What good tweak to the selling side of eBay would be...

[daro2096]

is to have the option in the postage of having the ability to set the postage cost to 3rd, 4th item bought, etc. for combined purchases instead of having to refund excess postage after they pay?

[roger_roger_over_and_nowt]

It's already available :- https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/posting-items/postage-rates/offering-combined-postage?id=4169

[daro2096]

No, its not. Not really. You only have the option to set post for 1st item and then another amount for every item after that. You can't set post for the third, the fourth and so on.

What I would like to see is:

1 x amount

2 x amount

3x amount

and so on.

As it is currently you got to set it at 9 pound per quanity which if someone buys 9 of something means they pay 81 pounds which means I got to part refund the buyer something like 63 pounds. Or you end up not receiving enough money to cover the postage. The current set up is flawed. This is vital if you are sending something that is of value.

[hudsonsclothes]

Yes it is, you can create a postage rule on your account settings and set it as free for extra meaning every item added by a customer after the first one incurs no extra charge

[selective_distribution]

Completely agree with you! It`s an absolute pain to set up combined postage. Sellers don`t understand it......and buyers don`t understand it. Like you I have found the best way to deal with the problem is to offer to refund the difference (usually postage), but this implies an element of trust from the buyer, and results in lost sales due to the buyer (understandably) not trusting the seller to refund. Ebay need to find a simpler way to combine postage.

[m25jet]

If eBay really wanted to fix this problem for good and make it as easy as possible for sellers to apply combined postage to a buyer's order then one way that they could do so would be to set the site up in such a way that sellers were given an option in their Selling Preferences saying "Provide combined postage?" with a "Yes" or "No" box to tick.  If the seller chose to select "Yes" and a buyer purchased more than one item then once the buyer had put all of the items into his/her basket and gone through Checkout the combined postage discount would automatically be applied.  The technology to implement such an option already exists; unfortunately, the only drawback is that it is also reliant on having a competent team of site programmers to implement the required changes, in which case it'll probably never happen - at least not on eBay...

In the unlikely event that eBay were to have a go at setting up such a system then in order to minimise any potential teething troubles they ought to release a notification for both buyers and sellers that displays across the screen after they've logged in, drawing their attention to the new feature and providing clear instructions as to how it's meant to work, with the article pinned in the eBay Community Forums so that anybody wishing to review the announcement would be able to do so at a later date.

[hudsonsclothes]

As explained earlier, the option to add combined postage is already available. Please check the link posted earlier in the thread https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/posting-items/postage-rates/offering-combined-postage?id=4169 there is a section about creating a postage rule which you then apply to your listings. I've tried to put step by step on here with pics hope it helps, but please read the above link as it has more info than I could possibly give.

Firstly go to the below hyperlink "postage preferences" on the above link i've just posted.

Then when the below screen appears click on edit next to flat postage rule:

You then set it up as below if you want free for every item after the first one a customer buys, if you want reduced postage per item then just select the percentage you want to reduce by (50% etc)

Then in your listings once you've saved the rule you've created in the postage section of a listing you click the drop down box and select whatever the postage rule you created was called.

Hope this helps and is correct 😅 You need to apply it to all listings past and future you want free combined postage applied to, and when a customer buys a couple of items it will only charge them for the first/most expensive postage cost.

[daro2096]

The problem with that is eBay don't offer Special Delivery with insirance up to £2500 in value. If you are sending something that is worth more than £1000 it won't let you put £18.75 in the postage costs to the buyer. £9.50 is the highest it will let you type in. The only other option I can see is to add the difference to the item price and then explain in the description or to the buyer part of the postage is included in the price but this can put off a lot of buyers.

[daro2096]

Maybes I am just thick and dense but a lot of this is not that clear and easy to use. Sometimes feel like I need a degree in astrophsyics to navigate around eBay's selling side of the website.

[daro2096]

The other problem with that is if you tick the box that says immediate payment for buy it now means then you can't send an invoice to the buyer requesting the total amount including the postage. They already sent the payment. All you can then do is send them a part refund. This is a hassle. Or explain to them in messages that a part refund will be sent after they pay but this requires trust on the part of the buyer that the seller will refund excess postage and a lot of buyers can be put off by this.

[hudsonsclothes]

No it is not just you, creating a postage rule and all that is tedious. I used to have to send refunds after a sale for postage at the beginning. However, once you have a postage rule made that is the hard work done, after that whenever you list something its just a drop-down box at the bottom of a listing in the postage section and then whenever a customer buys multiple items they will just pay for the first lot of postage.

[daro2096]

You know what would be useful? A series of video tutorials on eBay explaing how to do all this. Or maybes there is? If there are videos made by eBay up on this site explaining how to use the site then I haven't found it but then again this whole site is not easy to navigate around(it never has been though).

[m25jet]

@daro2096 wrote:

You know what would be useful? A series of video tutorials on eBay explaining how to do all this. Or maybes there is? If there are videos made by eBay up on this site explaining how to use the site then I haven't found it by then again this whole site is not easy to navigate around(it never has been though).

If eBay's so-called "site improvements" are anything to go by then if eBay were to introduce a series of videos for people to follow for the purposes that you describe they'd more than likely end up causing even more confusion!  🤣  Seriously, think about it for a moment - when was the last time eBay's site engineers made a major change to the site and got everything spot-on?

[the-nutwood-collection]

How could anyone sell something £1000+ on eBay and sleep at night?  I certainly couldn't.  I'd be a bag of nerves until the six month chargeback period was finished!

[the-nutwood-collection]

The problem with applying the postage at the basket level is that there could be multiple sellers' items in the basket.  The total sale value for each seller would have to be calculated, then each seller's postage table would have to referenced and the correct postage calculated.  Then the postage must be summed for the buyer's checkout total, and separated for the each seller's notification.  Or maybe the buyer would want to see the postage separately for each sale - that means changing the checkout display and invoice print templates.    

That's a lot of server traffic.  Not terribly difficult to code for UK sales if the tech designer and developers are competent - but we sellers have our own opinions on that.  However, but what if there's a mix of GSP and UK buyers - reporting the VAT and duty could get very tricky.