Ebay increasing prices
TL;DR: if you buy on ebay, they are taking more of your money and making everything a problem for us with combined shipping. Both buyers and sellers are screwed over. It can be fixed but be patient and keep track of your money.
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If you buy anything on ebay and suddenly you are being charged crazy amounts of shipping, there is a reason...
and I'm probably late to the game, but I figured out why.
Here's what happened:
When did I sign up for Autopay?
Normally, I only make sales or purchases of 1 item at a time. No reason to notice. Some weeks ago, I was able to combine shipping easily! Only a month or two ago!
Today, someone was charged for every item separately. Like they had checked out for each item, individually, even though every listing says I combine items.
Funny, that happened on Sou for me, it autopaid. I don't even remember setting my account to autopay, but I must have, right? I already have some iffy memory issues, maybe I did?
LOL NO EBAY JUST DID THAT.*
Respect people's paycheques.
This person was charged $27 for items that cost $12 to combine. It's only $15 but it's $15 tied up in Ebay's payment processors for an unknown period of time. And now we both have to keep track of whether those refunds even happened at all. Not everyone just *has* $15 they didn't budget for on Ebay, but even if they do, c'mon y'all I have been too broque to not respect people's money.
okay, so how do you fix it?
First let's say how to NOT fix it.
You can't just adjust the first item for the 'real weight' and send them a note saying you combined all items. If you do, Ebay says there's no proof you SHIPPED all items. If the buyer files a claim against the "unshipped" items and say they never got anything, you're screwed. Been there, done it. Yep even with photos.
A way to also fix it but not fix it and piss everyone off:
You CAN mail each item individually. They did pay for it, after all. It taxes the postage system with all that extra packaging weight, which means thousands of gallons of gas, wear and tear on their trucks, even more items getting lost in their sorting systems... but whatever.
Oh, did I mention that Ebay makes a portion of all of those separate shipping labels? yep! :)
Initial fix for individual orders:
But you want to combine shipping. 1) why teh fuck not, they should be able to. 2) why should i use 5 envelopes for 5 items all going to the same place, 5 labels, 5 receipts to show the order, etc. All the burden on the seller. 3) i didn't decide this shit, ebay just changed it FOR me.
Uhhhghhgh fiiinnnne.
You have to go to BULK LABELS. "Bulk labels" does not mean 'going down the list of orders from different people and printing them all in succession' like it USED to! That's where you combine items now. lol wait- it gets good.
So I combined this person's items. Let's say 5 items for easy math. - I adjusted shipping. It was $12. - THEN I had to go back and figure out, per item, what she was actually charged for shipping. - Subtract $12 from that number. Let's say it was $27, so [$27 - $12 = $15]. - Divide $15 by 5 items to get the overage amount, $3. - Go back and refund $3 on EACH item so the sales logs are accurate. - Put in an explanation for refund on each item. I just copy + pasted the same math. - Hope that those actually go through and ebay doesn't just decide against them for some reason. - Mail the buyer to let them know what's up because that's like, 7 emails/messages for one order. - Look like the guy who was taking all their money and blaming ebay for my problems.
*Turns out, Ebay does not have an "autopay" setting! That is why I couldn't find one to shut off!
What they've done is changed all SELLER accounts to autopay. You don't get to control whether you autopay.
So when an auction finishes, it charges the buyer automatically. Combined shipping, as above, becomes our problem. Not just something easy to do like it was.
All sellers have to go through our settings and manually change it to allow invoicing, which means we can combine shipping again (at the cost of someone not paying immediately, or potentially, ever.)
Which means when YOU bid on something, you are automatically charged and have to fight to combine shipping. And hope that the seller will take the time to do all the steps I just outlined for your one order.
Otherwise, especially big sellers like Sou, will just look at how many paid-for sales there are and package those in order received.
But fuck all of us. Ebay makes piles of money off this. It's like the old worm bank scam in the 90s- you take $.20 from this account, $1 from that account, times millions of transactions per year, and make yourself a TIDY Quarter 4.
Fix this shit for good as a seller:
Go to Account Settings -> Selling: Shipping Preferences -> Allow Invoice Requests
