Why can't sellers combine shipping on orders especially from Canada?

[barbie1959pink]

I do not understand why we can not combine shipping on international orders anymore.  I had one buyer order quite a few of my minis.  I went  to send her an invoice and I get a blue note stating that combined shipping is not offered for international , she got a message stating that the seller does not combine shipping, which is not correct. She paid.  So I printed a label and the shipping charge sent to me was $9.40 that said paid by buyer.  So then I find out that she was charged the full amount which totaled over $50.00.    I had another buyer get the same message.  So she cancelled all 15 items.  And a third buyer bought an item, I was told and paid $6.40 for shipping which I got.  So I sent the item.  It did not fit his doll so rather than send the item back, I told him just keep it as it was less than the postage and to return it would be more than the item. So I refunded total back to him.  Then he sends me a message and ask why I only sent him the $6.40 for shipping when he was charged  more than $17.00 for the shipping.  So I took a photo and showed him that I paid and I refunded the total item and postage in full.  Can anyone explain this to me?????

[steady2304]

From the few listings I checked of yours it seems you are using eBay International shipping for your international orders. The amount you pay for postage is just the amount that eBay charges you to ship the item to the consolidation hub in either Illinois or California. Your buyer pays not only that amount but also the charge for the international leg of the delivery.

Go to one of your listings and in the shipping details change the ship to location to Canada, Australia etc. and you will see what eBay is actually charging your buyer for that shipping method. 

Also to combine items using EIS you need to set up combined shipping rules or each item will incur a separate shipping charge.

[dbfolks166mt]

     Over the years I have had a number of things impact combined shipping and the puzzle keeps getting more complex. 

- First was combined shipping for BIN/IPR items which caused issues because the buyer paid for each item as soon as they purchased it and therefore each item had a separate shipping cost/charge. 

- Then there were issues with buyers placing items in a shopping cart and attempting to checkout and get combined shipping for all the items in one shipment. Sometimes it worked but often it did not. 

- Then EIS which initially did not support combined shipping although eBay was supposed to be working on and testing a fix for that. How that works in conjunction with all the other problems and issues is foggy at best. 

     https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/Combined-shipping-is-now-available-with-eBay-Internation... 

- Then most recently the autopay feature on auctions and offers which requires a buyer to provide payment information prior to making an offer or placing a bid which is analogous to BIN/IPR. 

     There are some workarounds which I have used. The most useful one is for a buyer who wishes to purchase several items like your buyer who canceled the 15 items and that is to simply create a custom bundle under one listing with all of the items and title it in such a way that it would not show up in a common search then provide the particular buyer with a link to the listing and/or the item number.