posted on October 31, 2001 02:20:38 AM new
Not certain about this checkout thing?
Don't know what all the fuss is about?
Read my story, and if you feel the way my buyer… (or I as a seller) feel please sign the petition on eBay.
First of all, I never requested checkout, or wanted it in my listings. It showed up when my buyer used "buy it now" in my eBay Store.
The buyer emailed me (before the purchase) to ask if I would reduce my shipping charge if he were to buy 45 different magazines from my eBay store. Being a reasonable seller, I told him I would cover the entire shipping as long as we shipped the magazines within the USA.
He was happy… agreed, and then came the checkout nightmare…
The buyer emailed me with the following…
"I had to do 45 individual Buy It Nows but E-bay will not let me check out. WHAT NOW?"
I then received 45 "Request for Total" emails. Each of them I had to reply with the details on shipping. The checkout system doesn't allow $0.00 for insurance, so I inserted .01 cent optional (I paid for the insurance as part of free shipping). You have the option to type in checkout instructions and return policy. I left these blank because the description covered the details, but I still had to reply to 45 emails and waste over an hour. But hey… this is what eBay calls "streamlined & efficient".
The Nightmare continues…
The buyer elected to use Billpoint, which is fine because it's mandatory if you have an eBay Store. BUT… those 45 "Request for Total" emails I replied to are now 45 BILLPOINT INVOICES!!! They don't consolidate the 45 sales into 1 invoice or 1 fee. Hence .35 fee per invoice on 45 sales of $3.99 plus deposit fee.
As a Buyer, that is 45 Billpoint transactions, and a ton of unnecessary emails. Even if he didn't use Billpoint he still would have to respond to those emails.
As a Seller… you can look forward to lots of additional work, and for eBay & Billpoint to do the happy dance with your money. Especially if you have multiple auction purchases from the same buyer!
The total process consisted of 143 emails received. This includes communication between seller/buyer, ebay, and billpoint.
I guess my old system of 1 email to the buyer for the 45 sales and 1 Billpoint invoice was… not efficient, not streamlined, not reliable, and not profitable enough for eBay.
No matter if you're a buyer or a seller this is what you have to look forward to if you don't keep the heat on eBay.
Rob
[ edited by cyberbuys on Oct 31, 2001 04:21 PM ]
posted on October 31, 2001 04:44:26 AM new
WOW... That's totally INSANE!
It's almost like they want to totally do away with the stores portion of their site... because they're pushing a lot of sellers like you to want to close their stores...
posted on October 31, 2001 04:57:03 AM new
"The buyer emailed me (before the purchase) to ask if I would reduce my shipping charge if he were to buy 45 different magazines from my eBay store. "
In the future it sounds like it would be better simply to email him one total, he pays, you ship and delete the items from your store.
Bypass checkout and ebay entirely.
Oh I forgot, that wouldn't be right!
posted on October 31, 2001 05:00:42 AM new
The 'nightmare' has started here also.....
...even though we put a note to ignore the ebay checkout feature that CLEARLY states WE will invoice you after the auction expires, we are now receiving "REQUEST FOR a TOTAL" emails through ebay about every auction that closes!
(just about all of our auctions INCLUDE shipping)
PayPal invoices all of our auctions, as do we if the buyer does not respond within 24 hours. (about 80% or more of ours are paid for via PP within hours)
I have emailed ebay about the checkout issue, and will continue to email them daily until it disappears or is made optional.
Every time I get a "REQUEST", I'm returning the favor to ebay.
posted on October 31, 2001 05:47:04 AM new
I treat the "Request for total.." emails the same way I treat ALL my junk email...I just delete them and send the buyer my normal EOA email.
posted on October 31, 2001 05:59:56 AM new
Does delete the email work? No further garbage from ebay? I have some auctions ready to end in a couple of days and dread what's to come. What a nightmare to impose on us at the beginning of the busiest selling time.
posted on October 31, 2001 06:00:07 AM new
Please don't take offence but I think your buyers a PUD for sitting there and doing 45 BIN's
The PC way to have handled that transaction would have been to end the auctions early and relist them as one large lot at the agreed upon price.
The realistic way would have been to just end the damn things and sell them to the guy.
Yes It takes more work but no one ever said e-commerce was fun.
cya
Jim
posted on October 31, 2001 06:14:38 AM new
Being a bead & charm seller this is exactly what I'm afraid of. Buyers wanting winning multiple items.
Angela
www.pandorastrinkets.com
-0- it's a beady place -0-
posted on October 31, 2001 06:20:54 AM new
all these stores are not designed with paper and magazines and other low priced items in mind,programming and maintenance is costly.
you can always have your own website and let your shopper check out many and pay one shipping fee,yahoo shop is designed like that.
ebay store is just a quick and dirty copy and modify of their auction software.
you just have to work with their system if you want to use it,amzn zshop is like that also,it does not combine shipping
posted on October 31, 2001 04:20:53 PM new
I did go to the checkout sellers help page prior to the sale...
Does Checkout allow me to combine multiple items into one purchase?
Checkout allows multi-item purchase for Dutch (multi-item) listings only.
The second paragraph reads...
Separately from Checkout, eBay Payments allows you to combine the charges for multiple items for the same buyer into a single Invoice. To do this, go to the item listing for any of the items that your buyer has won. When you fill out the eBay Payments Invoice, simply adjust the final charges for the Invoice to include the amounts from each of the auctions the buyer has won. You should tell the buyer in your message on the Invoice that you have combined these charges to make sure that the buyer knows to make only one payment for all of the items. The eBay Payments fee will be charged once for the total amount of the order, not for each item that is included in the order.
Since it reads "Separately from Checkout" I figured that I couldn't do that because the buyer sent those "Request for Total" emails though Checkout to begin with. Furthermore, I figured the magazines wouldn't have been taken out of my eBay Store unless I closed them directly. Finally, I emailed Billpoint and they didn't have anything encouraging to say as to this matter.
I emailed ebay to see if they would prefer I close auctions/eBaystore items (fee avoidance) in order to consolidate future multiple sales with Billpoint.
posted on October 31, 2001 09:51:08 PM new
There is a similar problem with Half.com and multiple purchases. There is no way to consolidate the shipping and give a break on the shipping.
One company I buy a lot of DVDs from charges me $2.50 shipping for each DVD and then each DVD is shipped separately !
If the DVDs weren't so cheap to begin with ($5.99-$6.99) I wouldn't buy under these circumstances.
posted on October 31, 2001 11:21:15 PM new
Checkout is not a shopping cart. There are so many variables to calculating a shipping price that is fair unless you sell the same weight items like CDs or DVDs. Being able to consolidate multiple auction/store wins into one invoice would be ideal, but I don't see eBay ever doing this.
