Combined Shipping - How can I turn this off

[soti]

I had a customer purchased two items from me today. One was fabric and had free shipping, the other was a set of magazines with economy shipping charges.  eBay combined them in both the payment and the shipping.  I could not find a way to separate the items so that I could ship the magazines (6 lbs worth) separately at a cheaper economy rate. Those choices were grayed out.

On top of that, they were an International Shipping program customer so the combined sales had a single eBay reference # on the shipping label.  Even if I was able to separately mail them (outside the eBay system) I figured I couldn't because eBay was expecting a single package with that reference # on it so they could repack it for shipment to (in this case) Canada.  Long story short, I paid Priority rates to ship 6 lbs of magazines with 10 ounces of wool.  Doh!

So, I want to prevent this from happening in the future and figured I would "turn off" combined shipping.  Well, there does not seem to be any where to do this.  In the Manage Shipping settings I have not opted into combined shipping.  At least it says "Not specified".  When you try to specify, there is no option to say NO.  Any help would be appreciates.  Why would eBay combine non-compatible items for shipping.   Any help would be appreciated.

[rebell45]

First, magazines do not qualify for Media Mail so basically you should have combined them. That said, you should be able to set up custom Shipping Policies under Business Policies to cover items that can't be combined. You should also mention in your listing for that item that you can't combine due to size or weight.

[nobody*s_perfect]

As noted in the other post: In this particular case the combined shipping should  have been a  non-issue because the magazines were not eligible for Media Mail shipping in the first place.

[soti]

  Thanks for your answer.

[soti]

  Thanks for your answer.  Still not finding the settings.  I have no Business Policies selection anywhere, just "Manage shipping settings" selection which has no means to specify not to allow combined shipping.

 

 

[bjshorses]

What about items that can't be combined because they are breakable? I'm selling medium-size china figurines, and if you put more than 4-5 in a box the amount of packing necessary becomes prohibitive. Each figurine is wrapped in bubble wrap, then the whole box is filled with peanuts. Figures shouldn't touch each other, and the USPS requires "two inches of packing between the item and the side of the box" - on all sizes including top and bottom.

I sold two lots of 4 figurines each and priced the shipping on shipping them individually. The same buyer bought both and charged the buyer a reduced shipping fee. To use the eBay shipping label, I had to combine them and take the chance on the buyer receiving damaged goods. But to ship them separately would cost me more than I received in shipping.

Not only that, but eBay calculated a reduced box size that wasn't big enough to hold all of them and the USPS required packing materials.