I mainly sell pins, but I do list and sometimes sell other items This makes it difficult for me to adhere to some of the things that EBAY says a "great" seller should do as a way to avoid problems with the new Immediate Payment required .policy
1st free shipping. Yes I could add shipping and handling to each pin which would of course raise the price my customers have to pay for the pin. If I never sold multiple pins to customers or never had local customers pick up pins from me that would work great.
Of my sales over the last 30 days approximately 60% of my customers purchased multiple items from me. Therefore those customers would end up paying much more money for their items. As the majority of these items were pins I can ship between 5 to 8 pins for the price of shipping 1 pin. Therefore a customer who bought say 5 pins from me would end up paying over 7.00 or more for the pins they wanted.
Wonder how long before they would stop buying multiple pins from me and move on to other sellers who do not have free shipping and can combine and reduce the shipping and handling costs.
I also have approximately between 7% to 15% of items bought locally and picked up directly from me. Therefore if I had added the Free shipping into the item costs then it would of course cost them more than if they bought from a seller elsewhere who combined shipping and handling. How long will I keep these local customers who have bought from me over the years?
Immediate payment required is also a problem for a lot of the same reasons. If the cart works then of course they can put their items into the cart and ask for an invoice with the reduced combined shipping and handling but as we have all seen and heard on these boards the cart fails to work quite often so EBAY tells our customers they have to pay immediately. So if they are prepared to do so they pay shipping and handling on multiple items, then I have to refund the excess shipping and handling charges. Of course EBAY does not refund the FVF on this refund.
So EBAY says set up a combined automatic shipping and handling policy. That's great as long as they buy exactly the same weight items. But what about the customer who buys 3 pins and a maybe a belt buckle or a poster. How can I set it up to automatically combine the shipping and handling?
Also many of my customers buy Flat price or Buy it now items as well as auction items and pay for their items once per week. Therefore if their Flat price items or Buy it now items are setting in the cart and another person can come along and buy these items. Another great experience for the EBAY buyer.
How many customers have I and others lost because of EBAY'S new policy that requires immediate payment on Buy It Now or Flat price items? We will never know. What is also scary is that I have heard that EBAY is trying to figure out how to force Immediate Payment required on Auctions. We must let EBAY know that Immediate Payment Required is not acceptable to us as sellers. Leave it as an option for those who want to use it.
I know this rant is long but thanks to those of you who took the time to read it.
By the way I have called Customer service and have been unable to get beyond the person in Manila or where ever who says gee it is a glitch and no there is no supervisor who I can talk to. They have promised that someone from EBAY will call me but I have been waiting weeks for that call back.
Again we as sellers can just roll over and do nothing or we can keep trying to let them know how unacceptable Immediate Payment required is to us and hopefully they will roll it back and make it optional again.
