International VS USA combined shipping issues

[quicksilverdiecast]

For many years ebay has been clueless at how to ship items internationally when comes to combined shipping, we all know this well.

For many years since the infamous cart system was crammed into the mix along with many conflicting shipping policies make what was once an easy system to Combine USA orders a total nightmare at doing so now...(no it is not my store settings or anything on my side, it is ebay and they know and acknowledge it.

So for about the last month or so I have been getting international orders (about 30% of my sales go international) and those with multiple items in one order they have already been combined(by someone?) and the shipping assessed comes very close to what it would be if I had to go back thru it and do it myself...so far so good there and holding my breath! On a scale of 1-100 I would give that aspect a grade of 98%...(nothing on ebay works 100% except for them collecting fees). With that being said I would like to make a suggestion that ebay hires the crew that straightened out the international shipping to fix the USA side of being able to combine orders as that side of ebay are clueless. Today since last fall I have been documenting each transaction with issues(various) with the cart and combine shipping that is over 440 transactions that had to be gone over refigured and straightened out and refunded the buyer the ridiculous overcharge on shipping costs, sometimes as much as 60.00(I have a lot of repeat customers who trust me to make things right) on a scale of 1-100 on the USA cart system get a grade of 20% and that is being generous.

So explain to me how one aspect can work near perfect and the other side of the coin(USA side) be such a disaster.

[pjcdn2005]

 Obviously eBay has set up some combined shipping parameters for shipping with the EIS.  I believe that it is still a work in progress as it doesn't seem to work all the time.  

If you set up groups of combined shipping rules for your own listings it would work better than what you are doing now.  It's extremely unlikely that ebay is going to go back to allow sellers to send an invoice the way that they used to so waiting for them to do something else may be a very long wait.

[richard1rst]

This is where the darkness and the candle come into play.

eBay international dictates that multiple orders for the same international customer have to be shipped separately. There is no option to send a combined invoice nor a combined package.

So, after a small amount of research of the options available I don’t use eBay international. Problem solved.

I ship direct by USPS. My buyers, both domestic and international, are able to put multiple items in their cart, request a combined invoice on which I can and do combine and discount the shipping charges, then ship everything in one box with one tracking number. And, as an added bonus, it is cheaper than using eBay international.