so I am unable to send a combined shipping invoice..
@sanfordsherman
Actually, that seems intentional. eBay has been going through a lot of changes that they suggest are improvements, enhancements, streamlining, etc. all in the name of taking care of a perceived non paying buyer problem. Not being willing to sanction buyers for not paying, they came up with all sorts of schemes instead. All were beneficial monetarily to eBay.
The first of which began with those the buyer requirements dropped on everyone's account. These sat dormant for months until eBay started forcing buyers to comply. These were the first that caused the dreaded auto-billing, removed many of the options to pay that buyers may have preferred, and DID AWAY WITH COMBINED INVOICING and SHIPPING opportunities. Buyers paid more, sellers paid more, and eBay made more at the expense of unhappy buyers. It also expanded to more buyers who bid on auctions, when they were billed as soon as each listing ended. and if they won ten auctions, they paid the full price on shipping for each. (That is the short version).
Then there was the phase of sellers who actually got offers from buyers (you turned off the restricted Buyer Requirement). A seller would accept the offer. But the buyer would get no notice their offer was accepted. eBay had renamed the seller's acceptance to YOU SENT AN OFFER when no such thing occurred. Buyers if they knew to look would get a YOU RECIEVED AN OFFER. Many buyers just figured their offer was ignored. It caused all sorts of confusion for both sides, and eBay refused to address the issue.
It was determined that some of these "YOU RECEIVED AN OFFER" that buyers were receiving were of two types. One the buyer could accept and it would behave in the normal fashion. It would end up in the seller's awaiting payment. At the same time, the same buyer during the same session would receive the YOU RECEIVED AN OFFER that HAD NO ACCEPT button, and they had to pay or not get the item. Of course, the same issue of NO COMBINED SHIPPING ensued. It was random, the seller had no control over which the buyer would receive when multiple offers were involved. No matter if your your buyer received a screen where they could accept or not, they were free to ignore the whole thing and not pay at all. (So much for the fixing the NPB theory)
In the last seller update, eBay proudly announced that ALL SELLER GENERATED OFFERS would be Immediate Payment Required. These are the ones sellers send to anonymous prospective buyers, and a single buyer may get more than one from you at that time. Again, IPR negates any combined shipping, and when a buyer has to pay full price on each item it sort of makes the offer system rather unfavorable altogether when one could simply BIN and get combines shipping, and pay less.
Then there is the issue of counter offers. Once again, if the buyer counters and you accept, eBay is making it an IPR situation. They are changing these to YOU SENT AN OFFER, when in actuality you accepted it.
Now that it is deemed a seller generated offer, it becomes IPR, which a buyer can ignore. They can only get a penalty for being a non-payer if they have an accept button.
Note that I have not seen the "screen" that buyers are now receiving with the counter offers. Unless you have a buyer that can do this and share it with you we will have to wait until someone comes along that does. I can only surmise after reading posts by other sellers, that it still may be random when counter offers are concerned if the buyer is required to pay, or they have an accept button that would allow combined shipping and invoicing for same.
If they are required to pay, the listing will remain live until they do, or someone else comes along and buys it.
I know that sounds like a confusing mess, and it apparently still is. Let me know if you need additional "history" on this topic, and I do thank you for your screen shots.
