Still unable to send invoices after 5 days

[guitargodzstore]

Still unable to send invoices after 5 days

[soh.maryl]

You have more experience as a seller than I have, so feel free to correct me if I'm in error.

To the best of my knowledge, the only time a seller needs to send an invoice is when the buyer has requested combined shipping for two or more items or if the buyer has asked for an upgraded shipping service, and the seller needs to add more shipping charges.  

But, due to your experience, you would know those things, right?  

[sss1301]

I also need to use the functionality of invoices -- I sell mostly LPs to international buyers and the new eBay shipping program does NOT support multiple items per order.   When I attempt to send an invoice now on an order with multiple items, I get the message that I can not create an invoice anymore.  BUT, it does allow me to create one, but it doesn't include all of the the items in the order.  In fact, the item that I click on is not included in the invoice.  The only way I can continue to conduct business is to create a dummy listing after the fact that has a list of all of the items and then work with the buyer to have them buy that one instead.   I then need to cancel the actual purchases.   eBay knew that this wasn't going to work and rolled it out anyway.   I don't get it.  If the intent was to steamline the process for selling internationally, why did they think it was ok to break the ability to combine multiple items into one order.   It's obviously cost prohibitive to send one item per order internationally, at least for LPs.   I've lost track of how many times they've rolled out a new "feature" and left a path of destruction on their existing functionality.   They do NOT know how to test their changes, period.    To soh.maryl, I'm sure your intentions were good, but your message was tone deaf.  

[hotrod168]

Most of our items ship LTL truck freight, so our default shipping policy is set to 'Freight: large items over 150 LBS'.

If you're not familiar with this format, it more or less sets the shipping price as 'null' when a Buyer initially commits to a purchase (using the 'Buy It Now' button or 'Request Total'), but doesn't allow them to proceed with their payment until we've sent an updated total with the hand-quoted shipping rate factored in. It may seem overly taxing, but it allows us to work with our customers to determine LTL rates with pin-point accuracy, which ultimately saves them hundreds of dollars in the long run (especially on bigger shipments). It also makes sure the Buyer is completely aware of the total cost before they pay for an item. 

The invoicing feature is the only way to accomplish this. If the system is down, and we can't send invoices, our customers cannot pay us and complete their orders. For any sellers that do their LTL shipping this way, errors like this are not simple minor inconveniences — it basically sets our sales on those listings to a complete standstill. That's why people get so upset when you downplay the feature's importance.