"Request Total" eBay's worst feature RANT.

[chriseecho]

I don't understand why eBay makes what should be such a straightforward feature so complicated and exhausting.

I've had to make purchases over the past week, each typically consisting of multiple listings from a single seller. Out of 10 separate transactions, only one time has it worked as expected. There's ALWAYS something. First, it took me googling and troubleshooting to realize that the option doesn't appear on the mobile app - something it appears everyone has been complaining about for literally a decade. There was one official response right here on the platform saying they were taking concerns into consideration and looking into it - that was in 2018. It's 2022.

Second, an error because you can't request total on items that are already discounted or under promotion. Why? How does an existing discount on items have any bearing on a buyer's need for the seller to combine them into one *expletive* package!? So because a seller offers a 25% off promo on their shop (something ironically done to encourage multiple/bulk sales), placing two of them in one package is suddenly a ludicrous request?

Third, "You can't request total on items requiring immediate payment". This, on a cart full of items under "commit to buy". This one has to be a bug because where is the sense!? The poor seller had turned on offers on every one of the items I needed to purchase so I would get the "commit to buy" option and be able to bypass immediate payment and request a total on all the items in my cart. Yet somehow, after all of that it didn't work. I know "Immediate payment" is something a seller can turn on/off per listing, but when you're talking about 10+ listings that's an absolutely ridiculous waste of time and effort on everyone's part. 

I'm not even sure how/why the one "Request Total" out of TEN worked. It must have been a full moon somewhere. Every other transaction, I've had to go back and forth with sellers. Do you offer combined shipping? Great! Oh it's not working can we do A. Oh it's still not working, how about B. Oh I'm still getting an error, could it be C? Okay well that was a bust, can you just send an invoice on your end? All right, sure that's fine I'll just place the order and you can refund the shipping overcharge on your end. This is EXHAUSTING.

Does eBay want to make any money, because all this does is discourage people from multiple/bulk purchases, which hurts the buyer, the seller and eBay. Everyone loses. So I ask again, where is the sense!?!?

Online purchasing is meant to be easy. No one wants to get into a 15+ message thread, spanning 2-3 days for each seller they need to purchase multiple listings from. And for starters, buyers should be able to see whether or not a seller even offers combined shipping in the relevant section of a listing page, without having to begin (what is sure to be the first of many) messages to the seller.

Sellers set their price and shipping method/cost per item. Buyers load up their cart and checkout. And eBay's system should be able to simply look at the seller's indicated weight for each item in the cart and do the calculation to combine shipping. This is not complicated code. You could even get fancy with it and account for difference in categories so you're not shipping glass with iron anvils, and have sellers choose the maximum number of similar items they will combine into one box, etc...

...Or better yet, just fix the darn button!

(And add it to the app!)

[blingfling123]

"And eBay's system should be able to simply look at the seller's indicated weight for each item in the cart and do the calculation to combine shipping"

This does not work, and it is the reason why a lot of people actually have combined shipping turned off. Not because they do not want to do it, but because they can't.  If you are only selling the same items over and over or similar sized items, that is one thing, if you sell a variety of things, that is a whole different ballgame. 

eBay sees two items each with a 10x10x10 shipping box size on the listing and thinks they both will fit in one 10x10x10 box when they will not. They just add the weights together and then calculate the shipping based on the new weight. This is the assumption that you made above. eBay goes by the largest box size and then combines the weight. Never mind that both items are 8x8x8 in size and two of them will not fit in that 10x10x10 box.

The seller is then on the hook for the extra postage because the size is now off. Size matters now with shipping on all carriers, a 1" increase in box size can double the cost of shipping an item when you get over a certain size. There is no way for the system to figure out what size the actual items are and if 2 different items will fit in that 10x10 box or if it needs to be bigger.

eBay also thinks it is perfectly acceptable to combine the shipping on a 5oz $300 ornament and a 20lb anvil in the same box. I know you said code by category but that will not work either because within every category (except for maybe an anvil category) there are breakable items. Think of car parts, while it is hard to shatter an engine block, a headlight can be damaged. For eBay to code down to the subcategory level would be cost prohibitive vs the amount of combined orders and there would still be similar issues 

If you want to combine multiple orders, ask the seller to change their options from immediate payment required to auction payment on the items you want. Then you can purchase all of the items without paying and the seller can send you an invoice for the correct shipping amount. PLEASE understand that new correct shipping amount is rarely the same cost as one item unless one item is large, and the others are small for the reasons noted above. Size is more important than weight now when you get close to a 12" cubed box.

Yes, it is clunky, but it works out for both the seller and the buyer.