How to quote a multiple purchase of eIS items to Japan?

[a_c_green]

A seller I'm mentoring has a situation with which I have zero familiarity.

He sells individual records - vinyl LPs - as BuyItNow with Free Shipping domestically and eBay International Shipping to other countries. He has had some multiple purchases domestically, for which he offers 20% off on 5 or more records, and 30% off for 10 or more, with that discount sent as a partial refund after the package has shipped. (That is not quoted in the listings, but offered one-on-one in messaging whenever someone asks.) His international sales have all been single listings so far...

Today he got an inquiry from someone in Japan who wants to buy 10 records, and wants a Shipping quote for those. I tried setting my location to Japan and viewing one typical record listing, and it showed me a little over $20 for eIS shipping to send one record there. 

That's as far as I got. Is the Japanese buyer able to put 10 records in his cart to buy all at once? If he does, is eBay really going to stick him with over $200 in shipping/Customs charges? Considering that eBay collects those charges and does not pass them on to the seller, how does the seller provide a discount for multiple items bought as one purchase with eBay International Shipping? Thanks in advance...

[glorybells]

The only way to do that would be for the seller to end those 10 listings, and create a custom listing for that buyer where all 10 are contained in the one listing.  It’s impossible to combine individual separate listings for EIS shipping.

[wastingtime101]

The buyer should put all the items in their cart and they will see whether eIS is combining shipping or not. eIS combines sometimes but not all the time.

If eIS is not combining, the seller can create a custom listing. They should not put "lot" in the title or eIS will be blocked. They can keep it simple and just say 10 records.

As for the discount sent as a partial refund after the purchase, that's problematic with eIS. Buyer will be assessed fees based on the original amount.

If your mentee wants to offer the discount, they'd need a store subscription to apply an order discount. Without that, their best option is to just create a custom listing for the buyer that reflects the discount baked in.

[wastingtime101]

---

@glorybells wrote:

 It’s impossible to combine individual separate listings for EIS shipping.

---

A seller can't do it manually with an invoice.

eBay shopping cart can do it automatically if the items qualify. Currently combined ship with eIS is not available for every item. It's category restricted, plus other factors (I don't have a full list).

The OP's mentee does free domestic shipping so that part is irrelevant. If they charged separate ship then they'd need automatic combined ship rules for domestic ship to combine and, as mentioned, international ship combining is up to eBay.

I've sold items where eIS combined international ship on multiples of the same variation, but then wouldn't combine international ship costs for different variations (colors) from the same listing. I've sold items where eIS combined international ship across different listings. I don't know the full criteria, but I do know eBay has said they are constantly evaluating and expanding eIS combined ship.

[a_c_green]

Thanks, all. My mentee (is that a word? 😁) does have a store subscription. It looks like the best strategy might be to assemble the selected records into one listing, and then upload that listing for him to purchase. He will be able to see his final costs at that point, both the discounted total for the records plus whatever eIS adds on for the international costs.

Next step in any case would be to get back to the buyer for a specific list of which records he wants. His feedback shows him to be a long-time record buyer with excellent feedback from other record sellers, so no worries there.

[monica-sells]

Please make sure your 'mentee' (love that word) remembers to remove the individual listings prior to posting the grouping. (I have forgotten to remove listings when doing this) Do not use the word lot in the new listing title.

[a_c_green]

---

@monica-sells wrote:

Please make sure your 'mentee' (love that word) remembers to remove the individual listings prior to posting the grouping.

---

Ayup.

Unfortunately I've just become aware of a new complication: at least one of the records that the guy in Japan is interested in is an auction. My mentee is researching sold listings for each title he's listing, and while most are simply BuyItNow fixed-price listings based on history, a few titles have sold nicely at auction, and in that case he will start his listing as an auction instead of a BuyItNow. So of course, this guy's initial inquiry has come in on a new auction listing.

If I'm understanding our topic here, I think he should tell his interested party that any auction win will need to be handled individually (he's not going to end any auction early), but he can group fixed-price records together on request, applying any discount (20% off 5 or more; 30% off 10 or more) via the price of the special listing to be created, and the shipping set by eBay will be whatever it will be.

[a_c_green]

---

@monica-sells wrote:

Please make sure your 'mentee' (love that word) remembers to remove the individual listings prior to posting the grouping. (I have forgotten to remove listings when doing this) Do not use the word lot in the new listing title.

---

Okay, a bit of an update here: The interested party has sent his list of 9 BuyItNow records he wants for his group purchase, plus the auction item that he is watching to see if it ends with no bids, in which case we'll add that to his group purchase.

My mentee is okay with temporarily taking the specified BuyItNow records off-sale for a few days, pending the outcome of the auction record, as he has hundreds of other listings remaining to keep busy with. Is it sufficient for him to simply revise the Quantity of each selected record to zero from 1, and then (if the Japanese buyer backs out later) just change each quantity back to 1 later on to restore their visibility? I will verify with him that he has the option for "Listings stay active when you're out of stock" switched On.

[a_c_green]

---

@a_c_green wrote:

---

@monica-sells wrote:

Please make sure your 'mentee' (love that word) remembers to remove the individual listings prior to posting the grouping. (I have forgotten to remove listings when doing this) Do not use the word lot in the new listing title.

---

Okay, a bit of an update here: The interested party has sent his list of 9 BuyItNow records he wants for his group purchase, plus the auction item that he is watching to see if it ends with no bids, in which case we'll add that to his group purchase.

---

Okay, a further update from my mentee, and a question here...

His Japanese buyer has sent his final listing of records to buy. My mentee ended the individual listings (11 in all) by setting the Quantity to zero, after first setting the option to keep Out of Stock listings for future re-use. He now has a single listing going up with a vague description, a fake BuyItNow price of $1000 (with Make Offer for his buyer to submit an offer of the agreed-upon price), the correct shipping details of 8 lbs. 8 oz. and a 15"x15"x7" box.

Here's the question: the buyer will be billed by eBay for their eBay International Shipping cost. By setting my own location to Japan and viewing the listing, I can see the eIS Shipping bill (not cheap), and it is being set, in part, by the deterrent pricing of $1000. I found in my own testing that if I revised the BIN price down to $100 or up to $2000, the eIS charge fell or rose significantly.

If he lists at $1000 but accepts $100 from his buyer, will eIS bill the Shipping cost based on $1000 or $100?

[wastingtime101]

---

@a_c_green wrote:

---

If he lists at $1000 but accepts $100 from his buyer, will eIS bill the Shipping cost based on $1000 or $100?

---

That's a good question to which I don't know the answer.

$1k is kind of an important number with eIS for various reasons (including at $1k they open, inspect, and photograph the item before forwarding).

Let me ask this - will anybody buy it at $200-250? If the answer is no, tell your mentee to set that price with best offer instead.

[12345jamesstamps]

I get this all the time with International Buyers who make multiple purchases.

I sell items at .99 to 2.00 usually.

My combined shipping is $1.30 International no matter how many a buyer buys because I want Repeat Buyers.

I refunded around $31.00+ to a Canada buyer a few days ago for combined shipping...LOL

And I used 4 standard envelopes and not one for shipping so no tracking...and plus I would not package everything together...that's crazy.

Some International Buyers cannot put everything in a cart and request a total shipping charge.

That .40 eBay fee per item sold is a big money winner for someone...instead of a just .40 cent fee of 10 items.

And, the refund from a seller will be immediately in 5 seconds taken out of 'available funds' or in 3 days from the seller banking.

[a_c_green]

---

@wastingtime101 wrote:

---

@a_c_green wrote:

---

If he lists at $1000 but accepts $100 from his buyer, will eIS bill the Shipping cost based on $1000 or $100?

---

That's a good question to which I don't know the answer.

$1k is kind of an important number with eIS for various reasons (including at $1k they open, inspect, and photograph the item before forwarding).

---

Interesting... One thing we were able to determine was that $2,500 seems to be the upper limit for eIS. My mentee had originally set up the go-away deterrent price at $9,999.99, but then discovered that the listing had no eIS price at all and was limited to U.S. only.

Backing the price down to $1000 got the international shipping option to appear as it should, but the Shipping for eIS was something like $100, which seemed oddly high even if Customs was involved (or maybe not). That was when some trial-and-error turned up the fact that the eIS shipping was affected by the listing price. We're wondering whether it will stay around $100 even when the actual lower offer is accepted. We all know that Shipping is not part of the price negotiations, after all.

I think I'm going to suggest that he lower the asking price to $200 or so with Make Offer enabled.

[12345jamesstamps]

Just my thoughts...shipping seems to be the highlight  'I got to make sure I get my 'all' shipping charge as a seller'.

So I don't ever want to 'under' my shipping charge...not me of course.

Here's a thought : and it has happened last week to me.

I gave a nice shipping charge and buyer returned to buy so so much more a week later..i.e. repeat buyer.

This is how I get repeat buyers.

Do I want items to just sit for months or a year and not sell?

Is this a buyer who might buy the same items?

And would I ship everything together for shipping...considering everything can be broken?

Have I shipped items out over $100.+ in separate packages...yes.

Were my buyers happy...yes.

This I need to make sure I get my shipping charge is the most important thing...again. just my thoughts...is not the most important thing to me...repeat buyers are...sorry...just my ranting about shipping charges.

[stephenmorgan]

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

---

[a_c_green]

---

@12345jamesstamps wrote:

Just my thoughts...shipping seems to be the highlight  'I got to make sure I get my 'all' shipping charge as a seller'.

---

I get what you're saying, but in this case the seller has Free Shipping domestically and uses eBay International Shipping for the international orders. In other words, eIS determines the international shipping charge that the buyer will have to pay; the seller doesn't set that up.

What does affect that shipping charge is the cost of the item, and what I saw in testing was that the deterrent price, the fake high number put in to discourage others until the desired buyer comes back to do a Make Offer of the agreed price, was causing an excessively-high Shipping charge that the buyer would be stuck with. We lowered the price to a few hundred bucks, not much higher than what the sale price would be, and that showed a reasonable Shipping cost.

So I just got an update: as of a couple hours ago, the buyer had made the offer, the seller accepted it, buyer paid, and the package is all ready to go out in the morning. Thanks everyone!