In Australia @biggysmalls, it is compulsory to offer PayPal as a means of payment. The only other option is direct ban transfer but few people use that nowadays and it is not feasible for items sold to overseas buyers. I guess the only option for me is to refund postage minus whatever the PayPal fees are.
David
Well I hope you can find another payment merchant service soon. I’m closing my PayPig account if they don’t change it so I won’t be using them to pay for anything either. I don’t care about PayPig anymore and I think eBay will be better off without them. We’ve been playing under 2 rule books for too long. Also, have you ever contacted eBay about your shipping problem through FaceBook? I have heard that is a better way to get solutions from them but I have never tried.
From a previous post. Not much hope.
Had a chat to Ebay today and the answers were pretty non-committal BUT this is the gist of it.
wa.cards:15:54 PM
Back to Q2. Is Ebay EVER going to sort out the Combined postage issue for buyers. It has been going on for over one year now.
Anthony:15:57 PM
To answer the second question, we haven’t heard update from our technical team regarding that for now since there will be a lot changes or updates in the site this coming months but rest assured that you will be notified when it’s totally fixed
Had a chat to Ebay today and the answers were pretty non-committal BUT this is the gist of it.
Anthony: 15:52 PM
Okay. Base on the information we have here, that update is firstly applied to eBay US. Our management is considering these action because of the reports and complaints from our members that PayPal will be charging too much fees for every transaction even if a transaction is cancelled or buyers were refunded by the seller due to the system failed to combine postage automatically. That’s why eBay is considering to have other payment methods and would no longer require to have PayPal as the primary mode of payment for the convenience of our members.
wa.cards:15:54 PM
Back to Q2. Is Ebay EVER going to sort out the Combined postage issue for buyers. It has been going on for over one year now.
Anthony:15:57 PM
To answer the second question, we haven’t heard update from our technical team regarding that for now since there will be a lot changes or updates in the site this coming months but rest assured that you will be notified when it’s totally fixed
I would like to know how many abandoned carts are out there because Ebay is calculating full shipping price for each item. I am so tired of answering the ‘why isn’t combined shipping working’ question. I thought it was me, I kept re-doing the settings, thinking I did something wrong. SO frustrating. How many sales are they losing because people don’t complete the sale because of outrageous and wrong shipping calculations?
A little venting, sorry…
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It is frustrating and right now I actually have the opposite problem. My listings are giving buyers that purchase multiple items from me free shipping for the second item. It wouldn’t be so bad but it’s a 20 pound item and customers are sometimes 2,000 miles away. (Maybe I need to check the combined shipping discount box since we seem to have the opposite problems). Anyway, at least they can make it through checkout though. I have seen listings give “invalid address” messages on checkout and not let customers complete the checkout process even though there is nothing wrong with their address. The worst part is eBay doesn’t seem to have a way to escalate issues out of a tier 1 technical support team. It’s almost like no one is actually driving the ship it’s just on auto-pilot.
You read in my mind Tracy !!! Just happened few minutes ago…
The situation is VERY complicated. My situation: Italian postal services costs depend on the weight. One postcard weights within 20 grams, 2 postcards between 20 and 50, 5 over 50 grams, and each range has a very different shipping price. Just 2 € as lost difference, if multiplied to monthly orders, is a large loss in my counts! So I am stuck: for some reason it’s better if customers are charged several postage and I need to manually put the correct one, on the other hand it’s a pain because many customers might not buy from me because of the multiple postage fee apparently charged…
A solution? Easy, take inspiration from Delcampe. Just forbid people to pay multiple orders without the previous manual update by seller. That is an intelligent solution, but eBay is quite good to avoid intelligent things…
Me Too!!!
I also had MANY combined shipping questions from many buyers… Then… A few years ago, I just decided to offer FREE SHIPPING and RAISE all my $ prices either by the maximum shipping $ amount or by the average shipping $ amount for that item. So my selling price is the combined item price PLUS shipping.
I no longer have to spend ANY time on questions nor complaints about “combined shipping”!!!
I just do not have to spend any time with “shipping cost details”!
And, if someone purchases 2 items, I put them both in the same box…
EVERY time I purchase something on eBay, I look at the TOTAL cost (price + shipping + sales tax) of the item anyway.
Neal
@neal do you use GTC with best offers? How do you handle offers in this case? Do you accept an offer also if the customer asks you an amount lower than shipping fee?
Your solution is interesting but sadly not possible for me because I use best offers for goods which actually don’t have a “market price”. I daily receive many ridiculous offers (and Italians are quite good doing ridiculous offers, I noticed more seriousness from foreign buyers). This way, I need to take shipping fee separated… as said before, I am stuck…
Well… Yes, until recently I offered Best Offer on ALL my listings. NO Auctions, NO GTC. Just 30 days, Best Offer. Now, I no longer use Best Offer on any items <$20, since people were making very low cheap offers. And, Yes, I have just recently been opt-ed-into all GTC.
Nope. I always consider the item price = (item cost PLUS shipping PLUS all fees). If a customer wants to purchase multiple items, I tell them to make a Best Offer on each item.
Well… MOST of my items used to be Used or one-of-a-kind… And I figure, better to sell it than store it in my garage…
Yep. Me too. Just Decline. Or Counter Offer with just $1 or $2 off. They usually get the point.
Like I said, I recently stopped using Best Offer for items <$20.
Neal
Interesting @neal , thank for your explanation!
I am getting more convinced day after day that there on ebay.com it works very different from my ebay site! Working differently I mean, that’s a different way sellers manage transactions. Here you have to put higher prices to receive decent offers. If you accept offers, you cannot consider it as 10% off, you will never sell nothing! You just have to consider at least 30/40% off, this is why I had to increase my prices. And worse again, if you send a counter offers, 9 customers over 10 just don’t reply, not accept, not decline.
During these weeks I am quite involved in thinking how to change my listings, too many stuff buried in thousands of similar items that go sold after years they are online. And the incredible thing is that many customers say me they never saw before my item although it was active from 2016… thinking thinking…
You have my full sympathy, Tracey. Drives me up the wall.
Regards David
0404 499 979
I SO get this. Canada Post is similar and being next door to the USA, where their postal rates are crazy cheap, it is very hard to compete. Buyers don’t understand that we don’t have flat rate media pricing that costs $2 or something, with tracking. We have $12 small packet that offers you nothing but mystery until it arrives at your door between 2 and 8 weeks later. 
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How does free shipping work internationally? Here, my regular item shipping is $6 to the USA but $11 international. Would you include $11 for everyone and hope they are domestic? I am finding that I am already having to charge way more than my competitors, just to cover the Ebay/Paypal fees then the shipping on top. It is hard to put a price on collectibles but when others are charging 99 cents…
Which leads me to a question that has been baffling me for years…
Does anyone here do 99 cent listings? How can that possibly be worth anyone’s time? Am I missing something? I checked the shipping on some too, it’s not inflated. With 99 cents you are losing over half in fees. I have always wondered how people do that.
I only do International Shipping through the eBay “Global Shipping Program”.
With the eBay “Global Shipping Program”, I pay to ship the items to an eBay USA “shipping center” and they in-turn ship it to the Buyer in a foreign country. I do not have any control over the “Shipping and handling” amount that eBay charges the Buyer on each item for this service. I do not charge for ANY Global Shipping nor Import Charges… I have no control over these charges as I am not charging them. eBay charges the extra $ and collects the extra $. I DO NOT receive ANY of the extra $. I NEVER get or see the extra shipping $. I do not even know how much $ they/eBay charge to ship to a foreign country. I simply receive the Purchase Price $, and that is all.
Nope. Not me. Tried it a few times years ago, and ALWAYS ended up selling the item for 99 cents. Stopped doing that very quickly. NO Auctions here.
Neal
Ah, yes, that makes a difference. The Global Shipping Program only applies to the USA. The rest of the world has to try and figure out how to make it work within their local postal systems, which are usually convoluted and expensive. In my dealings with them, Ebay don’t much care that other regions have different rules.
I have many listings at $2,3,4 etc. That’s just the nature of the items I have for sale. If someone has an issue with combined postage then I may ask them to pay the full postage and refund in PayPal. That is about to become more difficult.
I rarely send with tracking and just cop the odd one going astray. But like I said, low cost items. No one would pay $6 for tracking when the item only costs $2
David
For my items, that $6 is without tracking. Add that and it is over $20 
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Ah yes! Italian post is the worst at all with no doubts, but I had so many troubles also with shipping to Canada… it seems we are in the exact situation, difficult to find a solution…
In my idea it merely depends on who you are, if private who uses eBay as pastime or a serious (/professional) seller. If you are a business seller, you rarely can afford 99 cents. Here, in the standard fiscal regime, almost a half of your net income goes in taxes. And this is not a manner of speaking. Now you understand why other users who don’t pay taxes can afford to put rarest postcards at 99 cents as starting bid and then are happy also if it finished much slower than its regular price over the collectables market. This is at least my idea of the situation, at least in my country and for those goods I sell…
I have a excel file to calculate shipping fee and my prices are also higher than other sellers. Why? I think this is also because many of them don’t know how much fees ebay and Paypal keep, they just pay the bill. So they don’t know that if a shipping costs 10€, you at least need to put +3,4% (Paypal fees) + 0,35 cent (fixed PayPal) + 0,1 (ebay fee) and maybe 0,50 cent of packaging in order to go in tie and not loose money.
Eh yes, that ages far from poor Italy… that would be quite practical as method, but I still need to do all by myself because I have no other solutions at all…
Same here 
!! So Canada post are really similar to mine… and want to talk about “economy” shipping without tracking > item does not arrive/customer says it is not arrived > dispute > …
Come on , this is why I started participating in fairs 
!!!
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