"To make your purchase easier, we grouped these items for you to purchase first."
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?.........
12345jamesstamps
·2 years agoThat .30 per order does hurt for the seller.
I have International Buyers who say they cannot combine and ask for a total shipping....and I only had International Buyers for the last 4 days...no domestic buyers. Isn't that strange?
I did managed payments where International Buyers are suppose to be able to combine to ask for a shipping total but cannot do it. Imagine getting 3 UK buyers and they can't combine! I do the refund for the extra shipping they paid of course.
eBay stated International Buyers can combine and ask for a total. One of the moderators here mentioned it.
My domestic shipping is free but not International and of course I am getting like only International Buyers for 4 days every week for the last 4 weeks. So, I pay the extra International selling fee as well.
Anyway, I have bids on 4 items tonight. Curious to see if eBay pays them before me...and if they are combine.
the_collector_2k
·2 years agoI've found a couple of "genius" enhancements that eBay has recently introduced. This is one of them. In placing some orders today, I've had this happen a couple of times. It's not happening because of different sellers. It's not happening because of difference in sales/shipping.
I can maybe add some interesting info: I currently have 11 items in my cart, from 2 different sellers. If I try to checkout via 'pay only this seller' for Seller A, I get 2/3 items. If I try to checkout with all 11 items from Sellers A and B, I get everything except Seller A's 2/3 items which were originally grouped for checkout. It seems the system is separating them (maybe?) based on the category they are in. Perhaps, this is worth checking for anyone else noticing this "feature". It doesn't help stop it, but maybe establishes a pattern for when/why it's doing it.
Sellar A's 2/3 items were in:
Collectibles & Art > Coins & Paper Money > Bullion
Seller B's items and the remaining 1/3 from Seller A were in:
Collectibles & Art > Coins & Paper Money > Coins: World
Checking a previous order that was split, this pattern holds true on the 1 item it forced me to checkout separately for.
ittybitnot
·3 years agoThis 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 ....
@ajs_coins_and_alchemy
It is my understanding that items that are "on sale" or have a special going on CANNOT be combined for one invoice. Yes, you can pay in one payment, but you will not have the ability to request a total for all in the cart. It is 'working as intended' as far as eBay is concerned.
Count yourself lucky. Once you are required to fork over a payment source in order to bid it will even be more "easy" since they will all be automatically paid for individually (including shipping) as soon as they end. You will never have to use the cart at all! Now that is going to be make checkout no longer necessary (REAL EASY) and the special shipping program from the seller for auction wins will be moot.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP3 years agoItems were not on sale and had no "special". These were merely standard auction wins. So was not the case for this scenario if that is what you're suggesting. Not sure if you're just providing tangential info or trying to provide a reason for the problems I faced.
Yes having to enter payment info first will be a pain.
How will that work with sniping? Will one have to sit there and enter info before a last second bid? Will info have to be entered before every bid even on same item (re-enter info multiple times for multiple bids on one single item).
To me, it's all ridiculous and not worth while, but thats my opinion. I don't run auctions as a seller, and I've never had non payers on offers until recently.
ed8108
·3 years agoNot good for you but good for ebay, gives ebay more revenue, the more you spend for shipping the more in fees ebay collects
safan80
·3 years agoajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP3 years agoThankfully not the case. My state doesn't charge sales tax on the purchase of coins/currency/bullion. Really nice because I'm a coin/bullion dealer. I buy all of my items on EBay and resell them. Taxes on $60k in purchases this past 12 or so months would've sucked. Of course you can get that resale license with the state where you can avoid sales tax if you're reselling, but because I don't pay any sales tax to begin with, I can avoid the hassle and paperwork all together 😜
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP3 years agoDon't forget the additional 30 cent transaction fee charged for each payment made / order placed
Worked fine for me because I ended up paying less in shipping in the end because seller gave me free shipping on the remaining two items, he just sent an invoice to try to fix the problem and avoid the same issue again of ebay trying to make it "easier". (I mean... I saved a whopping 78 cents ... but was really cool of the seller.)
sdneped
·3 years agoAnother possibility, if the Morgans and the Kerfuffles are in different currencies or shippings
They cannot eBay Checkout together, and must be deported separately.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP3 years agoAlso not the case.
Same currency, same shipping method. Everything was "auto-combined" and ready to go. (Not to be confused with invoice, I believe an invoice would've prevented or negated this situation.)
downunder-61
·3 years ago@elizabeth@ebay
Another enhancement????
Can you check what on earth eBay is attempting to break now?
🙄
sdneped
·3 years agoMaybe 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
OP3 years agoHad 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.
gurlcat
·3 years agoI 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
OP3 years agoI 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.
wil_483592
·3 years agoJust another ebay "improvement" to make them more money I assume
gurlcat
·3 years agoWell 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.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP3 years agoWow, 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
gurlcat
·3 years agoI 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
OP3 years agoI 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.
ajs_coins_and_alchemy
OP3 years agoBiggest 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
·3 years agofollowing.