I chose buyer pays shipping, but my live listings now show *I'm* paying shipping

[sleepyjared]

I listed two items yesterday and both times chose that the buyer will pay shipping. Now looking at my listings through the app and in the browser, I'm getting conflicting information. On the overview page one item shows "price + Shipping, but the next item shows "price + Shipping (You Pay)" 

However, if I click on either listing, they both show shipping as Free. 

I definitely chose that the buyer pays shipping, and it even displayed the approx. shipping costs when the listings first went live. Now today they both appear to show that I will have to pay the shipping. For the Halo helmet I probably wouldn't care as the shipping shouldn't be too much, but the racing wheel is pretty large and heavy and based on the interest in it so far I'll end up paying more for shipping than what the item sells for.

Has this happened to anyone else? And how can I contact eBay about looking into this? Can I cancel the auctions and try re-listing them? Sorry, I'm not a very frequent seller so looking for any insight. Thanks very much.

[fern*wood]

Revise the listings.

Never mind---I see they already have bids.

[coolections]

I believe you would have to cancel since the items have bids. Personally I would le t it ride. Buyers know how to add and the final price will reflex the item + shipping. No one bids their max and then decides to pay even more for the shipping. It is always based on the total.

[wesk_36 · Accepted solution]

"Has this happened to anyone else?"

It has happened to many sellers as reported here, some sellers have said that after listing everything was fine but their shipping changed to free later..
This problem has been going on for years and is currently posted as well; current complaints and older posts from years ago talk about the same problem. For example:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/eBay-FREE-Shipping-glitch-SELLERS-BEWARE/m-p/31032994

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Help-My-shipping-and-handling-keeps-changing-to-quot-free-quot...

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/ebay-keeps-changing-my-listings-to-free-shipping/m-p/29873134

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/My-postings-are-automatically-changed-to-free-shipping/m-p/309...

Just now posting this comment twice, I got an error message saying I cannot post this! Ebay is full of "glitches."

[sleepyjared]

Major yikes. Thank you for your response and posting the other links. It's interesting to see that this has been an ongoing problem for literally years, affecting many people, and yet during my chat convo with an eBay rep a few minutes ago she was ADAMANT that there is no possible way a shipping option could change after a listing is posted, and that the only possible way this could have happened is that I mistakenly chose Free Shipping when creating my listings. I know for a fact I did NOT do that. Also, she "checked" to see if this has been an issue before and strangely enough came up with nothing! Your post really dispels that notion.

I guess I'm going to do what the commenter above suggested and just ride it out, and if I end up incurring a cost from having to pay the shipping I'll chalk it up to a lesson learned. From now on though I'll only be creating listings on my computer as it does appear this glitch involves using the eBay app which is what I normally use to create listings.

Anyway thanks again.

[fatoni-25]

Many sellers may not realize that regardless of what they chose when they list their items, their DEFAULT SHIPPING BUSINESS POLICIES may state otherwise and if they do they may just override the listing's shipping policy.  These Business policies are under site preferences and include all of the seller's settings, if a seller has never adjusted or set these policies to begin with then they are likely set to a default which in the case of ebay and shipping would most likely be set to FREE Shipping.

And any business policy stands a great chance of overriding your listing's policy after you save it, since it's in that seller's settings.

Btw the CS is right, selling on ebay however isn't a simple 1-2-3 boom bang bling!

It takes considerable time, experience and know how to learn how to set up everything right and proper so that no so-called "malfunctions" occur, generally the newer inexperienced sellers apparently would much rather blame the problems on "glitches" rather than accept responsibility for the error so that they can fix it... Because by refusing to accept responsibility for the problem, the seller is relieved of the duty of fixing it.

Well guess what, not fixing it doesn't make it go away.

I've sold well over 4 thousand items here. Not ONCE has my listing turned from one form of shipment to another, and if it did it's because something in my settings was off and telling it to.

I am sure the usual gaggle of peanut gallery is about to make a few comedian comments about this, but go set up ALL your site preferences once and for all... All your business (selling,shipping, and return) policies as well, do it right and you won't have to worry about this again, or keep losing sleep over "glitches" that don't exist, choice is yours.

[sleepyjared]

Huh, so if a problem hasn't happened to YOU, then it must not exist despite happening to dozens of other people? I don't understand the extreme apologist stance, as if something like a technical glitch couldn't possibly exist. Anyway, that still doesn't explain the discrepancy between the shipping method shown on my Seller Overview page [+shipping] and what it shows if I go into Revise Item [+shipping(you pay)]. I'll attach photos of each. So either they are showing conflicting information on purpose because… uh reasons, or there might in fact be some sort of glitch affecting a bunch of sellers that have reported the same problem over the last 5+ years.

Anyway, to your original point, can you tell me how to access my DEFAULT SHIPPING BUSINESS POLICIES since I can't seem to locate this information myself and some of us just casually use eBay and aren't 4000+ items sold experts on the matter.

[wesk_36]

"I am sure the usual gaggle of peanut gallery is about to make a few comedian comments about this, but go set up ALL your site preferences once and for all... All your business (selling,shipping, and return) policies as well, do it right and you won't have to worry about this again, or keep losing sleep over "glitches" that don't exist, choice is yours."

I don't think it's funny and you must be new, there are indeed many glitches on ebay; many long-standing problems that you seem unaware of despite your condescending attitude about the gaggle from the peanut gallery!

Nice attempt at marginalizing sellers with their imaginary "glitches" that don't exist".

[sleepyjared]

So for anyone following along, I think I've realized the problem after listing a new item and following the process closely. I think ultimately it DOES come down to my own user error, but by way of eBay's utterly terrible UI and user experience.

When you get to the shipping options, eBay gives you a "Recommended" option, which in my case was that the buyer pays shipping. The first UX folly is that you have to actually click to confirm that recommendation, which actually I don't have a problem with but it's also not very clear and from my experience with UX design you should always design for the absolute lowest common denominator. Just assume that someone somewhere will do something totally stupid and will ignore obvious instructions, because it happens A LOT.

The much bigger problem is that the recommended shipping option fills in your package dimensions automatically, and those dimensions can be nowhere close to the actual package you are sending. Then right below this is a box where you can adjust the package dimensions. Now, this led me to believe that those boxes were simply there for me to input my actual package dimensions, which I did. It's reasonable to assume eBay wants you to use accurate package dimensions for your item. HOWEVER, the moment you click on the boxes to input the dimensions, it automatically de-selects your recommended shipping option and then automatically selects You Pay option from the sidebar as it is recalculating the shipping cost based on the new value you entered. It does this for EVERY shipping dimension value. So there are multiple opportunities for your shipping option to be changed without you even noticing.

At best this is just poor user experience design or just poor coding, or a combination of both. At worst it is a purposeful obfuscation to trick people into choosing free shipping for their items, which obviously benefits eBay. I'll give eBay the benefit of the doubt and assume it's just the former, but from here on out my advice would be to be HYPER vigilant to all the options that are selected during the listing creation process, and to double, triple, and quadruple check everything before submitting, and even check frequently after the listing is live just to be safe.

[sleepyjared]

So, ANOTHER update, lol. The customer service rep who I was live chatting with and disconnected from me before the issue was resolved sent me an email and acknowledges that this is a known problem and that they will "make sure this will be taken care off." We'll see. Also she says my account has been notated and they'll be watching to see whether I pay the shipping or the buyer pays the shipping when the auctions end, since it currently shows it both ways. 

I'll be sure to update once the auctions end to see if anything actually happens with all this.

Edit: Also wanted to be clear that I really appreciate that she got back to me via email. It really felt like when she disconnected from chat that it was like "welp I'll just peace this guy out and he'll probably just go away rather than go through all the hoops to get in touch with a rep again" which is pretty much where I was at. So the fact she followed up is commendable. 

[dhbookds]

Thanks for posting what may be the problem.....that may help alot of people who were following the original path you did to solve the problem.........  Sharing info is the most valuable part of these boards.....