They also need to add it as an option *after* clicking the checkout button, not before. Never understood why they hid the link in the cart like that...
@sjk4x4 wrote:
Please add a request total to the app
Hi @sjk4x4! Requesting the total is not currently on the roadmap, but we'll make sure that the mobile team is aware that you'd like to see it as a future enhancement.
As for why the request total is outside of the 'Go to checkout' @hotrod168, is because usually things need to be changed before the buyer can pay. Like shipping being added to the invoice for example. It's best to get the invoice with the correct amount to pay, and then go to checkout to pay. We always appreciate getting feedback from our members though, so thank you for passing this request on as well.
... for some reason my posts are not going through — I'll maybe try to break it up (not sure if it's a length thing).
@hotrod168 wrote:
To clarify, where the placement issue specifically results in constant headaches are scenarios where the Buyer has not committed to a purchase yet (but is attempting to do so from 'Add To Cart') and the items are from listings like ours where the shipping isn't calculated automatically. I wish I could say this is just a mild inconvenience for us, but we honestly lose sales over it, and it causes unnecessary frustration for our customers on a daily basis. I apologize in advance for the lengthy post that will follow, but I'll do my best to explain the reasons why this has been so troublesome for us (I've also included a picture in the post above to highlight what the customer sees, as a reference).
To start, Request Total can technically do two things for the Buyer:
1) It can request an invoice from a Seller for outstanding orders that have already been committed to, but are not yet paid for (often to request combined shipping when buying multiple items from the same Seller)
2) Or, it can be used to initiate/commit to a completely new order for the items currently in the Buyer's cart
It's worth noting that with the latter in particular, that's currently the only way a Buyer can place an order for an item in their cart if it doesn't have calculated shipping (otherwise they have to go back to the listing and use the 'Buy It Now' option). That's why they really do need to implement Request Total on eBay mobile and the app. As it stands, Add To Cart is currently a useless dead-end for any of our customers using either platform. And the confusion is only compounded by the wording of this very misleading error message that pops up for the customer when they do click the checkout button:
"This item requires freight shipping. Please contact the seller to request order total and ask for freight shipping costs."
At first glance, that may seem like a fairly straightforward and adequate explanation as to what must occur next. Contact the Seller, they send you the order total — sounds simple enough, right?
Well, it certainly would be... were it not for one major drawback: it's currently impossible for the Seller to do that if the Buyer hasn't committed to the purchase yet.(1)
As a consequence, every week we have multiple customers that ask us to do what this error message seems to imply we're capable of — send them a total for their order. And since no system is in place for us to accomplish this, we instead have to manually send them a follow-up message detailing the work-around with Buy It Now (or send an Offer) and explain what must be done before they can proceed after doing either of those. The time we have to dedicate to this process is extremely cumbersome, especially when it's compiled with other eBay glitches currently affecting our listing format that must be constantly explained and dealt with on top of it.
And mind you, the confusion caused by the checkout process isn't a problem that only recently came into play for us. We've had to deal with it in some shape or form since the very first day the Add To Cart feature was implemented over a decade ago. In fact, until that overlooked Request Total link was added in as a band-aid solution — which took another four or five years — Add To Cart was just as useless on the desktop version of the website as it currently is for our customers using eBay on mobile or the app.
And hey, I certainly get why eBay hasn't jumped all over this. Obviously Sellers that are ultimately affected by the problem make up a small percentage of the Seller population as a whole. But it's not like we number in the dozens — plenty of us still manually quote shipping rates, especially for larger items requiring LTL truck freight for delivery. It would be different if it just took slightly longer for some of our lesser-known problems or gripes on the platform to be addressed and resolved, but it gets to be incredibly frustrating when we're sometimes forced to deal with them for years at a time — even when we make an effort to document them ourselves and actively report to eBay's customer service team. But just fixing this issue alone would be a MASSIVE quality of life improvement for Sellers in our position, especially if they can implement it with our other suggestion below.(2)
(1) When the error message in the checkout prompt states that you need to request the total from the Seller, wouldn't it be more logical to include the option for doing so within the same message? Even on desktop where RT is implemented, the little blue link for the total request is extremely easy to miss. And if the Buyer is seeing that error message after clicking check out, then they technically can't pay or completely check out anyway (the pay button is locked until the shipping is invoiced), so I don't see a downside to at least including a secondary link to RT in there as well. At minimum, it certainly would clear up the majority of the confusion our customers have with the process.
(2) eBay should give Sellers the option to include their own custom message that pops up at the checkout prompt (either in place of the error message, or just below it). That would at least give us the chance to further explain why the Buyer can't pay for their order yet, and it allows us to explain how long the process normally takes. It could also give us an opportunity to reiterate what relevant information we may need from them yet to get an accurate shipping rate (such as liftgate, appointment reqs, etc.). That would make the overall checkout process significantly smoother for anyone that manually invoices the shipping to their customers, and without us having to compensate by overloading the listings with the same information (which far too often is glossed over lately). And hey — since the inclusion of a simple text box doesn't require eBay's system to do any further mathematical equations, I reckon that the likelihood of catastrophic failure resulting from the additional coding required to implement such a feature should drop from an +80% certainty to the lower 40's. Those are pretty good betting odds (I kid, I kid)!
While it's not something mobile is looking to implement at this time, I have passed on your frustrations and suggestions for the desktop version of the site. Thanks for the detailed response @hotrod168!
