What is a committed purchase?

[12345jamesstamps]

Hello,

Another morning with a strange situation.

For some odd reason a buyer asked for an invoice for 28 items....some of my good items for sale.

He sent an "invoice request"..."A buyer has requested a total for their committed purchase".

My shipping is free first of all. Strange. 

Does this mean if the buyer doesn't pay in 4 days ebay will still use his credit card on file?

And should I let him know that this will happen? Its a lot of money.

And my biggest worry is a credit card dispute down the road. Scary to me.

And here's the kicker...he did pay for one expensive lot at the same time.

Is this not strange?

[spark-chaser1]

Just my opinion, since you offer free shipping, just send an invoice anyway, as you would any other time that states the owed price, and let the buyer pay it. 

The buyer may have simply flaked and somehow missed that you offered free shipping... 

Over thinking it and communicating more with the buyer might confuse things further.

[frankenhobbit]

It could be that as you offer Free shipping, the buyer knows it is baked into the price and wants a piece of the probably quite decent savings you would make on shipping 28 items in one lot. 

ETA, I see what you are selling now so the savings may not be THAT considerable, but the premise still applies

[sextons-sweet-deals]

Your probably right. 

The buyer should have communicated with seller first before buying 28 items. Now they are trying to play the game. 

The O.P. will have to decide on how to handle this. 

[spark-chaser1]

Great point, FH. 

And another great reason to send an invoice as-is... Its not up to the buyer to decide what  fractional included prices a seller sets for " free" shipping... 

If the buyer was cool with loading up the cart with the set prices per unit as shown,  then they can go forward and pay them.

But yeah, that is probably what was on the buyer's mind. 

[dbfolks166mt]

     I would simply give him a price for the entire lot and if they are good with the price I would create a bundled package listing for them rather than dealing with 28 different purchases and combined shipping. They could try using the cart but that has some issues at times especially if your listings are BIN/IPR. 

     EBay will not use the CC on file if the buyer does not pay. After 4 days you would simply cancel for non-payment When you create the bundled listing you could always specify BIN/IPR. 

[frankenhobbit]

I don't think it is unreasonable to request a discount for purchasing multiple items, I've done something similar on some items where the OBO button was active. In my offer, I refer to the other items I will be making an offer on. I make offers on all the items to add up to the total. I usually go for maybe 10-15 percent off depending on the item. That way the seller can counter easily if they want to, though nearly always, they accept. 

This is where as a buyer, I actually LIKE the much hated auto-pay feature. It shows I am serious and that I will follow through. It might persuade a seller to accept. I wish buyers could turn on that feature with their offers as sellers are reluctant to turn it on themselves for fear of scaring away buyers. Of course, I am not saying a buyer should be able to proactively turn the feature off! 

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

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@12345jamesstamps wrote:

Hello,

Another morning with a strange situation.

For some odd reason a buyer asked for an invoice for 28 items....some of my good items for sale.

He sent an "invoice request"..."A buyer has requested a total for their committed purchase".

My shipping is free first of all. Strange. 

Does this mean if the buyer doesn't pay in 4 days ebay will still use his credit card on file?

And should I let him know that this will happen? Its a lot of money.

And my biggest worry is a credit card dispute down the road. Scary to me.

And here's the kicker...he did pay for one expensive lot at the same time.

Is this not strange?

---

Whats his feedbag look like?  Is he international'e?

If'n he's not paid for the items wants invoicing on I'd say, "Howdy Ranger!  Appreciate you're purchase it will ship shortly...  As to the other items ordered, I have reserved those for you and will consider a bundle sale to you after the order placed is completed and satisfied."

Remove the items wants invoice (aka: Set Quantities to zilch'o) and note the items on a notepad doc, cut n paste.  Sheep the order placed WITH TRACKING and IF it's eggspensive slap signature required on it.  If its real expensive I might even go FedEx or UPS and make sure photo's of the order are printed, copy goes inside the order, another copy sittin' right there at the FedEx desk or UPS desk so the clerk goes Yep, thats whats in there and use a registered service there.

Why so wherefore how bouts?

Welp... MANY a MOON ago when had the gamestore fella walk in wantin' sell all these posters and two of them were Lenticular (that's 3D in ticular' terms).  So those 3D jobbers were used in theaters for movie promos right?  Partners didn't want em' and I thought em' really cool so, yeah... Bought the lot, like $40 clams.

Lenticular's sat in my garage near 3 years before one day I decided to see what they were?  OH MY GOSH.  One was worth $1200 minimum and the other $1500 minimum!  WOW!  Ding ding... Da' Ding Ding Ding right?  Serve to figure, Kodak's home town, Kodak made the posters.  I know... I know... Where's the warehouse someplace where stacks more exist LOL!!!

 So this place out California way want's em', they sell movie memorabilia.  I went low on it, $2700 JUST PEACHY with me.  I'd saw pristine one of them sold at Christies for $7000 still in wrap and such.  So make the deal, sandwich them between 3/4" foam board and off they go FedEx.  They arrive and the FUN BEGINS!

Place makes claim to their bank that one of them is actually a PROTOTYPE (Makes it worth more actually) but NOT what they ordered.  Mind you, this is against my merchant account in the day.  And as you know since you've done retail, chargeback never partial.  So bam $2700 goes in lieu plus of course the $50 instant fee's for CB processing and $25 for our reply.  Going back and forth of course don't do in email at that point, want everything going through the Merchant account in communications which is $25 every single time.

Now that all said, had WE NOT put everything together at FEDEX we'd like lost the entire chargeback.  It was FEDEX's manager at the station we'd statement from AND that FedEx would file fraud charges against the buyer as they witnessed the package being assembled and there were NO damage claims of insurance or claim of FedEx mishandling.  We ended up settling for $1700 with the place, which was actually $1500 thereabouts due to the $25 fee atop fee for "Official communication" through EMS systems.

Was I **bleep** oh yeah! But, hey, $40 in, $1500 out I let it be.  Bottom line it was FedEx's statements sent off to the risk assessment folks which actually be Wells Fargo (the aggregate processor) that sealed the day.

[12345jamesstamps]

He paid for one item. And then he requested a total for 28 items.

And I will be paying around $10. for shipping out of my own pocket.

So I don't think a discount should be given.

[femmefan1946]

And I will be paying around $10. for shipping out of my own pocket.

Free Shipping does not come out of the seller's pocket.

It means the seller included their costs of shipping in the asking price.

Out of the seller shipping costs do exist. Sometimes I will upgrade a package to tracked from my profit or use a label instead of postage stamps.

[fyeo20000]

if a buyer saves me 27 trips to the post office & 8 hours handling time, they get min. 10% off, probably more if requested

[12345jamesstamps]

Someone mentioned I should give a discount on the 28 items the buyer hasn't paid yet.

That's where the $10. of shipping  was mentioned about.

I didn't think a discount and shipping should be done for this lot.

[12345jamesstamps]

I am so in the negative already from other buyers where I gave shipping discounts for International buyers who cannot combine their orders...LOL

I wish this buyer would ask for a discount up front.

[dbfolks166mt]

He paid for one item. And then he requested a total for 28 items.

And I will be paying around $10. for shipping out of my own pocket.

So I don't think a discount should be given.

     Curious how you ended up paying $10 out of your own pocket for shipping? Given what you sell I wouldn't think it would be from an increase in weight of the package. I have come up short a couple of times between what the buyer paid, or what I had baked into the price for shipping, but generally it's $1-$2 but never that much. 

[pjcdn2005]

To answer the question in your title, a committed purchase simply means that the buyer clicked on the 'request invoice' option in the cart. Once they do that, they have committed to purchase the items so if they don't pay, you will have to cancel the transaction.