Issues completing sales with offers and counter offers...

[second-city-bazaar]

I have been experiencing ongoing issues with completing transactions from offers received and counter offers sent/ received.  This has been a continuing issue since last year when eBay changed its check out process in order to keep listings live until the buyer pays.  Firstly, I am not even receiving sale notifications after an accepting offer or counter offer and thereafter I have the buyer contacting me saying that they are unable to make payment until I add the cost of freight to the payment invoice.  Herein lies the problem as I am unable to send an invoice as I have not even received a sales notification.

The complicate the situation I sell furniture so unable to add a fixed freight cost to my initial listings as this will all depend on where the customer is based and the cost of an independent courier.  I contacted eBay on several occasions and the best they could say was to let the offer expire (this could take days) and then get the customer to make you another offer and then to add the agreed courier cost.   Personally, I thought that eBay was supposed to be a selling platform and not "make offer, let offer the expire and then wait and see what happens next" platform.  

I can see what is happening here - eBay is only allowing transactions to be completed if there is already a fixed postage cost which is fine if you are selling postable items but for larger items such as furniture this can not be done unless you go through there "let offer expire routine".  Even when I have a normal sale then still I can only complete the sale if I put on the invoice that the item is being collected by the seller - if I put down freight and do not enter a delivery cost (as what I used to do prior to the changes) then the buyer gets a notice stating that they can not check out until I have included freight costs.   Now I understand that eBay profiteers from freight/ shipping/ delivery costs being included in the overall final fee but to render sales near on impossible for making freight a requirement is taking things to another level.   The way things are now it is pointless me sending out offers or accepting counter offers - which is ridiculous.

I've read lots of other complaints like this so I'm know I'm not the only one having issues but from what I can tell from speaking to advisors there is not going to be a common sense solution to this problem.  Would love to hear that I am wrong?