"To make your purchase easier, we grouped these items for you to purchase first."

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

I won 5 auctions from a seller. I had all 5 items added to cart (None "Saved for later").

...For anyone that cares, it was 3 Silver Eagles and 2 Morgan Dollars.... So point is it was 3 of one kind of coin and 2 of the other.

I go to check out and it took items away. Seemed like an odd glitch. So I backed up and tried it again several times. Each time it only provided me the 2 Morgans or the 3 Eagles, but never both.

Thats when I looked up at the top and saw this... 

So EBay intentionally removed items from my check out, to make it "easier". 

What's the problem with this? It forces me into making multiple orders, that means sellers pay more transaction fees ($0.30 per order/payment). But most importantly, it screws buyers who are trying to take advantage of the seller's combined shipping policy. This seller had a "Pay the first shipping and each other shipping is a flat rate ($0.40)" It forced me into (2) separate orders so I was going to have to pay the full shipping on 2 different items (one per order) instead of getting discounted. -- problem solved by reaching out to seller and explaining that Ebay is being unhelpful with their new idea.

So anyone see this before? Anyone have any idea why EBay thought this was a good idea? Anyone know how to get in touch with the EBay geniuses and tell them this was an awful idea?.........

[gurlcat]

following.  

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

Biggest problem with this is going to be that any seller who has an auto-combine policy like pay the first shipping and get free or flat shipping on the rest... Yeah, the buyers are not going to be able to take advantage of that, and then the buyers are going to blame the sellers, and sellers will get neutral/negative feedback, and sellers will have absolutely NO clue what is going on.

Seriously, who is this concept trying to help?..... What makes this "easier"? How is making me make several payments easier? They already allow split payments on 2 cards for higher price orders, how is this easier or helpful to force me into separate purchases?

BY THE WAY, I SAW NOWHERE FOR ME TO UNDO THIS OPTION...I SCOURED FOR LIKE 5 MINUTES, I COULDN'T FIND A WAY TO UNDO WHAT THEY DID...NOT OPTIONAL!

[gurlcat]

I suuuure hope there's a rational explanation for this, but I can't think of one.  If it was larger objects and First Class shipping still existed and was the tier that the seller had put on all the listings individually, then I could see the software rejecting the auto-combination of 5, if it would have exceeded the F.C weight limit.  -But none of those things are true with coins or today, obviously.  

If it IS purposely overriding the seller's automatic combining settings to get higher seller fee totals, well not only would that be extremely jacked up, but yeah, that "to make your purchase easier" would just add insult to injury.  I've seen my share of corporate pig lipstick, but this would take the cake. So I feel like there has GOT to be some innocent explanation.  

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

I mean, I would love to think so, but what throws me through the biggest loop is the fact that it had that little message at the top of the screen... That's a clearly intentional action on EBay's behalf so 1) what is the threshhold for it to trigger? 2) What is the reasoning?

I bet if the seller had sent an invoice prior to me paying, it wouldn't do it... but of course I didn't think to request an invoice since it's auto-combined.

In the future if I face this I will request an invoice even if its autocombined and just ask them to send the same price invoice but invoice it so hopefully ebay stops messing around.

[gurlcat]

I just did a search to see if anyone else has posted about this.  Interesting results: I found 2 threads where that exact message was at the top of the screen and the buyer was not able to get all the cart items to show as one purchase, so at least we know it's not a new message.  BUT in both those cases the buyer wanted to use a coupon code, so they're totally different from your situation with this one seller.  

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

I think it's the same exact problem but in a different way? They couldn't add all items to cart and apply coupon across the board, I couldn't add all items to cart and receive shipping discount. So different goal (coupon or shipping) but same point of buyer not receiving "full" discount and paying in multiple orders, both buyer & seller paying more.

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

Wow, Ok, one reddit post from 2018 and one paypal community post from July 2020 (seems to be the paypal equivalent of this forum?) 

This is crazy, I mean... I mean I've never faced this before and I buy a lot and often buying multiple auction wins from same seller. Usually receive invoices which may nullify this problem but still W ----- T ----- F

[wil_483592]

Just another ebay "improvement" to make them more money I assume

[gurlcat]

Well the 2 threads I found were right here in the Ebay community forum.  One was just last month and had no replies.  The other was from 2020 and had numerous replies, and they DID give logical information about how the items were from various sellers (so that's already different from your case) and some of those sellers were still on Paypal while the others had been moved over to M.P.  Again, totally different from this thing with one seller offering combined shipping on coins, with no coupon code needed.  

Hopefully someone who knows more than I do will see this thread and help. 

[sdneped]

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@ajs_coins_and_alchemy wrote:

So EBay intentionally removed items from my check out, to make it "easier". 

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Maybe try 2 buttons on the Cart itself, instead of at eBay Checkout:

-- Save for later

-- Pay only this seller

Jump back and forth to arrange it right, and then go to Checkout.

[ajs_coins_and_alchemy]

Had only items from that seller in my cart, so "Pay Only This Seller" is a moot point and not an option

I did toggle items "Save For Later" and that did not work to jumble anything up or "jiggle it loose". It persisted. I went back and forth trying to back out and go back in like 10x trying all sorts of things.

[downunder-61]

elizabeth@ebay 

Another enhancement????

Can you check what on earth eBay is attempting to break now?

🙄

[sdneped]

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@ajs_coins_and_alchemy wrote:

Thats when I looked up at the top and saw this... 

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Another possibility, if the Morgans and the Kerfuffles are in different currencies or shippings 

They cannot eBay Checkout together, and must be deported separately.

[ed8108]

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@ajs_coins_and_alchemy wrote:

So EBay intentionally removed items from my check out, to make it "easier". 

What's the problem with this? It forces me into making multiple orders, that means sellers pay more transaction fees ($0.30 per order/payment). But most importantly, it screws buyers who are trying to take advantage of the seller's combined shipping policy. 

 Anyone have any idea why EBay thought this was a good idea? 

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Not good for you but good for ebay, gives ebay more revenue, the more you spend for shipping the more in fees ebay collects