Combined shipping with Simple Delivery - confusion!

[discodalek]

My buyer bought 10 separate items from me, which I'd listed using the Simple Delivery option, and I want to combine them into one package so he only pays once for postage. He already paid, so I can't raise an invoice for total sales. The advice I've seen here is to combine everything into one package, buy new postage based on that combined package size/weight, then refund the difference. But it's not clear if I can use this method for Simple Delivery.

With the traditional eBay delivery option I set the packing+shipping fee. I get paid that in the final sale and it's up to me to purchase labels with funds from the sale etc. But looking at my dashboard, the orders with Simple Delivery are showing postage as £0.00 - with the usual shipping system it showed the postage amount (e.g. £5 sale, £2 shipping, total to seller = £7). It seems as if the shipping cost is solely handled between eBay and the buyer and as the seller I just receive the shipping label.

There's no way for me to combine postage through eBay's interface. So the only way I can see to do it is to buy a new postal label separately from Royal Mail/Evri for the combined order. But I don't receive money for postage on orders with simple delivery, so I'll be paying for the postage myself. If I also refund my buyer, that refund is coming out of my sale funds, not the postal fees. Is that correct?

How do I combine the orders, and refund the simple delivery postage, so that both myself and my buyer aren't out of pocket? p.s. I'm a private seller, not a business seller.

[lucy_farmer]

'But I am a private seller'

'If I sold  over £1000 per year (I don’t) then I would still need to pay tax regardless of whether I’m a private or business seller, so that is irrelevant. '

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If you are a genuine private seller selling your own personal possessions, you would not have to pay any tax.

The £1000.00 limit you are refering to is the trading allowance (for sellers who are trading in a very small way)

It's not a 'selling your own clobber' allowance.....😊

[lyndylooops]

I was told today by ebay that if you use another carrier and add the tracking number to the order you can then get a refund or refund buyer (depending on what buyer has paid for postage) as this will void the label.  However they said lots of things including a hack for oversized parcels that don't fit SD sizes - but turned out it didn't work when we tried it together - twice!...so who knows?!

[xyz307xyz]

This should work for oversized parcels https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Seller-Central/how-do-you-list-anything-bigger-than-61cm/m-p/7882486...

[xyz307xyz]

See this for "If you don't use the Simple Delivery label provided"

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/posting-items/setting-postage-options/simple-delivery?id=5575#se...

[lyndylooops]

Hi thanks so much. This is what the agent walked through with me changing
the price to £800, getting the other options to appear choosing parcel
force and saving. All looked good until we went back in to correct price
then other carriers disappeared and it reverted to SD. Tried several more
times and eventually it seemed to stick. Think this works randomly so
trick is probably to persevere until it works and then keep checking it
hasn't reset back to SD. I despair of ever seeing any intelligent thinking
from the decision makers at ebay!

[xyz307xyz]

Did you complete the boxes where you manually type in the dimensions and weight?

[lyndylooops]

Yes thanks for checking I did all that each time but only worked doing it
over and over for two separate items. Seems a fix - sometimes. They're
fiddling with it all again and refreshing SD on all listings apparently
when they make the new Buyerr Protection changes over next few days so may
be worth checking all your oversize listings to make sure they haven't
been changed again!.

[dianesstuff]

I've lost yet another sale because of not being able to combine shipping using simple delivery.

I'm a private seller trying to sell some old collections & buyers tend to want more than one item.

I've also tried doing combined listings for buyers but then the buyers change their minds, it's so frustrating and time consuming having to relist things over and over again. 

Come on Ebay sort this out. 

[3942rick2005]

You have to follow my workaround exactly, it only fails if you try to do something different however slight. Several people fail with it but it transpires that they tried to do something different.

A bit like my stepfather couldn't programme a universal remote, he spent days with it to no avail. I followed the instructions and it was done in 2 minutes.

[jackpants]

It’s very unlikely that you would have to pay tax on the items you sell as they have already been taxed when you bought them. Even if you sold £thousands a year.

[mrtest59]

Ebay told me the labels are generated once and if not used within a month they refund.  So on each item generate label, note down the tracking code on the first item, under orders on each other item add the first tracking number.  Now you have n deliveries to same buyer all with same tracking and at some point in the future ebay refund buyer for unused labels.  im to new to know if this works

[xyz307xyz]

ebay's policy is you use each label for the item(s) in that transaction.

And if you've selected or overridden ebay's choice of size/weight band, and that's not enough to cover the packaged item(s) [from one transaction or multiple transactions] then you could be charged the extra plus a fee. I've not heard of anyone having been charged - but I don't read all the posts on this forum - and am doing so less and less, as time goes on.

[bingopy]

Seems to be the case as all RM labels will state on them as to when the package needs to be posted by and if it's not used they would then cancel the label out and refund it... but because it goes through ebay the week you get with RM becomes a month with ebay meaning that if a buyer has purchased 10 items from you with lets say £2.50 postage on every one then they have to wait 30 days to refunded the other £22.50 that in anyone's book is rubbish. Ebay at the very least should give us as sellers the ability to void a postage label just as you can on RM's website thus speeding up the refund process for the buyer or even better, just allowing combined item shipping like they used to.

Brian.