How does combined postage work with Simple Delivery

[hummingbird-curios]

Some bright spark in CS told me that to combine postage, all you have to do is use one simple delivery label and the buyer will be credited for unused labels after 30 days or so.

I really cannot believe the stupidity of some of the answers CS give.

If you go to Tesco and buy something on a 2 for the price of one deal, would you wait 30 days for a credit!!!!!

Buyers want to buy items, pay for them and have them delivered - end of.

What utter rubbish have eBay come up with, it's so bad it's laughable. I see a mass exodus of sellers on the cards here and eventually it will affect other sellers as most will buy elsewhere in future.

Come on eBay, short term gain - long term pain

[lucy_farmer]

Did you ask CS if that would means *all* the sales in that one parcel could be 'marked as delivered'?

[edwardian-dreams]

It IS pathetic at best to ask sellers and buyers to wait 30 days for some refund instead of them getting their sh it together in the first  flipping place excuse the French 

what IS their problem combining postage , it can’t be rocket science 

[hummingbird-curios]

Some time back, buyer buys 6 items individually and pays 6 x postage. All 6 items packed in one small parcel and I refunded 5 x postage.

So buyer pays £20.70 postage and I immediately refund £17.25. Simple solution , happy customer.

I enquired as to what would happen in the same situation with simple delivery as buyer pays 6 x postage and gets 6 x postage labels, one for each item.

They say to use one label on one package and eBay refund 5 x postage after 30 days.

Furthermore, tracking only shows on one item so one gets paid 2 days after delivery and 5 items get paid after 14 days.

I wouldn't let eBay run a candy floss stall at a funfair, they wouldn't be able to cope.

[xyz307xyz]

It doesn't at the moment. Hopefully the message will eventually get through and then hopefully they do something about it.

[sas_team]

Can you not enter the same tracking number into the other 5 items and it should show all of them delivered at the same time?

My worry with the simple delivery is that they only cover you for the value of the item and no more, so if that package goes missing with 6 items in 1, would you lose out on the value of the other 5 items for posting them altogether?

[xyz307xyz]

The last post on this thread was about 8 weeks ago. Here's ebay's current policy:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sellercentre/postage/simple-delivery

Can I use one label to post multiple items to a buyer?
If your buyer has purchased more than one item from you in a single transaction, you’ll receive one prepaid label for posting your items to them. You can only use the label provided once.

If your buyer has purchased items from you in different transactions, you’ll receive separate postage labels to post each of the items.

How does combined postage work with Simple Delivery?
If your buyer is purchasing multiple items from you in a single transaction, we’ll automatically calculate combined postage and show your buyer the amount they have saved at checkout. If you’re offering free delivery on these items, we’ll automatically calculate combined postage and only charge you for one label. Items will need to be posted in a single parcel, and the label can only be used once.

[polinka.grhw]

I’m reading this three months later and sadly nothing has been done about it yet. 😞 

[marcusrowland0]

Still a complete shambles.

[xeynltd]

I have just been told to buy 1 label and send all items together using that label. Keep the rest of the items I posted in the system. Request the buyer to confirm via a message that all were received or they should give me a feedback on all. After this I should open a support request to get the others marked as posted. 

Does this make sense and most importantly work??

[marcusrowland0]

In the scenario in message 10, when you buy a postal label you should get the tracking number and paste that into the tracking number field for the other items you've included in the package. They should then show as posted and eventually as delivered - it's worked for me with one package so far, and I did it many times that way before I was told I had to use Simple Delivery.

If the buyer waits until all items have ended and got into the system, then pays, they should automatically get a price with combined postage if all of the items are Simple Delivery. It doesn't happen automatically if any of the items are not Simple Delivery, which is when you may have to mess around as above.

The main snag with the way that the weight is calculated for Simple Delivery is that it's by the maximum weight band for each item (often a kilo per item), so if three items that would each be sent as 1kg maximum packages are put together eBay assumes it's s 3Kg package, and charges over a fiver for postage, even if the actual combined weight is under 1kg.

[sas_team]

I ended up contacting CS myself too and was told this isn't possible with simple delivery. I had to either send out all the items individually to be covered for loss or damage, or alternatively cancel the buyers orders and ask them to reorder everything after adding the items to the basket first, so they can purchase as a bundle.

But like @marcusrowland0 has stated some of my packages are a large letter 100g max. So multiple purchase could fit into a large letter 1kg, but eBay will say its 3/4kg and now a small or even medium parcel price so they still charge more.

What is worse is I offer free postage on most of my items, meaning when someone orders individually what would have cost me £3.45 maximum before for even the largest of combinations, I've been charged £7-8 for instead with just 3 items. It's ridiculous.

I was told to go onto my laptop, go to 'My eBay', click on 'All Orders', then in the top right corner click 'Comments' to raise concerns there. Apparently these messages go straight to the tech team. I don't know how true this is but CS said the more comments that come through there of rhe same nature will mean they have to look into it further.

[xyz307xyz]

"If your buyer has purchased items from you in different transactions, you’ll receive separate postage labels to post each of the items."

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sellercentre/postage/simple-delivery

[marcusrowland0]

As I understand it, if a buyer pays for a postal label that isn't used it's eventually refunded - it allegedly takes a month or so, but that's better than nothing. The time that this came up I told the buyer up front that this would happen, and that they might have to chase it up with eBay eventually, they told me to go ahead and do it. DEFINITELY don't do this without the buyer knowing up front what you're doing.

An alternative, again with the buyer's agreement, is to cancel all of the sales, create a new single lot with buy it now and the appropriate postage, then re-list it at an agreed time and send the buyer a link to the new listing - when I did this I took one of the cancelled sales then edited the description to add "Containing the item described below plus items previously sold, in the condition described in the original listings"

Then gave the item number and name for each of the original lots, e.g.. 

Item xxxxxxxxx - Vivitar 28mm camera lens blah blah

Item yyyyyyyyy - Used graphics calculator blah blah

and so forth

The down side of this is that it gets a LOT more complicated if the buyer wants to return one of the original items but not the other(s). But that has always been a problem with combined postage.