Ebay auto-combined shipping without asking
I listed Item 205172789016 (electric shaver) at $12, with quantity of 4 available. It was Buy It Now with immediate payment required. Shipping was by USPS Ground Advantage which would be about $6 to the lower 48 states. Someone in Missouri bought all four at once, paying the 4 x $12 = $48 listing price which is fine. BUT eBay "pre-combined" the four items and charged him only $11 for shipping all four.
I have had many people order groups of *differing* items which ended up going as combined shipping - where I did the combining. In those cases the buyer paid the sum of all the individual shipping costs and I refunded the difference between that and the actual shipping cost. I have not before had multiples of a single item sell since I rarely have more than one of anything, so I lack experience with this process.
Importantly, I *do not* have "Combined payments" enabled in Shipping Preferences. So I think eBay should have charged him 4 x $6 = $24 for shipping and let me manage any refund - as usual.
It appears that eBay takes it on themselves to guess at a combined shipping cost when the items are all from one single listing ie. with Quantity > 1. But this makes no sense to me and puts me at risk of losing money on the shipping. I have another set of fairly heavy things to list (identical dishes) and am now hesitant to put them in one listing.
So... is this normal eBay behavior when multiples of a single item (which had Quantity > 1) are sold? Or does it look like something simply went wrong this time? Thx.
stainlessenginecovers
·1 year agoLooks like you are using calculated shipping. Not sure if the system works correctly when you use that system. All my items have mulitiples available and I use a Flat Rate (I choose) shipping cost with AN ADDITIONAL $xxx for each additional item, should a buyer purchase more than 1. When you click 'edit' do you see this section (Shown below)??
r-e-b
OP1 year agoI am using Calculated shipping, and the option you're seeing for flat rate doesn't appear. Thanks for taking the time to try to help.
albertabrightalberta
·1 year ago"It appears that eBay takes it on themselves to guess at a combined shipping cost when the items are all from one single listing ie. with Quantity > 1."
No, this isn't a case of ebay taking anything upon themselves to combine shipping. This is a case of the seller (you) not properly setting your shipping rules properly in cases in which the buyer purchases multiples of the same item.
r-e-b
OP1 year agoI took the time to provide a detailed discussion of a possible bug in eBay's system and asked for insight on that. I described the action eBay APPEARED to take as apparently wrong. You chose to focus on that one remark and white knight for them with gratuitous rudeness. Maybe that's what your Mentor badge means.
Too bad you couldn't also explain which of the "shipping rules" would apply, and how, as that would actually have been helpful. Not surprising since the rules are unclear, and it's easier to just find a reason to slap me and move on.
And btw there's nothing by that name, only "Shipping Preferences" and "Shipping Policies". My one encounter with a Business Policy was a catastrophe as it made unforeseen changes to hundreds of listings with no way to revert except hours of manual work. I'll never touch Policies again and feel sorry for anyone who is misdirected into that minefield by off-hand comments and vague terminology.
In "Shipping Preferences" nothing can be set without enabling "Combined payments", which is basically the opposite of what I want - which is to let me combine the shipping costs. So I had left that disabled. Of course there's no info on what the default actions will be in this case (dissing eBay again; sigh).
If I do enable "Combined payments" there are then choices for the "Calculated shipping rule" for which the skimpy "More info" help is useless because it refers to all of them without distinction; go figure (sorry... can't help it). The choices are: (a) No discount / (b) Combine all item weights / (c) Combine all and subtract some.
(a) MAY be what I want, though it would reasonably be the default and that isn't working.
(b) This APPEARS to be what eBay took on itself to do i.e. the default, as I fairly stated in my first post.
(c) Not what I want.
As the most promising way to tell eBay to NOT "combine shipping payments" I'll ENABLE "Combined payments" (!!) then choose "No discount". Then in my listing I'll enable the newly-appearing "Calculated shipping rule". And so discover by trial and error, as usual, if that's how to prevent eBay from outsmarting me.