Problems with "New! Combined shipping is now available with eBay International Shipping"

[theartofserver]

A week ago, I received this email from eBay:

Initially,  I was really excited about this because I haven't been able to combine items for my international customers since February 2023. I sell computer parts, and my customers often want to combine various things from my store and I've been losing out on sales of "add-on" items. I also sell a lot internationally with customers from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, South Africa, and many European nations. I announced this to my customers via social media, but unfortunately, I had to retract because I cannot get combined shipping to work still for eIS (eBay International Shipping) orders.

I had one customer try several attempts to place the order to see if I could get it combined, but I could not. Speaking with eBay customer service wasn't much help, as no one seems familiar with how this is supposed to work. The rep was trying to be helpful, and spent a lot of time trying to find more information, but was not able to really help me.

Does anyone know more about this eIS combined shipping? How do you get it to work?

[wastingtime101]

Let's start here @theartofserver :

Are you expecting to combine by sending a manual invoice?

Or are you expecting the system to combine automatically based on the combined weight of your items and/or your combined shipping rules?

If it's the former, that's not how the program works. If it's the latter, please post a couple of item numbers and a destination country and we can run some tests to see what shipping rates are shown.

[pjcdn2005]

I did a quick test and put a few items in my cart with my Canadian address.  It is combining shipping when I add  multiple items from the same listing. But it is not combining costs when I add items from different listings.  For example, when I put two of one item in my cart, the shipping cost just went up a few cents.

I know that with global shipping the cart just combined the international shipping portion, it didn't combine any of the domestic shipping costs.  I thought, but could be wrong, that the rep said this would also take the sellers combined shipping costs into affect.  If that's how it is supposed to work, I wonder if it is not combining costs from multiple listings because this seller appears to just have domestic combined shipping set up for items within listing, not for various listings.

I can test more later and do screen shots if someone wants me to but for now I have to go.

[theartofserver]

I don't have any particular expectation on how it should work. I just want to know what the process is to get it to work and I can work with that. But I have not found a way that works. One of my customers cancelled and re-ordered multiple ways and the result was split orders even though they checked out only once with multiple items in cart.

As example, say you add these 2 items to the cart:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/163243700697

http://www.ebay.com/itm/163809901742

If you try to order both of those together, it will end up being 2 different orders via eIS.

[theartofserver]

Yes, that's exactly it. If they add different items to the cart, it gets split into multiple orders after checkout.

However, even before this announcement, since Feb 2023 when I got forced to use eIS, I have always been able combine ship orders with multiples of the same items. The problem has always been with multi-item orders of *different* items.

[wastingtime101]

There are 2 immediate thoughts coming to mind @theartofserver :

1. Even though the notice said you're eligible now, perhaps they haven't pushed out the update yet

2. As time has gone on we've learned through trial and error (and vague references on policy pages) that sellers access to eIS can be based on any number of invisible factors. Sellers may see some listings that are eligible and other, nearly identical listings are not.

With that in mind, I wonder if similar invisible restrictions will be placed on combined shipping with eIS. It may not be a blanket 'anything can be combined' as we're all expecting.

The eIS team hasn't been forthcoming with sellers about limits and restrictions. It's been a painful process, to be honest.

You're the first seller that's come to this board saying they're part of the early opt in so I guess time will tell.

In the meantime, all I can suggest is creating a new listing with all the items your buyer wants, that way it's one item, one purchase, one shipment. Stinks to do that, but if your buyer wants the items and you want the sale, that's the only option I can think of if eIS combined ship isn't applying.

[wastingtime101]

Hey kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay . Can you escalate to the eIS team - OP has been opted in early to combined shipping, but it's not applying to their listings.

[theartofserver]

@wastingtime101 thanks for your thoughts. I agree, and suspect there's stuff going on in the backend that we as sellers don't have visibility into. and I know changes are not always a smooth ride. I do wish eIS team was a bit more communicative, which I think is something they can do. I've tried emailing them, I've spoken with eBay support reps, who seems like they've been kept out of the loop, so from my perspective, it's a black hole.

Combined shipping for eIS is something that is very important to customers outside the US. And I know I've probably lost out on sales since the change in Feb 2023.

Thanks for the suggestion on creating custom listings. I have done that before; it is just a bit of pain on the backend bookkeeping and inventory asset tracking. Doing that occasionally would be fine, but it is not a sustainable pattern. 

[wastingtime101]

You and I are on the same page @theartofserver . Please do keep us posted on how this goes for you (and feel free to @ tag me any time). Unfortunately, with communication from the eIS team lacking, we've been forced to rely mostly on seller experience to figure this stuff out.

[kyle@ebay]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

Hey kyle@ebay elizabeth@ebay . Can you escalate to the eIS team - OP has been opted in early to combined shipping, but it's not applying to their listings.

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Hey @wastingtime101 thanks for the tag.  @theartofserver in looking at the email from your screenshot, it doesn't appear to be addressed to any particular account, which seems odd, so we definitely want to take a closer look.

Can you please send us an email to askcommunity@ebay.com with your account info, and the date the email was sent, so that we can have our shipping team take a closer look?  

[theartofserver]

kyle@ebay message sent to the email address you specified. hope to hear from you. thanks.