Does eBay automatically combine shipping?

[360carguy]

Just sold 7 industrial filters. Had them listed for 69.99 each with actual shipping dimensions/weight entered.  For this particular buyer shipping per filter would be around $42.  I also Had volume pricing added so the buyer saved approx $70 for buying all 7 which I’m fine with.  For some reason the buyer was able to only pay $113 total for shipping.. these are large enough where combining shipping would cost me just as much if not more so at this point I will Be out around $170 in the extra shipping costs.   I looked In my seller settings and combined shipping is not activated.  Is this how it is? I just Went through process of listing the same item to just make sure I didnt See any combined shipping options that I may Have accidently checked, nothing.  I’m assuming eBay won’t be able to do anything and I’m probably out on the money?  Any thoughts?  Thanks!

[bonanza125]

For situations such as these I just "Free Shipping" which I add the shipping cost to the item. That way I don't get involved in a mess like this. You are unfortunately as the seller responsible to know what shipping cost will be and combine shipping. You can either ship the items the way the deal stands and lose money or cancel the order and take the defect/negative feedback. Maybe reach out to the buyer first and explain the situation how there is an error in shipping cost charged. Can anything be worked out and see what they say.

[360carguy]

I appreciate the reply.  I did have free shipping before but for these large items it’s tough because it can vary so much depending on buyer location.  That’s why I listed actual dimensions for buyer paid shipping..

for this situation in particular is it standard for shipping to be combined automatically by eBay?  I dont Even know how they came up with the $113 shipping that was paid by the buyer for the 7 items when 1 item would be $43ish

[inhawaii]

If you don't have combined shipping set up ($X for the first filter, $X for each additional filter) you can see what it's going to cost to ship all the filters together and refund the buyer accordingly.

You would do a refund and the reason would be "shipping discount".

[bonanza125]

"For this situation in particular is it standard for shipping to be combined automatically by eBay?  I dont Even know how they came up with the $113 shipping that was paid by the buyer for the 7 items when 1 item would be $43ish"

Remember 1 item is $43 but that doesn't mean that 7 items will cost $301 in shipping cost if they were shipped together. It would be cheaper then. What you need to do is package them all up and weigh them together and find out the cost of the shipping. Actually $113 could make sense if shipped together. However you need to find out that when you try to purchase a label. 

[360carguy]

Unfortunately it is actually more expensive to combine them. Shipping from western Washington to North Carolina.  14 pounds each 28x15x15.  $43 for 1,  28 pounds at 28x30x15 comes out between $90-110.   

[bonanza125]

Ok then that's oversized. This is a unique situation cause the buyer wants 7. Your only options are 1) to come to an agreement with the buyer where they have to pay more in shipping cost or else they need to agree to cancel. Saying the system undercharged you to where the buyer wanted to cancel then. 2) Ship the filters at the rate which was charged to the buyer which would mean you lose money.  

[mirror-in-the-attic]

I don’t know if this is true because it did not happen to me but I saw a reseller with a YT channel discussing this issue and so I changed  my only multi quantity listing to a bundle instead.

The YT pretty much said, when buyers purchase multiple items in a combined shipping listing, EBAY will change the weights but not the size of the box.  So, obviously, your might run into a situation where mu,title widgets won’t all fit into the same box for which you did the original listing.

if this is true, that’s a huge issue because the calculations for shipping go by the over all weight plus box dimensions.  A bigger box can dramatically increase price.

So, I’m choosing to hold off on doing any of those listings.

[pjcdn2005]

   I think that if you are using calculated shipping, they will combine the weights if someone purchases more than one item from the same listing even if you do not have calculated shipping rules set up. As someone else mentioned, the calculator does not change the packaging size as they have no way of knowing what size it would be.

If they had purchased items from different listings and do not have shipping rules set up, the calculator will not combine shipping costs.

If you are setting up another similar listings that would cost much more to ship more than one item, you might want to set up calculated shipping rules just for that one listing.  It looks like you could specify that there would be no discount for combined shipping. I am just guessing here but I think that in that case it would  charge the full shipping cost for each item.  Or you could set up a handling charge for each additional item.  There are probably other ways too than sellers handle it but you have to figure out which way works best for you.

You are not supposed to ask your buyer to pay extra shipping as your shipping it supposed to be set up for the correct shipping cost.  But some buyers do agree to pay more.  You could also cancel the order for out of stock/damaged.   In most cases I think that a seller just covers the extra charge but for that high of an amount, I might just cancel the order and take the defect.