Buyers can't request total or invoice

[kia_488]

Help! I have had several buyers try to request a total or an invoice so I can give them a shipping discount. After several calls to Ebay and trying different settings, it STILL is not working !! Argh....I am losing buyers over this.  I do not want Ebay to calculate the shipping cost for me, I want to do it myself. I want people to place their items in their cart then contact me for an adjusted price. I am sure there is a way to do this, could someone please send me detailed instructions on what settings I need to adjust? Thanks so much!

[velvet@ebay]

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@kia_488 wrote:

Help! I have had several buyers try to request a total or an invoice so I can give them a shipping discount. After several calls to Ebay and trying different settings, it STILL is not working !! Argh....I am losing buyers over this.  I do not want Ebay to calculate the shipping cost for me, I want to do it myself. I want people to place their items in their cart then contact me for an adjusted price. I am sure there is a way to do this, could someone please send me detailed instructions on what settings I need to adjust? Thanks so much!

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Hello @kia_488! It sounds like you want to be able to offer shipping discounts and you can go here to learn more. Be sure you're set up to offer combined shipping though, as that is required. You'll notice it states that towards the top of the help page I included too.  

[biggoldenbig]

Hello,

I ran into this same issue, but found that you can adjust a setting in your seller's account to enable your buyers to "Request Total".

Go to "My eBay" at the top, then click the "Account" Tab, then in the menu on the left, click "Seller Account", then click "Site Preferences", then click "Business Policies".

Here you should see a menu with all the different shipping calculations, and somewhere in there is a policy about requiring immediate payment. The default title is "eBay Payments: Immediate Pay". Click into this policy and uncheck the box that says "Require immediate payment when buyer uses Buy It Now". Then you have to click the "Save" button at the bottom once this is done.

If you have a customer that has items from your "Buy It Now" in their cart, they will have to "Save for later" and then re-add all of them to the cart in order to use the "Request Total" feature. Please also note that even after updating this policy, it takes a few minutes for it to take effect.

I hope this helps! I know there are many of us small sellers that may not have been aware that our potential buyers were seeing this issue and being deterred from purchasing due to additional shipping charges.

[shipscript]

This is what a buyer will see if "Immediate payment required" items are added to the cart.

Checkout - request total

A buyer may also not be able to request a total if the seller offers combined shipping discounts and only one item is selected in the cart.

 

[deb-onair]

Hi there

Had to contact ebay about this issue but they gave me different advice. I have followed your instructions and found a policy 'ebay payments'. I assume this is the one you referred to in your message. The box 'require immediate payment when buyer uses buy it now' was already unchecked so I have ticked this box instead. Hope that is correct. I had a buyer today who wanted to purchase several items from a listing with variations but they told me that they were being forced to pay postage for each item from that listing. Anyway the only way I thought I could get around this was to remove the items from the variations and relist them individually so I could send the buyer an invoice showing combined postage.

I am hoping now that if this happens again that the buyer will be able to request the total cost.

[shipscript]

@deb-onair 

To combine shipping, the listing must NOT include "Immediate Payment Required" and your account must be set to Allow combined shipping and payments. 

Immediate payment can be either a Shipping Policy attached to individual listings or can be individually selected on each listing if you don't use Shipping Policies.

Uncheckmark the "immediate payment required" option in the listings where you want to allow combining, since "immediate payment" does not allow adding to cart for combined checkout.

You will also need a global setting that will apply to all listings (since you are in Australia, modify the links accordingly to https://www.ebay.com.au/ship/prf 😞

On your account page

under Shipping Preferences  

you will see the option to  "Allow combined shipping and payments". 

Edit that option to allow combining and to set the duration for requesting combined shipping.  This is the feature that will be enabled in the cart so that the buyer can request combined shipping.

You can also set shipping rules on that page if you wish. You are allowed one calculated shipping rule and multiple flat shipping rules.  When the rules are set up, you can select the rules at the listing level (or within a shipping policy).

For instance, in my magazine listings, within each listing, I set the dimensions to fit a priority envelope, and assigned a weight of 9 ounces to the thinner magazines and 13 ounces to the heavier magazines. Then I selected calculated shipping for both Ground Advantage and Flat rate priority envelope. 

When the buyer places more than one variation item in the cart, the shipping discounts are automatically applied and the buyer can choose the preferred shipping method at checkout.

Checkout - request total

When selling through Variation listings, make sure that "immediate payment" is not applied. Add an instruction to your variation listing that the buyer must place multiple selections in the cart to combine shipping. In your case, if you don't set up shipping discounts, instruct the buyer to request a total from within the cart.  You can see from my screenshot (above) where the shopper will request that total. If you set up shipping rules, the buyer would not be able to request a shipping total, since the discounts would be applied automatically.

[kh-stanley1]

Hi everyone,

Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread HERE if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.

Thank you for understanding.