posted on October 28, 2007 09:33:09 AM new
The shipping price that you can see on the search page is flawed (no REALLY). I always give my buyers the choice..priority, parcel, UPS ground. The buyer is able to choose the cheapest way. BUT...ebay will only display the FIRST option. Therefor, someone looking at the search page only sees which one is first. If priority is on the top, the bidders may think that shipping is too high...and not bother to look at the auction and see the other options.
Another thing is insurance. IF I have UPS as the first option, insurance is included.
If I have parcel post on the top, the buyer is required to pay the insurance.
But if the buyer chooses the second option, UPS, the required insurance is still attached to shipping. I always have to refund the insurance if the buyer chooses UPS. If UPS is on top and the buyer chooses parcel, the required insurance is not added to the invoice. I suppose my only recourse is to only have one shipping option. It's all a matter of WHICH option I have first.
It just bothers me now, that the shipping price is connected with the selling price, and it isn't reliable. A buyer has to go to the auction page to know what shipping will be, and I'm worried that he/she won't even look.
posted on October 28, 2007 09:05:40 PM new
Ebay has become so anti-seller success it isn't even funny.
They are driving their sellers away in droves and yet they are so stupid that they can't figure out why. It's clear that they never read these boards, or they choose to ignore them.
posted on October 29, 2007 10:59:25 AM new
I try to put the cheapest...but I can never be sure when a package weighs 5-7 pounds. Depending on where it's going, it's all a toss-up..sometimes Parcel..sometimes UPS. I just wish ebay would quit trying to interfere in every little aspect of our transactions. Pretty soon, they will be telling us how to pack..or maybe they already do..
posted on October 29, 2007 12:06:18 PM new
Cheryl,
The problem with putting the cheapest first is that, if you require insurance (as we do), you will either be cheating yourself or cheating the customer.
EBay, among its many other sins, invoices insurance at the rate of the first shipping option. UPS insurance rates are considerably lower than USPS. If USPS is listed first, and someone selects UPS for a $95 item, they will get pissed off because they're being charged insurance even though UPS provides the first $100 free. If we list UPS first, the buyer will "get insurance" for a USPS shipment for free. It's a bad carpenter who blames his tools, but we found that the only solution to this crap software was to only list one option and make the others available on request.
We've been complaining about this for a long time, long before eBay's latest adventure in "Finding." It is typical of the lackluster talent they have working for them that this bug continues to this day, but they are fixing things that aren't broken. EBay has been intellectually bankrupt for some time.
posted on October 29, 2007 02:05:32 PM new
This new Search feature and how the results are displayed is simply another step towards the complete Nanny site. The new Search may help a very few dullards and newbies, but not majority of Sellers or Buyers. The reasons stated in the prior posts are just some of many,many examples of the new confusion. Ebay is making it harder to Sell items and find items,and if you don't want your items to show up at the very bottom of a long list of search results, which probably contain a lot of results which have nothing to do with your item, you are forced to go along to some measure. I suppose, like some other posts I have seen on the Ebay boards, I am going to have to write a disclaimer in my ad, so as I don't get screwed with almost certain eventuality that my shipping fee isn't going to actually cover the shipping cost in some circumstances. This "new" feature is really only a help to those who choose not to read the ad body, where shipping is noted, or are ignorant to the costs of shipping. Ebay keeps shooting itself in the foot IMHO. The model for the future is for us to all have our own sites, with search engines such as Google are better able to find items on the web or on Ebay,than the convoluted results which Ebay's own Search engine spits out for a simple item searches. I could go on with specific examples of search results, shipping issues, handling issues, and everything else. I mean, thousands have complained via the boards, and Ebay is content to ram it down our throats again. These idiots are going to realize when the technology gets so simple an idiot can use it, that Sellers and Buyers both are going to leave Ebay in droves. It's already happening.
posted on October 29, 2007 03:10:12 PM new
I agree, but what you way holds true only for fixed price sales; for auctions, there really isn't a viable alternative to eBay.
