New price proposal logic overrides combined shipping
Summary: A forum is discussing that eBay has changed the make-offer feature, which means customers now have to pay directly. Several participants, including nerdylittlethings and perfect-sally, report that this is causing problems with combined shipping, since customers have to pay shipping costs for each item individually. This leads to confusion for customers and increased fees for sellers. inspektor-clouseau mentions that eBay is working on a solution, but no timeline is known. Another participant, lotusgaarden, recommends proactively informing customers and refunding any overpaid shipping costs to maintain trust while they wait for eBay’s solution.
Ebay has now changed with price offers so that customers who accept an offer have to pay immediately. Fine and good.
But there seems to be an unpleasant side effect:
If a customer makes price offers for several of my items, they see these in the shopping cart. However, my settings for combined shipping are not applied.
Instead, shipping is charged for each item. If the customer places the order, Ebay creates a separate order for each item with a price offer.
That is very confusing for customers and I constantly have to answer questions about it.
Is there a way to get around this that I just haven't seen yet? Thanks
lotusgaarden
·1 month ago · EditedI inform my customers about this untenable situation on Ebay’s part.
By message to the buyer:
The original Ebay notice about this "new feature" .
The customer clearly sees that the seller is not at fault, and is not enriching themselves from shipping costs either. By refunding the excess shipping costs for combined shipping.
I naturally use the resulting personal contact to build customer loyalty within the Ebay system. That goes over well!
A improvement on Ebay’s part and a solution to the problem would clearly be desirable.
Regards, Andreas
perfect-sally
·1 month agoAnd not only that, if eBay creates multiple orders from it, you also pay the fixed fee for each item / sale.
According to eBay, they seem to be working on it, but that has been going on for quite a long time and no solution is known.
For now, there is nothing left to do except refund the shipping costs paid too much and then file a complaint with eBay about the fees paid unnecessarily.
nerdylittlethings
OP1 month agoYeah, right, that of course comes on top as another annoyance, that you end up paying the base fee multiple times like that
Still, thanks for the reply. At least now I know it’s not just me. So far, I’ve only been getting standard responses from eBay, which aren’t helpful at all. Very frustrating.
Customers keep messaging me about it, confused. A lot of them don’t end up ordering at all. So the current state of things is really not a workable situation for eBay either, in my opinion
inspektor-clouseau
·1 month agoHello,
We've already discussed this topic several times.
According to eBay, a solution is supposed to come in the second half of the year. We'll see.
This only concerns PV that were originally initiated by the seller (even if there is still some back and forth afterwards with counterproposals).
PV that come from the buyer continue as usual, i.e. combined shipping is still possible.
perfect-sally
·1 month agoYeah, weird! To mess that up, you only need a few stages of programming on eBay’s part, but to fix anything takes months. Sad!