@stainlessenginecovers
I didn't miss anything you said. I think perhaps you're mis-interpretting some of what I said and/or assuming I am a newbie. (25+ years, over 20,000 feedback, and over 50,000 eBay items sold. And I set up every single ad.) That's not to say I know everything. (Clearly no one does.) But I am very familiar with most concepts and processes. Especially the basic ones...
1) I understand what the eBay Flat-Rate shipping option is. I explained why we don't want to use it in the first three sentences of that paragraph... Then I merely pointed out our items do not fit in USPS Flat Rate boxes. I added that to the end of my eBay Flat-Rate explanation to point out that wouldn't be a way for us to predict what cost could be (and eliminate some of the headache of re-working ALL our ads), which I thought you might be tempted to argue could make us more comfortable with using eBay's Flat-Rate option. That's why I put it in parens (). It was kind of an aside, added to head off a potential answer on your part that we should look into USPS Flat-Rate boxes as an option...... Anyway, I can see I should have inserted 'USPS' and 'eBay' in front of every 'Flat-Rate', since they share the same name, and I think I have done so in this paragraph...
2) I understand you may feel it works better for you to dictate one option. And we do that on some items where we've determined it makes sense. But I disagree that it should be the de-facto policy for all. There are some situations/policies/practices where there is one answer that is clearly the best (or even the only) answer, but this is not one of them... I believe it is OK for buyers to have shipping choices. They do want and need it, in fact. Even if it was just the PO Box issue. (Which it isn't...) Cost, timeliness, and personal experience can all play into their carrier decision. I feel there is nothing wrong with giving buyers a shipping choice. I can see how some sellers might feel differently and, again, that is their choice. But to try to tell every seller there's one way it should be is not accurate or reasonable. It is a choice. The buyer has multiple possible reasons for choosing one listing over another, besides item price. Shipping is one of them.
3) There is a fair amount of variance in shipping amounts for us for each state, on a given item. (I see the actual shipping costs virtually every day...) Especially considering we ship to AK, HI, PR, VI, etc. There is a great deal of variance for some of those locations. (And, yes, I know I can set up special rules for locations. But I shouldn't have to. Calculated shipping should work as intended. All the variables used for the shipping calculations are known by eBay, in advance...) My 'grief' is being caused entirely because eBay isn't accurately quoting the range of possible shipping costs when I set the service up in the ad, so I am falsely led to believe the minimum shipping charge is higher than what it could possibly be. (*I originally reported this as a calculation error on their part at the time of the order, but I was basing that on the range they were quoting during ad set-up/edit, assuming it was accurate. I have since discovered it is not, and that's the problem.*) Why is eBay even presenting that information during ad set-up if it is not accurate? It would be better to display nothing at all than to display inaccurate information. Clearly they don't really want it to be wrong and it is in their best interest to fix that problem. If they do, my grief goes away. The answer is not to adjust my ad policies to potentially be less favorable or fair for buyers, merely because eBay has a bug... That's just putting a band-aid on it. (Not to mention taking a bunch of time I shouldn't have to spend. That would be grief.)
