR anyway on the .com purchases I was making. We really need to get this whole mess clarified by eBay. Yikes.

rose-dee · ‎05-31-2017

@mjwl2006 wrote:
Free Shipping eliminates Request Total.

But if eBay's checkout were working properly, it really shouldn't do so if a buyer chooses a mix of items, some with free shipping, some not.

If a buyer puts 1 item in the cart with free shipping, plus 2 items with shipping attached, they should be able to verify the shipping total with their seller. A variety of sizes and dimensions could easily skew the total against the buyer. For example, the shipping cost on a single large item might allow everything else to be sent in the same box.

This whole thing is a serious issue and I think we need some precision from eBay on it. Many thanks to eBay for hiding it from us for so long. No doubt they were happy to keep collecting the extra FVFs on all those partial refunds where sellers didn't bother to pursue the matter with eBay's CS.

I mean, really, don't they ever check their own site now and then as buyers?

momcqueen · ‎05-31-2017

Having played with the Shopping Cart as much as I have, I can assure you that if it is a mix of Free Shipping and postage costs form one seller in the Cart, the Free Shipping goes NOT override the postage costs.

momcqueen · ‎05-31-2017

I don't know what problems you are encountering. My Combined Shipping discounts work as they should. I check them from time to time. The only time they didn't work as they should was about a year ago, briefly, when there was a glitch and postage options that shouldn't exist were being shown to buyers in locations who couldn't use them. That was eventually fixed.

rose-dee · ‎05-31-2017

@mjwl2006 wrote:
I don't know what problems you are encountering. My Combined Shipping discounts work as they should. I check them from time to time. The only time they didn't work as they should was about a year ago, briefly, when there was a glitch and postage options that shouldn't exist were being shown to buyers in locations who couldn't use them. That was eventually fixed.

We've been through this before. Not every seller's situation is like yours, nor are the options you've chosen necessarily appropriate for others. All the problems I've identified were issues I encountered as a buyer, on several occasions over the past few months, which is what brought this matter to my attention. As a seller, I'd never have known. Clearly the sellers I dealt with weren't aware either.

I've asked today whether 'qottie' can provide a more global clarification about the current state of eBay's checkout system that will allow sellers, including those who list on both .com and .ca, to make informed choices for their particular situations. One of those choices might unfortunately be dropping automated shipping discounts entirely. We'll see.