eBay's system is erroneously telling potential Buyers we do not ship to their locations

[hotrod168]

We're getting reports from some of our customers that they are being shown a message when they attempt to purchase an item (with Buy It Now) that the 'Seller does not ship to your location/state.'  It allows them to commit to the purchase afterwards if they want to, but I'm going to assume that for every person who has bothered to send us a message about this asking 'why', there's likely a considerable number more whom automatically went looking to purchase elsewhere. Not good, especially since this has been an ongoing issue since at least early summer. 

And I'm assuming it's a technical issue related to us Sellers that quote their freight shipping manually.  Since this requires us to send an updated invoice once the shipping has been determined anyway, the only restrictions we technically have in place are for international locations — nothing domestic. Based on feedback from our customers, it doesn't appear to be related to PO Boxes, either (which none of them were using).

I've waived off many of this website's mildly inconvenient issues in the past, like the awesome one we still get every time we try to send someone an invoice ('Payment information for this item can only be updated on the site on which the item was originally listed)', but this is more serious. I can guarantee this hasn't just cost us sales — chances are it's unknowingly affecting others as well.

[mr_lincoln]

@hotrod168  So is it possible that Sellers wouldn't even know if Buyers "try" to purchase from them then get that message and move on to another Seller?

[hotrod168]

Yep, that is exactly what is happening, at least in some instances.

As an example, a week or two ago, my brother attempted to purchase a headache rack for his work truck. After initially hitting Buy It Now on the first one he was initially interested in, he got the same message about how that seller didn't ship to his location (which he found odd, considering they were one state away). Because he didn't click 'Commit to Purchase' on that second stage to finalize the order, that seller had no indication of that purchase attempt.

In the end, he ended up purchasing a different style rack anyway, but that was our first indication that other people were still having trouble with this as well.

[hotrod168]

Update on 11/10/2017:

We attempted to recreate the problem this afternoon on our PC using my son's personal eBay account, and we were able to get a better idea of what is going on, as well as a screenshot of the exact wording of the message:

This item does not ship to WI, United States. Here is what you can do:

• Change address
• Pick a different item that ships to you

Originally we were under the impression that it was with the 'Buy It Now' button that our customers would sometimes get this error. While that may still be possible (we only tested it on PC, not mobile), we were unable to recreate it on our end.

What did get it to pop up consistently was using the 'Add To Cart' function. After adding one or more of our items to the cart, it goes to a new page with a breakdown of what's currently in the cart. If we click the main 'Proceed to Checkout' button by the total line (as most people would), the page with the aforementioned error message will pop up every single time. No option to continue to commit to the purchase either — it simply looks like a dead end. And since the order does not go through until the Buyer has checked out, from my end as a Seller there is no indication that any of this is happening.

It is worth noting that it did seem to allow me to commit to a purchase if I used the 'Request total from seller ' option at the initial checkout window instead of 'Proceed to Checkout'. However, it's also greyed out unless you have more than one item in the cart and is fairly easy to overlook — and what are the chances someone is going to request a total when they were just informed that the Seller does not ship to their location anyway?

[hotrod168]

...And this is still broken as of 12/05/2017.

Additionally, we have learned that adding a promotional price to our items causes the error to occur with the 'Buy It Now' as well — and the "Request total from seller" work around doesn't work this time, because it apparently 'already has discounts applied.' In essence, it comepletely breaks the listing and makes it unpurchasable.

How many MONTHS are we going to have to deal with this before eBay decides it's a problem worth addressing?

[howardml23]

I have this now; and also had it two weeks ago.  This is definately an impediment to sales.  EBay needs to fix this.  The last time I got an invoice from the buyer and then was able to check out.  For most items, people won't go through the trouble.