eBay

momcqueen · ‎01-13-2018

Ah, to live in a nation where 'free' shipping meant eating a postage cost of three to five dollars.

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2018/01/13/shippo-survey-results-highlight-popularity-free-shipping/

reallynicestamps · ‎01-14-2018

Is there any option on eBay that allows us to automatically have 'free' shipping if an order goes to $XX.xx?

I don't often get multiple sales, and most of my stuff goes LetterPost anyway, but it would be good to know.

@tyler

@happy_pigeon

momcqueen · ‎01-14-2018

@reallynicestamps wrote:
Is there any option on eBay that allows us to automatically have 'free' shipping if an order goes to $XX.xx?

I don't often get multiple sales, and most of my stuff goes LetterPost anyway, but it would be good to know.

@tyler
@happy_pigeon

Yes, it's one of the first option under the Combined Shipping Rules. Going from memory, the wording is something like 'buyers pay ____ in postage when the order total reaches _____ in dollars' so you as the seller would choose '0.00' and '150.00' or whatever is your threshold . I have mine set to ten items in the order and it all ships free. You can arrange it by a dollar figure or number of items.

One thing you can't do is isolate that deal for certain segments of the 'international' community. Like say only Americans are eligible but Australians are not. Which I find to be a bit of a bummer because the cost of free shipping to The States is often equal to domestic within Canada whereas shipping to UK or Europe is three times as much. Therefore, I cannot offer 'free shopping' to my American customers without giving it also to buyers in Germany. I love my German customers but the threshold to qualify for free shipping own their order would have to be higher than the threshold for Americans given the inequities in postal cost.

rose-dee · ‎01-14-2018

@mjwl2006momcqueen wrote:
@reallynicestamps wrote:
Is there any option on eBay that allows us to automatically have 'free' shipping if an order goes to $XX.xx?

I don't often get multiple sales, and most of my stuff goes LetterPost anyway, but it would be good to know.

One thing you can't do is isolate that deal for certain segments of the 'international' community. Like say only Americans are eligible but Australians are not.

No, but it is possible to specify which particular items qualify for "buy X, get free shipping" (at least on .com it is, I don't know about .ca). This allows a seller to limit the damage free overseas shipping might do in such a scenario, for example by designating small, lightweight items that ship with low cost Small Packet Air service, or only more expensive items that justify the tracked shipping costs. I've done this on .com and it works particularly well if one sells multi-item orders primarily to the U.S. and only rarely overseas. The occasional overseas shipping cost is more than offset by the numerous U.S. multi-item orders.

I do agree though that eBay needs to do a lot more work on its automated combined shipping rules. One thing I'm still not completely clear about is whether a rule set up on .ca for example will apply to .com buyers. The most recent word by the "Pinks" on this was, if I correctly understood, that each site had to have its own rules set up. If this is the case, it would suggest eBay has a means to offer promotional shipping to buyers on one site that is different to buyers on another.

@The problem of course is that overseas buyers may be shopping not on their own site, but on .com or .ca. So, as you say, being able to designate buyers by their actual location in setting up combined shipping rules would be a great help. Maybe @tyler, if he checks in, could comment on whether this will ever be in the cards, although I suspect combined shipping rules were set up primarily to cater to U.S. sellers selling domestically.

momcqueen · ‎01-14-2018

I suspect ebay.com offers different choices for customization than does ebay.ca.

What I have done in the absence of finding what I need is a workaround where I have 'calculated shipping rules' for one type of product and destination, and another 'flat-rate combined shipping rules' for other types of product and destinations. It's a stop-gap that lets me stick a toe the area I'd like to fearlessly tread. It's not as intuitive as I need it to be, but I rather suspect the level of customization that I require would make most new sellers faint. Ideally, an Advanced section of Combined Shipping Rules might be best, like there are two forms of the Listing Form. One for people who seek a quickie, and the other for people who really like to get in there and dig around.

momcqueen · ‎01-14-2018

Also, Promotions Manager allows a seller to dig into some areas covered by Combined Shipping rules but, of course, that feature is not available to sellers who list from ebay.ca. YET. I may just die of happiness on the day it is launched, something like the day I discovered the ebay.com Shopping Cart suddenly worked for items born on ebay.ca and elsewhere.

pjcdn2005 · ‎01-14-2018

One thing I'm still not completely clear about is whether a rule set up on .ca for example will apply to .com buyers. The most recent word by the "Pinks" on this was, if I correctly understood, that each site had to have its own rules set up.

If you list only on .ca you need to set up the rules only on .ca. International shipping rules would apply to buyers who need shipping outside of Canada.

If you list only on .com, you need to set up the rules on .com. International shipping rules would apply to buyers who need shipping outside of the US.

If you list on both sites then yes, you would have to set up rules on both sites. If a Canadian buyer purchased items listed on .ca, then domestic shipping rules would apply to them. If that same Canadian purchased an item listed on .com, international shipping rules would apply to them.

The problem of course is that overseas buyers may be shopping not on their own site, but on .com or .ca.

That's irrelevant. It doesn't matter where they shopping, it matters on which site the item was listed on and where it is getting shipped to.

happy_pigeon · ‎01-15-2018

Thanks for flagging this, @reallynicestamps. It looks like other members have offered some very good answers already, but let me know if you need more assistance.