What to do when eBay combines a multi-item shipment?

[varebelrose]

eBay apparently auto-combined multiple purchases yesterday into one shipping package.

In the past, if a buyer purchased multiple items, there was an option on the sold page to combine the items for shipping, with one tracking number. You had to make a conscious decision to do so, or you could ship them separately. Yesterday, we had a buyer purchase multiple large, heavy lots of books. These were marked in the ad as "cannot combine shipping due to weight/size", but I did not change anything in settings to set that.  I assume the buyer put them all in his cart and payed for them together. The shipping fee he paid seemed to be the total for the 3 lots combined. The three lots sold, showed up on the sold page and the shipping label page, as one transaction, with no apparent way to separate them out and ship separately.

In this case, we were able to repackage them and ship them together, although it was a PITA and made for an almost 30 pound package. I would have really preferred to ship each package individually, with the ability to use ebay shipping labels for each one , and have individual tracking numbers, as it has always been in the past. I say say this, because not every time can multiple purchases be easily repackaged into one shipment; this could have been 20# of books and glassware, for example. I suppose we could have split the shipment by using PP labels, but still would have had no way to input tracking info for each package individually.

Is there a recent change in settings that I have missed, to NOT allow multiple items to automatically be combined?

Thanks for any advice, YMMV.

[Anonymous]

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@varebelrose wrote:

It just threw me for a loop because in the past all items bought by a single buyer were separate, and it took a decisive action to combine them. Have a great afternoon!

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They are combined when a single payment is issued. They are separated when separate payments are issued. As outlined above, either way does not prevent you from purchasing multiple shipping labels for the transaction.

[modulok!]

I understand what you are saying...buyer purchased multiple items from you and paid for them with 1 payment.  The buyer paid full shipping on each item.  Because of the 1 payment for multiple items, Ebay combined all the orders into 1 and only offered you the ability to print 1 shipping label for all orders combined (although the buyer paid full shipping for each order).  Here is an easy way to break up the orders and print a separate shipping label for each individual item (as I believe that is what you wanted to do)...

Go to each individual item's listing page (now ended because it sold) and at the top there will be a "Print Shipping Label" link.  Click it and it will only be a shipping label for the individual listing you are currently in.  Do this for each listing that sold.  This way each item gets its own shipping label and individual tracking number.  If you now look in your solds list, each item that was previously combined into 1 shipment will have its own tracking number underneath it.  Hope this helped.

[kateinthe26th]

in your shipping preferences (from what i remember) there is a box you can check to 'offer combined shipments'

which i checked because that suits me....go into your shipping preferences and see what options you have checked and not checked off.

....there are heaps of shipping 'rules' you can set up 

[klhmdg]

There is a box on each listing also and if checked allows combined shipping.

I have some items I make sure the box is not checked because the items should ship alone.

[kateinthe26th]

Seems strange...I bought 2 hardback books from a seller in April and wanted to request an invoice for combined postage but the prompt I got from inside the shopping cart was ' this seller does not offer combined shipments' but he did give me some money back after shipping as he preferred to package first so he knew exact shipping costs

Anyway, what made me mention this was the prompt I got from inside the shopping cart that said 'seller does not offer combined shipping'....he must have set that up as a preference so you should be able to also if that would help you out

[berserkerplanet]

From site settings at https://www.ebay.com/ship/prf (new interface) or

https://cgi5.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SellerShippingPreferences  (old interface)

(ignore the red highlights - that was for something else. The part of interest is "Combined Payments". If not enabled, then no combined shipping and the cart produces the 'seller does not offer combined shipping' message. If enabled, seller offers combined shipping even if no Flat or Calculated rules are specified (or at least it did in the past - haven't checked since I started using combined shipping rules, but have had combined payments enabled forever)