Customers are being shown order totals where shipping invoiced has been multiplied by item quantity

[hotrod168]

I was forwarded this screenshot from a customer today who initially thought we were attempting to pull a fast one on them.

The rate they were originally quoted was $259 for the pallet (LTL truck freight to Washington), and that's exactly what we invoiced them for. However, at some point in the payment process, this was the total being displayed for their order. I'm still awaiting a follow-up response on what platform they were using, but it looks like the page this was displayed on calculated the total by erroneously multiplying the shipping rate by the item quantity (in this case '2'), then even calculated the sales tax on this new combined amount.

While it doesn't appear to actually be charging my customers the inflated rate, it's still likely to result in the loss of multiple sales the longer this issue persists.

[hotrod168]

Update:

I was able to speak with the customer today, and it sounds like they were brought to the page that displayed this by clicking the bell icon next to My eBay (on desktop), then clicking the 'Pay Now' notification in the dropdown for this specific order.

Shortly after sending us the screenshot and a message that they weren't about to pay for this (considering the difference in price), they finally saw the regular emailed message that gets sent out after an invoice has been updated. Clicking the Pay Now button on that message did give them the correct total, but only once they clicked the button (the email itself didn't have any of the dollar amounts actually listed, if I'm remembering correctly).

[hotrod168]

Update 2.0

This issue is still unresolved as of MAR-22-2021. eBay's technical team is aware of it, but it doesn't hurt to provide additional information for the sake of other Sellers running into this problem as well.

Since my original posting, we have confirmed that this is *NOT* just matter of the order total being displayed incorrectly.  If the Buyer does not notice the price discrepancy and proceeds with their payment, eBay will charge the Buyer for that new inflated total. Thankfully this has only occurred once (and we just refunded the difference afterwards), but it does take the potential severity of this issue to another level. On a lesser note, it also does not appear to be limited to just the desktop version of the website, as at least one customer reported using the eBay App specifically (though the total was still accessed the same way, through the bell notification icon).

My greatest concern is that while only five customers have reported running into this, I think it's fair to assume the number of unreported occurrences is higher than that. I say this because three of the five made the initial assumption that we were being dishonest about the shipping rate (i.e. we quoted $160 for shipping, not specifying it's actually per tire). Even when those three did see the standard email that normally goes out after an invoice is updated with the shipping—which displayed the proper order total—each Buyer assumed that was merely a correction we made after the fact. So if that initial outward appearance is that the Seller is being either, a) incredibly deceptive; or b) made a glaringly obvious mistake, how likely are you, as a Buyer, going to follow-through with that sale?

As a counter measure, we're now preemptively messaging our customers after sending each invoice that this issue is occurring (as well as how to access the correct total). However, we've still had at least one customer cancel an order in spite of this. After seeing such drastically different invoice subtotals, they were worried that, even if they did pay the one with the proper amount, who's to say it wouldn't charge them the inflated rate anyway? Even if I have no evidence that would suggest otherwise, those reassurances won't work with everyone.

And I don't blame them. Truthfully, when critical issues like this persist sometimes for months at a time—even when they are limited to a small subset of eBay's users—it continues to chip away at an already eroded confidence in the platform.