eBay mobile app incorrectly showing Free Shipping on items that have free Local Pickup
Just discovered a very annoying issue courtesy of an understanding customer. In the eBay mobile app, if we have an item that has buyer-paid shipping but also offers the option of Local Pickup (many of our items, this is our most commonly selected shipping policy when listing items), it will show the item as Free Shipping, presumably because there is a free option available, even though it should either show the shipping charge, or say Free Local Pickup, or something else that's accurate to our selected options. If the customer had been less understanding, we could have been in a much bigger problem here. Screenshots and item links below:
Items for reference:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186731806457
https://www.ebay.com/itm/186673801158
This is a huge issue, and if it's showing Free Shipping on other items (I haven't checked all of them, but it does NOT show free shipping on all of our items, so I'm not sure why those did for this customer), we may not know until we have other angry customers.
wastingtime101
·1 year agoWell, we don't know for sure @kensgiftshop because neither of those screenshots show search view or listing view, and search/listing view is where the problem was happening before. I have not seen free ship in search/listing view on local pickups in a very long time (years, I think).
This looks like something entirely different to me. It looks like free shipping shown within the payment summary after the buyer committed to the purchase. At this stage the buyer should have manually selected the free local pickup shipping option since the seller's default is paid ship and requires manual selection of local pickup.
I am halfway wondering if the buyer is trying to get one past the seller to convince them to ship free? Without a screenshot of what the buyer sees on the listing, it's impossible to tell at this point.
Can you tell us @brightlightbookseller :
- Were these offers?
- Were these items the buyer added to cart then used the request total link?
I looked at your listings in the app and they are all distinct about being either paid ship or free local pickup. I don't see any indicator of free ship until after I manually select local pickup then it shows $0.00 free ship under the payments summary, similar to what your buyer is seeing above, and that's directly below the paid ship / free local pickup explanation.
Screenshots:
brightlightbookseller
OP1 year agoThese were not offers, one had offers enabled and the other did not, but the customer did not send an offer or receive one on either, they were paying full price.
The customer did request a total from us, but I don't know if they saw free shipping before they did that, as they contact us after that about this. They originally asked us to reduce the price on one item and combine shipping, which made me shake my head (why purchase then ask to reduce the price, instead of making an offer first?), so it's possible they were trying to pull something, but at no point should it have shown free shipping anyways, so if they were trying to pull something they either achieved something I didn't know was possible or were really expecting something different than we listed. I guess that does complicate things a little, and I wish I had more detail about the timeline and exactly what they saw at the beginning.
Edit: Just in case anyone's trying to look it up in Product Research or anything now, I did end up giving them free shipping on both, since we would have accepted an offer on the one and possible on the other had they contacted us, and I was trying to make them happier.
wastingtime101
·1 year agoOK got it. In that case I think the buyer had to manually select free local pickup and based on the fact they were trying to get you down on price I'd wager they were using this as a tactic.
That said, I agree it should not show free shipping at that stage (or any stage) when local pickup is selected.
I suggest shaking your app to report because eBay does review those tech reports.
brightlightbookseller
OP1 year agoI can do a report, we'll see how much good it does but the more the better, I guess!
stainlessenginecovers
·1 year agoI've seen that on Google as well, for OVER 1 year! Click it and the item then says 'local pickup' but since there is NO shipping cost, the Shipping is Free when you pick it up??
kensgiftshop
·1 year agoI was wondering if the app was still showing free shipping, when it wasn't.
wastingtime101
·1 year agoHaha I saw this thread and immediately thought of you @kensgiftshop .
Just the other day I was looking at listings with free local pickup on the app and did not see any kind of free ship indicator.
Anybody who wants to report the issue can use the "shake to report" feature while the app is open and it'll prompt you to file a tech report.
kensgiftshop
·1 year agoI guess we know now that it's still happening.
brightlightbookseller
OP1 year agoI couldn't reproduce it on my app, so I'm hoping maybe the customer was just still using an old version of the app, but I wasn't going to push too hard to find out more and risk upsetting them.