Unannounced change to Request Total

[toomuchstuffagain35]

I was wondering why I was getting ebay messages to send an invoice only to find the buyer had already paid.

Then I had a buyer tell me after they requested an invoice they got an ebay message to "pay now to keep this item". So the next 2 times it happened I asked the buyers and yep that's what ebay is doing now.

WHY? The whole POINT of sending an in invoice for adjusted shipping/combining shipping is to WAIT for the invoice.

Is this yet another glitch or 'working as intended'?

[wastingtime101]

Correct me if I'm wrong @ittybitnot , but you do a lot of shopping where you request invoices for combined shipping. Have you seen this? If so, can you post a screenshot or copy/paste at least so we can see exact wording of the message?

[stephenmorgan]

............

[ittybitnot]

 Have you seen this? 

@wastingtime101 
I am not quite sure.  I have one order where I requested a combined invoice (two days ago) where the seller has not responded.  I should have another tonight.  As per usual, I am inundated with the typical "Pay Now" reminders from eBay for the individual products (auction wins from the same seller), but did not take notice of the wording.  This has happened for a very long time and I typically ignore them.  These are for sellers that do not retain the combined shipping killer Buyer Rules, since I no longer bid on those as a matter of form. 

Offhand the phrase  "pay now to keep this item" sounds like something that could involve some sort of "offer" situation, as to keep this item doesn't usually apply in a request total situation for auctions without Buyer Rule retention.  I will observe on my next order of auction wins when I send the "request to combine", or any ebay notification different from the "you committed to buy so Pay Now" .   Even without the 'to keep this item' statement, eBay does bug you to Pay Now (separately ad nauseum) while waiting for the combined invoice. 

I did have one disturbing occurrence the other day that I am going to follow up on and see if I can replicate it. I had a seller send offers to me on five items.  I already know these have to be paid for separately (regardless of Buyer Rules retention or not), and generally will cost more do to no combined shipping than just hitting the BIN and getting a combined order at regular price. 

Well, one of these (one of the five due to it being my favorite of the bunch) I clicked on to "review offer".  Next thing I know is that the said item was put in my cart.  I had quite a few items in my cart from other individual sellers that I had won in the previous hour, and if I had mistakenly paid for the "cart contents" to other sellers of single items, I would have paid for that as well had I not noticed it was sort of "added" by a ghost/bot.  I just deleted that item from the cart, and the offer has not yet expired. 

I have an appointment this morning and will look more carefully and take screen shots when I return in a couple of hours. 

[wastingtime101]

My mistake @ittybitnot - did not realize you primarily purchase auctions. Thought you might have some fixed price listing request total situations going on.

I can't see the OP applying to auctions because they had a definitive end with an auction winner.

Fixed price is an entirely different beast where, in theory, the item could remain active.

[ittybitnot]

My mistake @ittybitnot - did not realize you primarily purchase auctions.

@wastingtime101 

Generally the products I purchase are ONLY sold at auction as far as I can tell.  I can try to find some BIN and see what happens.  Today, this is the error message I am getting when I use the "request total" in my purchase history, OR in my cart where the auction wins end up.  This has been going on all day: 

I contacted the seller from which I requested the total a couple of days ago.  I used the message the seller feature and explained that I had also sent the request to my own email client, and it didn't arrive there either so perhaps the system was malfunctioning.  Told him I was ready to pay, and he sent the invoice in two minutes.  He said he never got the request in the first place, and thought I was still shopping...LOL... I don't make sellers wait, I just start a "new batch" and request a total on day two or three at the latest.  

The second seller's "request" showed the same red banner error message, in both my cart AND the purchase history so I just messaged that seller, too.  If the system is broken, no sense having the seller wait unnecessarily.   
 

In case it matters to anyone else, I have been using the Firefox browser, Win10 Pro.  

With regard to the second part of my post this morning, I figured out how to get those seller generated offers (multiples from the same seller) to magically appear in my cart.....LOL...however, I couldn't test to see if I could "request a total" or combined shipping once I had them all in there because it is broken anyway.  

I will go off and see if I can find some BIN items that I can test.....  I can always use some glue, or drill bits...LOL.

[wastingtime101]

If you haven't already @ittybitnot , click the ? icon on the bottom right of the page. Then select the option to file a tech report at the bottom of the pop up.

[ittybitnot]

@wastingtime101 

I will have to wait until it happens again.  I did simply contact my second seller, and a combined invoice was sent almost immediately and I already paid. 

I did purchase a couple of fixed price items, used add to cart, and requested a total.  Got a green banner this time,  LOL...

 I need some driver and drill bits for my new drill.  It took freaking forever to find a US seller that was a REAL US seller, not just a 'pretend' one.  That is because you can't get to the feedback page directly from the listings anymore without clicking 'see all feedback'  and repeating until a page appears with the tiny 'go back to classic view'  and there it is CHINA...LOL.   I should go look for the "?" icon on that annoying flow.  

If I don't get my combined invoice, I will look for any abnormal eBay reminders for me to PAY NOW!!

[toomuchstuffagain35]

I just had another buyer ask if they could combine shipping. So this time I told them to add to cart & RQT but IGNORE the ebay bleep about "pay now" and we'll see what happens.

[wastingtime101]

Good luck with the new buyer. I get why some sellers prefer to manually combine. For my biz, setting up automatic combined shipping rules was one of the best gifts I ever gave myself.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

I've tried using the combined shipping rules but it never works out for me.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

So far since I posted this I've now had 2 buyers who had an issue and never came back, and another (repeat) buyer who said ebay blocked her buying again even though my settings are for up to 25 items (on that ID).

[ittybitnot]

For my biz, setting up automatic combined shipping rules was one of the best gifts I ever gave myself.

@wastingtime101 s

I use a similar feature on my website.  This way orders are automatically combined for shipping and it is by "class".   It uses a fixed price format.  For example, all items categorized when listing as "small" are charged $4.25.  Each additional from the same class is $0.25.   Items that are listed as "medium" are $15 with each additional in that class being charged $5.   So if you you buy three from the "small" class ($4.75) and two from the "medium" class ($20), your total shipping for the five items would be $24.75.   

When I sold on eBay, I could never figure out how to do this since my products were all different sizes, shapes, and weights.  Until eBay removed the "commit to buy and continue shopping with this seller"  in favor of  the cart (and lists of things that prevented the buyer from requesting a total from the cart or a seller sending an invoice)  all was fine for me with putting a buyer's orders in one box and sending an invoice.  I was glad to have the business, and I would assume buyers were happy not to get endless error messages>>LOL. 

Can you actually make eBay shipping rules yet that can automatically combine a ten pound anvil, a sterling necklace, a pair of earrings, and (as my old friend here used to say as a humorous example) a chipped porcelain teacup?  

[wastingtime101]

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@ittybitnot wrote:

When I sold on eBay, I could never figure out how to do this since my products were all different sizes, shapes, and weights. 

---

There is some flexibility with combined shipping rules, but there are limits. I wish there was a lot more flexibility. But yes, you can make it work with varied product!

For example:

- I have heavier product which has combined shipping based on weight. eBay totals the weight across items and bills the buyer based on the weight.

      - Downside: on purchases large enough to split into 2 packages, I'm sometimes out on ship costs because the system bills based on a single box. Generally the large $$ sale is enough to make up for that. I'd love to see eBay add an option to limit the number of items, like ... combine weight on a maximum of 6 items before starting a combined rate for a second package.

- I have lighter products that have combined shipping based on number of items. You can set up many different combined flat ship rules. Like $x for the first and $y for each additional. Or flat $x when someone buys y or more items. Or Free ship when buyer spends $x. Etc.

What sellers often don't realize is these rules can be applied at the listing level (or biz policy level).

So ... you could list that anvil with no combined shipping rule. List the teacup with a combined ship by weight rule. And list the necklace and earrings with a combined flat ship rule.

Or if you use biz policies you could apply different policies to the teacup and the jewelry so they can both combine by weight.

For example Ground Adv / combine by weight / 1 day ship policy applied to jewelry.

Then you had Ground Adv  / combine by weight / 2 day ship policy applied to the teacups.

eBay won't combine if listings have different handling time, or different shipping service, etc. This is one of the many reasons I love biz policies. More flexibility with combined ship rules.