I’m doing my annual “clean up the workflow and database” process, and one of the things I’ve been focused on this year is rationalizing my US shipping process.
From pure laziness, I confess over the last couple of years (since USPS First Class Parcel disappeared) I’ve been hard-coding the shipping details in each listing, or at least in the prototype listings I duplicate for a given kind of item. This seemed to be going OK, but in the spirit of maintainability I feel like I should go back and clean all this mess up: A few smart Shipping Policies, an update of the handling fees I set years ago on some listings, and so on.
Along the way, I discovered that I was not passing along the eBay discount on USPS Ground Advantage to the buyer, and that explains why my magazine sales have dropped since the rate hikes.
Anyway, I am cleaning that up now.
As I understand it, what I should do is go to my eBay Seller settings page and select either “eBay discount settings” or some fixed rate slightly lower than my seller discount settings. One location, it should apply to… well to what?
I notice that in the listings I have now, there is a checkbox labeled “Apply promotional shipping discount". Some of those are checked, others are not. I’d like to check them all.
But when I just now looked at the GarageSale AppleScript dictionary, I can’t seem to find that setting anywhere. Therefore:
Should I bother? Or if I go ahead and set up the correct Shipping Policy categories and apply them on eBay, will this get overwritten? I will almost certainly try to be better about Policies soon, but not today.
How do I script this toggle, if I should change it?
One quick question, which is difficult for me to check.
If I go to eBay and tell them to apply my [full] eBay shipping discount, as described above, does the GarageSale checkbox Apply promotional shipping discount even do anything? I ask because it feels like even listings where it is not checked have a reduced shipping charge after a while.
The problem testing it all is that it may take 24 hours to modify the eBay setting completely.
Does this checkbox actually have anything to do with applying shipping discounts from eBay? Is it only about applying user-defined discounts for multiple items in one shipment?
Well to be honest I’ve started using Shipping Policies, and restarted all my listings (because of a stupid cut-and-paste mistake, they all had to have the sizes adjusted) and… now I have absolutely no idea what that checkbox does.
Is it something grandfathered in from the old eBay API, maybe?
Honestly I had no idea that checkbox existed until your support question. I use Business Polices and I’ve enabled commercial rate shipping on eBay’s preferences. No idea what that checkbox does or used to do!
The Business Polices are super easy to setup on the eBay website and integrates into GarageSale seamlessly. Agreeing with @vjl here because I also don’t know where that screenshot you provided is (mine doesn’t look like that).
My suggestion would be not to overdue the Business Polices. Unless you have a specific need to be that specialized (For example, I did have to create a unique one for some oversized items that I knew had to either be pickup or go UPS due to the dimensions). I’m in the US and have my entire eBay seller profile bringing in limited policies to cover every situation (free shipping, eBay standard shipping, media/ground/priority, ground/priority/ups, priority only and my unique “ups or local pickup”) for reference.
Altering them on the eBay website will update your live listings straight away. You can also “update” the settings with the GS program to ensure you have your most up to date policies to create new listings. I have never had to do any listing revisions, or reposts, in GS when I have made a change to any policy (unless I would like to link a different policy).
Lastly, I was initially hesitant to utilize the “Apply promotional shipping discount" in the eBay (website) seller settings, because I figured, for sure, it would be a recipe for getting shortchanged on the cost of postage. Much to my delight, it’s been 100% accurate in terms of the calculated charge matching the cost to print the postage. I have to hand it to eBay for (finally) getting the calculator consistently accurate.
One thing to be aware of that I went back and forth with eBay and they have decided it’s a feature, not a bug, is that if you have a biz policy that includes multiple types of shipping [eg: allow your customer to get a bundle of books via slower Media Mail or via faster Priority Mail], make sure to include box dimensions in GS.
For Media Mail it doesn’t matter. For PM, it does. If you fail to provide dimensions, eBay applies 1 inch by 1 inch by 1 inch as the dimension. This has a fun effect of making a 3 pound or higher box of books/a book, cheaper for the customer to pick Priority Mail, as it will be something like $5.50 [depending on zone]. The heavier the box of books is, the bigger chance that even if they are in zone 6, PM will be cheaper, since the dimension counts more than the weight for Priority Mail.
In reality of course, it costs me a lot more to ship a 9 pound box of books Priority Mail to Washington state than it would for Media Mail. I learned this the hard way as customers continued to pick the cheaper shipping option.
So if you have a biz policy that offers multiple shipping choices for the buyer, make sure you provide dimensions in GarageSale when using that biz policy!
I do not use dimensions for 99.9% of listings on eBay as they are uploaded via GS.
I just happen to have a 9 pound lot of books listed with Media Mail, which shows a rate of $10.47.
I added Priority Mail to this listed temporary. The Priority rate is be computed based on its weight of 9 pounds and not the 1” x 1” x 1” dimensions eBay enters when you go to try to print a shipping label for an item that did not have dimensions uploaded as part of the listing. Priority Mail is correctly computed at $15.40 for zone 1 and $51.85 for zone 8 for retail pricing as that is what my eBay preferences are set to. I do not ship to zone 9.
Those 1” x 1” x 1” dimensions should be rejected for computing any rates as they violate USPS’s minimum package size rules.
Personally I would never offer Priority Mail as a option on books as I would have increase the price of the books to cover the increased cost of FVF on Priority Mail versus Media Mail or Ground Advantage. Almost every buyer will choose the Media Mail option, but you have to protect yourself for the “one” that needs the item like his or her life depends on it and options for Priority Mail. LOL, when I worked for a wholesaler some guy spent $70 to have a pen and pencil desktop set shipped overnight on a Saturday (about $148 in today’s money).
So far this year all but one item that was listed with Media Mail was shipped for a cheaper price via Ground Advantage Cubic rates. Any large differences in the cost can be refunded to the customer since entering any dimensions for book package sizes to take advantage of Cubic rates is not an option since I use free boxes from stores and sizes will vary.
The only time I include dimensions for USPS is if the package is over a cubic foot or it exceeds one of the length surcharges OR if I am offering UPS Ground.
I don’t use any eBay business practices. Everything is taken care of by a few listing templates based upon various shipping scenarios, which are duplicated to create a new listing.
I’ve charged USPS retail rates for 26 years. Any large difference can be refunded to the customer.
Passing the carrier discount to the customer means you must increase the price of the item to cover FVF on the shipping. When rates go up then you must adjust your prices again.
The transition from First Class Package to Ground Advantage was a bulk AppleScript.
I do charge the discounted price on UPS packages since the discounted price can be as much as 70% less than retail. UPS accounts for less than 0.01% of my listings. In these cases I compute the commercial rate on PirateShip using packaging dimensions, weight a zip code in farthest away zone I ship to. I then increase the price of the item by 20% of this shipping amount to cover FVF. I typically ban shipping to Alaska and Hawaii in addition to U.S. Protectorates on such listings as the 20% will based lower rates to the Lower 48 States.
Combined shipping discounts will have to be done in head since I sell all types of items.
I’ve entered explicit dimensions on all items for years. About half (2000 at the moment, heading for 5000 ideally) of my listings are non-Media Rate, and demand size and weight.
The simplest and easiest Shipping Policy approach I’ve found is one that is Madia by weight and one that is Non-media by weight, and now that I’ve activated those I’m squashing the occasional leftover that sneaks through from older listings on other sites (apparently eBay Motors is not integrated, for some reason?)
I use User Properties in Garagesale for validation for several things, and for a long time I’ve used a User Property to indicate whether or not an item can be shipped USPS Media Rate or not. That validates before launching a listing.
The checkbox does seem to disappear when one starts to use Business Policies. Not sure what it’s for, or if it does anything, any more. It might be (?) from the ancient days before Business Policies were actually revised? I notice I’ve got 8 years of discourse membership here, and that might be from before this site existed
As for passing along the shipping discounts from eBay, for now I’ve simply selected the seller preference to send them along in full, and once I get enough data on sales increase (anecdotally it’s been huge, since the retail price for shipping a 2-pound non-media package across the US was nearly $20, and is discounted closer to $10), I can tune it back up. eBay apparently lets us pick a point between none and all of the discount going to the customer.
I suppose I am just curious what the checkbox used to do, now. In the spirit of code archaeology.
If (when) USPS increases their rates I don’t have to adjust anything (so you lost me there).
A lot of this seems inefficient in terms of effort to me anyway. If I can keep my shipping rate competitive on the marketplace than that’s the goal, rather than charging retail rates and hoping the buyer just assumes I’ll refund the few dollars, is that the strategy? Just trying to follow
Yeah, with biz polices the recent holiday increase in USPS rates automatically kicked in. When those holiday rates get removed in mid January, the new rates, until July 20216, kick in [they will be higher than the rates were a week or so ago, but lower than the holiday rates are - though like the July 2025 update, some rates can go down - my Media Mail rate went down a huge amount in July 2025]. But with biz policies that all gets taken care of automatically.
