Question on Combined Postage

[macomponents]

I'm just trying to understand the correct way to list an item on Ebay and I'm turning to the community for help. I'm a business seller and I organise my own shipping.

So I have ten pieces of an item which I am selling in quantities of one. The shipping cost for second class post is £1.55. The item is small and light so I am happy to put £1.55 in the "Buyer Pays"  box and £0.00 in the "Each additional cost" box to let the customer buy any quantity, for a total shipping cost of £1.55

I set the "Rate Table" and "Combined Postage Rule" to "none".

After an issue with a cutomer being charged multiple shipping charges on a single item, I have been told today by Ebay, that to prevent a customer being charged an additional £1.55 for each item purchased, I have to enable a "combined postage rule" and I cannot just use the "Buyer Pays" and "Each additional cost" boxes.  I thought the "combined postage rule" was for use across multiple different listings.

Any advice or confirmation either way would be appreciated

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Why not just add a multibuy discount?

Far easier than messing about with postage rules etc.

[cobwebcottage]

It should work the way you are doing it. I have a few policies with a small charge for additional items which work.

Maybe it needs an amount in the 2nd box. Could you try 10p for each additional item and then we could do a test run if you let us know which listing it is.

Failing all of the above, if it doesn't suit you, it's the weekly chat tomorrow at 2pm so you could ask the community team.

[the-nutwood-collection]

I have a postage Business Policy which is £2.00 for the first item, £0.00 for each additional item.  Rate Table and Combined Postage are both 'None'.  Same as yours, and it works OK - charges £2.00 per invoice, irrespective of the number of items.

Have you physically keyed '£0.00' in the Additional Item box or just left it as a null field or default value?  I always key a value, even if it's there as a default, because sometimes there's a coding error and the default value isn't passed to the database.

[macomponents]

Thanks for the reply. I do use multibuy discounts on some items, sometimes together with the free postage for additional purchases of that item, however I've never tried to group free postage for additional purchases across similar listings. I thought that's what the combined postage rules were for. 

[macomponents]

Thanks for that. I may take you up on the offer. Somebody else has mentioned the possible need to physically type the £0.00. It was just the insistance from the agent today, (after the results of an IT ticket) that the only way to ensure free additonal shipping for items on a specific listing was to enable a "rule", made no sense to me, when the ability to do that is clearly at item level. 

[macomponents]

Thanks for the reply. I probably leave it as a default value of £0.00 which may be where it went wrong. 

I may delete the one rule that is set up on the account. I can't remember setting it up so it must be many years ago. I'll get back to basics at item level, making sure the £0.00 is overtyped, and create a new rule that I might then be able to apply to a range of similar items.

[str11p]

This one of yours works, maybe you can compare against the one with the issue,

[macomponents]

Thanks for checking this one for me. I've made a slight tweak to that listing. Would you be able to try once more time please to see if it's still working okay? Thanks Arthur

[str11p]

Still fine at £1.55. Including adding 2 of a different size and 1 of quantity 100, still £1.55 for 5 items. Do you have a live listing which still has the original issue?

[macomponents]

Thanks that's great, so the listing is doing what I hoped it would. The tweak I made was to remove the "combined postage rule" which I noticed was included in the listing. It was enabled in a drop down box just under the Royal Mail postage descriptions. 

I can't even remember setting up this postage rule so it must have been some years ago

I'm tending to think that the issue at the weekend was just a glitch and not a wider issue for me, however it has led me to wonder if I could be doing something better by actually making use of the postage rules, so that's something I'll be looking into. 

Thanks again for your help

[the-nutwood-collection]

By all means try out the postage rules, but monitor the effect closely.

The problem I found when I used the rules as that eBay doesn't make it obvious that there is a rule that could be of advantage to the buyer - the buyer must click on the 'i' symbol to see it, and I doubt that many buyers do that.

To deter small orders, I set up a rule that reduced the cost of the postage as the value of the order increased, up to a point where the order would be freepost.  On the listing, it just showed the base postage - which would seem unreasonably high to anyone that was considering placing a large order for such a low weight item.  It killed sales, so I removed it and took another approach.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Which is exactly why I suggested a multibuy discount in the first place!

 🙂

The problem with the rules is exactly that, you never know if you will get a discount until you actually add them to the basket.  And as most people don't even use that, it's straight to buy it now!

[the-nutwood-collection]

I do use multi-buy but, in this instance, multi-buy doesn't work for what I wanted to achieve.  I don't want orders for less than 5m, it's just not worth putting the stuff in an envelope.

Multi-buy would be great if we could set our own levels, say 5, 10, 15, 20, but not 2, 3, 4.  I find the fixed levels are a huge deterrent for large sales - someone buying 50m or 100m doesn't want to pay the 4m price.   

[bizzy-lizzy99]

|I have Combined Shipping enabled and it still doesn't work.