Combined shipping when buyer using autopay thru PayPal

[shephe_69]

I recently sold 2 wigs (2 different listings) and the buyer sent me a message saying she wanted both wigs and requested combined shipping, which I agreed to. She sent me an offer for each individual wig and when I accepted them, her PayPal account immediately paid me for the items.  From what I understand, the buyer is supposed to put the items in her basket and request an invoice from the seller.  I never had a chance to send her an invoice since her PayPal account paid immediately.  She ended up paying a lot more in shipping than she should have.  Almost $25.  My listings showed $8 and $9 shipping, so I have no idea why one of the items had her pay almost $8 more.  I called her to discuss the issue and had her cancel the purchases and do it again with trying to put them in her basket, but the same thing happened again so I told her I would just refund the $8 to her, which I did.  Why did this happen and how can I avoid it in the future?  Does it have to do with the fact that she offered me less than I was asking and when I accepted the offer, it didn't give her a chance to request an invoice for combined shipping?

[arunalus]

Hi,

I believe it's beneficial to provide free shipping with the shipping costs incorporated into the item's price.

[ebooksdiva]

When your buyer used "Best Offer" eBay has your buyer requirements set to require a payment option prior to sending an offer. When you accepted those offers your buyer's payment method was used to pay for the purchase offers cant be combined when a payment method is required when placing an offer. 
You can turn off this requirement in your Buyer Management page.

You can also set up combined payments in your Shipping preferences 

[shephe_69]

Thanks so much for your reply.  Very helpful.  So, it sounds like the issue occurred because of one of my buyer requirements.  I have "Require buyers to provide a payment method before they make an offer" checked.  (If I uncheck this, it leaves me open to more possible unpaid items, right?)  I also have "allow combined payments" checked.  So I don't know why I wasn't able to combine shipping costs for her. 

Also-on another note-how do I know if there is a reply to one of my posts in eBay Community?  I just kept this window overnight open as I wasn't sure how I'd know if I got a response.   Thanks again.

[wastingtime101]

Hi @shephe_69 . Changing the setting ebooksdiva alerted to you will help, but it may not fix the problem entirely. We've seen numerous reports where eBay is processing auto-payments even when the seller does not have that setting checked. Come back any time if you run into more questions.

For this buyer you can send them a partial refund for combined ship, or you can discuss with them the option of cancelling the transactions and creating a new listing for both items together and they can repurchase.

As for your question about knowing when you get replies:

1. You can log in here, click your avatar on the top right and go to "my profile" - from there click on your discussion thread and check for replies.

2. You can set up notifications. Click on your avatar and click on "my settings" or just go here:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/user/myprofilepage/tab/personal-profile

Click on the last tab "subscriptions & notifications" then click on the sub-tab "notification settings". There's a setting for "new replies posted to content I subscribe to" that should be defaulted to notify you immediately.

As long as that's set to notify you, what you do from there is go to the top of this discussion thread. Click the Options menu on the upper right, then select Subscribe. You will be subscribed to receive notifications when there are new posts to this thread.