eBay

quicksilverdiecast · ‎04-01-2024

After a 2 year long battle with ebay over the cart and combined shipping here is the problem and why. AND the only way it will change is if you call up and express your feelings and request that it be changed...Now you will have to follow along closely and in the order as presented to begin to understand the hows and whys...

Step 1 . A buyer comes to your store and finds a number of items he wants and put them in the cart...so far so good...but he has finished and is looking for a way to request a combined total, but he either has no button OR if the button is present and he pushes it...it blocks him for requesting the combined shipping! and here is where it goes down hill..Since it has been blocked it automatically does not allow any notices to be sent to the seller!!!!(virtually making this buyer and his items unknown to the seller)..the pop up gives the reason for being blocked as the item(s) offer a discount and cannot be combined....and here is what ebay considers a discount---any item listed with the "make offer" in the listing...any item listed with Bulk qtys offered....and any listing where a buyer may send a message and you send him back a response with an offer lower than the "Buy It Now" price.!!!!. SO stay with me now....now you have a buyer setting there with a cart with a couple hundred dollars(I have this issue right now) and since everything is blocked I as a buyer have no idea the seller exists and is trying to spend money in my store(or your store) SO. the buyer is going to do 1 of 2 things, he will either get tired of waiting for you the buyer to respond(as he assumes you know what is going on in your store...OR he messages you (which would be the 1st time you would know the buyer exists)....He asks me to combine his order, not understanding I cannot see his order. I try to explain to him about the cart, but since it is so screwed up, I am not confident(until today) at telling him the hows and whys as an answer. (when he calls ebay he gets the same old "it is the sellers fault" cow patty....) So this particular buyer and I have went back and forth about a dozen times with screen shots etc. and he has one item that he bought a qty of 2 which being small was about .50 cents cheaper than the buy it now price...Now a rough figure of fees ebay would have collect would be somewhere in the neighbor hood of 30.00+ dollars on the entire order, but ebay feels compelled to cause you to lose a sale (either known or known via his message) and them 30.00 in fees over a .50 cent discount!!!! again call me crazy......so if it is known ebay suggests that you try to convince the buyer to just pay the overcharged shipping(in this case at least 50.00 over what it should be) and that I being the seller should refund him....(would that not be avoiding an ebay "Policy"? which is against "Policy" lol) I have pressed ebay on answering the logic behind this insanity and they have none or one they do not want you know) I am not that trusting as a buyer to extremely overpay on shipping and HOPES the seller will refund me! Me personally I would simply walk away and laugh thinking the seller tried ripping me off on shipping!

But if I go back and create an entirely new listing with the buy it now price of what the sellers bulk order would have equaled then everything is fine and the sun will shine! So please tell me the logic if part a sells for 10cents or discounted to 9cents? it is the same part? Yes., does it weigh any more or less because it is a penny cheaper? No....will it fit in a box with the other items he wants? Yes....Does the post office care? No. AND MOST OF ALL is it providing good customer service and a "positive ebay buyer experience" NO...and you the seller will get the blame, bad word of mouth and if by chance does pay for it and turns right around and leaves you a neg feedback and dings your star ratings on reasonable shipping, which over time adds up and causes ebay to...guess what? raise your fees and restrict your account...and NONE of which was your fault nor deserved! Now some of you are setting there thinking my cart works fine! No it does not, you just do not know about the buyers who walk away going somewhere else because ebay never indicated to you they existed! I had an ebay team leader create a live cart and proved every aspect I described above, she is also a seller and was unaware of this. So ebay will tell you this is not high on their priority list to do because not a lot of people call and complain about it....well no kidding how does a seller call up to complain about losing a sale he never knew about from the start, unless of course you are Houdini...ebay wrapped that up nice and neat..can't call in and hold their feet to the fire if you do not know about it....well now you know! and now you know what to do...and how to make it a high priority issue. Yes it has taken me 2+ years to piece the bread crumbs together, countless calls to ebay, and since Oct 2023 have over 300 documented cases where buyers were blocked and had to message me. As I set here writing this a thought occurred "If a particular order where no discounts etc were offered or applied...when one combines shipping is that not giving a discount? Anyhow if you want to take the risk out of losing sales and possibly repeat buyers and even a possible negative feedback...call in and call often...or set back and continue to pay ebay to hinder your sales....

quicksilverdiecast · ‎04-04-2024

Respectfully, As many long winded posts as it takes....I have had ebay techs go over my store and all have agreed the number of shipping rules based on the number of various variables would be infinite, not to mention confusing. If all I sold was based on a nice neat size like selling CD's and DVD's that would be beneficial...

And with the recent change in the way ebay-USPS-determines the cost of shipping based on box dimensions where 1" more can make a big difference as well as possibly costing you more to ship than what you charged...when the seller has the ability to determine the actual dimensions and weight AND if it can be safely shipped together you only need one shipping rule....the one where a seller can accurately determine it.

When you start adding this rule or that rule each step along the way is a chance for mistakes, which can be costly. Understanding people is likened to water....both take the path of least resistance....Am I glad the cart seems to work for you ABSOLUTELY! but it also is not Cart friendly to most buyers and sellers..

I have also had a number of transactions where a buyer has chose and committed to buying numerous items....was NOT forced to pay for them(how and why?), ebay sent an action needed notice, as well as it showing up on my sold item list with a "send invoice" notice. I click it on and it brings up all the buyers items with check boxes in front of each item(so I can determine if it safely can be shipped with the other items) I pull package and enter dimensions and whatever materials required to safely pack and ship and insure if needed enter the totals and send the invoice...for the buyer to pay...so it can and does work and simple for everyone...

thelongball · ‎04-04-2024

You can quit defending yourself as you are 100 % correct and the others that say its been broke for along time are also correct as it has. Its been broke ever since they allowed offers to be negotiated. It is not only lost sales for the seller, it is for eBay too. Now with eBay getting all the transaction fees from the multiple purchases, they more than make up in getting their money. It will fall on deaf ears forever. So we just have to get over it and do what we can control. Your putting yourself thru a ton of stress which isn't healthy. Sometimes blowing off steam is good. This isn't the place to do it though as it seems that someone always says your in the wrong. That just heats you up more and again its not healthy. All we can do is complain to eBay not each other. Your rants and long winded post would be time better spent in listing more items. Again worry about what you can control in life.

quicksilverdiecast · ‎04-08-2024

However if the cart worked properly, as it once did, you would not have to refund anyone anything, nor would you have to waste the time looking for 20-30 item numbers and do all the work figuring it out...It is designed for the buyer to make his best offer(s) through the cart....As I said before ebay is clueless when it comes to combined shipping...and all those shipping rules you create you can toss out the window now as the carriers all are using a dimensional box size now example: a combined order weighing 10 oz in a 2x6x9 dimension prices out at one figure however if the dimensions were 10 oz in a 6x6x9 is different in cost.

So tell me how many box accurate dimension are you going to need in a store with 4,000 listings from 3x5" 1oz to 45lbs 28x10x30 and everything in between including having the option of buying 2 or more of any 1 item(s)... You cannot! They only way is for the seller to pull the entire order and see how best to safely pack it...then enter the correct accurate dimensions and send the completed request back to the seller. Very simple and easy to do....vs going back and forth with buyers and refunds etc plus if the cart actually worked right and notified sellers there was a buyer with items you could also salvage that sale, otherwise unless that buyer messages you, he will after a point of time just leave and never come back...

How did it get this way? 1 ebay failing to test the aspects and effects it will have on the platform. 2 In such a big hurry to try to keep up with amazon and throw a phone app against the wall BUT WITHOUT A REQUEST BUTTON of multiple item sales....3. Ebay has crammed so many different marketing angles with strings attached to the shopping cart that the cart was not designed nor able to cope with it all.

When you have a shopping cart the basic common sense idea is for buyers to put item(s) into the cart and to request a combined shipping total....otherwise what use is a cart...it is not a storage bin...that is what the "save to watching" area is for. It is so screwed up now that if a buyer comes in and finds an item listed with a buy it now/make offer listing and the buyer makes an offer I accept it...and he wants 3 different items he has given offers on and I accepted.....so that is step one....nothing strange...so now he want to deal with shipping and wants all items combined into one parcel....again common sense should rule here...BUT NOPE ebay says you cannot discount and item twice!!!!!!!????? and blocks both buyer and seller from going any further and in doing so makes it impossible to complete the sale....money lost caused by ebay whom you are paying to defeat your transactions due to stupidity. So unless your buyer wants to pay shipping on each item and ship each item by itself. Example: 5 different decals that will combined weigh 1 oz which will be roughly 4.50-5.50 ground advantage(this would be 99.8% of buyers would think and choose) VS ebays way of thinking that the buyer should pay each items costs added together., now the buyer is asked to pay 5 x $5.00 which now equals 20.00 and a box and labels and packing etc(certainly not "green" by any stretch) and now the buyer is over charged 15.00.... Yes there are a number of workarounds this stupidity but all of them are time very consuming, and if you have brisk sales a buyers items may be spread out on the sold board and can be missed easily when figuring out the total shipping and amount to refund...and like the person suggested go through all the item numbers and put together a total to see if you can match the buyers offer(I will not do that period) or you can get each item number and create a new listing entirely. All of which are time consuming and very easy to make a mistake....where on the other the other hand if the cart actually worked (with logical common sense) everyone sales would pick up and the buyer would "have a good ebay experience" What is needed is a command string to be dropped into the cart string that blocks ebays blocks. Ebay survived 20+ years without needing a cart and combined shipping worked perfect.

Onto International shipping using EiS I think we all know, both buyers and sellers, what a nightmare it was to get item(s) combined....and scared MANY international buyers away with outrageous shipping charges....well somehow that all has changed as a few days ago I had an international order where there was 5 different items and I about fell off the chair when I check the shipping costs as it was like within 50cents of being accurate...Who and how it was combined I have no idea, but as far as combining and coming up with an amount for the buyer is stunning! So now the International side works as it should and the USA side is fubarred...