I just had a potential buyer asking me about combined shipping price. I already price my items at a discounted flat rate. I am not sure how EBAY does this. I cannot ship multiple items at the flat rate I am charging though. I asked him to contact me and maybe I can take a few dollars of an item.
This information from eBay might be helpful. It covers combining shipping if the buyer hasn't paid yet, as well as combining shipping after the buyer has paid. It also covers shipping combined orders, which is important also:
@chapeau-noir I appreciate that you and @packratville helped me out. It was the second time that I needed to combine shipping and am happy that I now can feel more confident in how to approach it.
You're welcome. It doesn't come up too often for me, but when it did I came here to Selling and got help too, and also felt more confident afterwards. Good luck!
Update: I added the automatic combined shipping discount but it apparently did not work. The buyer bought two separate items (instead of five) requesting offer discounts. I sent a note and made the sale and hopefully have a new customer regardless.
Ideally, most of my repeat customers add all the items they want to their shopping cart to purchase and request an invoice. I figure the shipping for them altogether and enter that for the shipping on the invoice and then they pay.
