Combined postage

[michellebartley]

I wanted two seperate items from one seller and asked them about combined postage and said can you do a manual invoice and got a reply saying "buy each item seperately and we will give you a refund for the postage". I thought this was very inconvenient actually. I have also been told by another seller the same information on a previous occasion. I would much prefer a manual imvoice.

[*crikey*mate*]

I get where you are coming from and their reasoning perplexes me - can't see how that procedure isn't frustrating and inconvenientn for them too - I wonder why?

Must be a reason.

Maybe they don't know how to combine?

The ionconvenience for the buyer here is that additional money is out of circuit for them whilst going through the process - tied up and can't be spent elsewhere.

I haven't figured out why, but sometimes my momey will come straight from my bank account and others if i don't select credit, I send an echeque which I refuse to do, so will then select the credit option (same card and same bank account - it is a debit crad/account - one option is processed as credit, the other as cheque) when i pay via the "credit" option, any refunds don't stop at PayPal, they immediatekly get redirected to my "card" taking another 2 ior 3 business days - so one refund recently, I had $260 floating around in cyberspace unable to be used

this works like this even for unclaimed payments.

recently made a payment of $105 - came up as unclaimed. I ended up cancelling it - but even though it left my account immediately, it took 3 more days to come back - in the meantime, seller said "fixed my account" I paid again - they hadn't - so now i had $210 just floating around somewhere unable to be used.

[michellebartley]

And also if you pay for two items seperately that leaves you short of money. And if seller does a manual invoice then you are obligated then to complete the transaction so its in their favour to do a manual invoice because then its a binding contract.
Also in my first comment I meant that seller will reimburse you the difference for postage cost.Afterwards.

[digital*ghost · Accepted solution]

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@michellebartley wrote:
And if seller does a manual invoice then you are obligated then to complete the transaction so its in their favour to do a manual invoice because then its a binding contract.

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The contract is formed as soon as you confirm the purchase, so with or without a manual invoice, you're obligated to complete the transaction once you've purchased an item.

That aside, a seller can't combine items if they have immediate payment required because you can't buy them without paying for them, which is most commonly the reason a seller will instruct a buyer to buy / pay for items individually - not being able to provide combined postage discounts is one of the primary reasons many sellers don't use immediate payment required, but for other sellers it eliminates a lot of problems if their buyers rarely purchase more than one item (if their items are suitable for automatic postage discounts and they were set up, adding the items to a cart should mean the discounts are automatically calculated before checking out, but at the moment the cart sometimes won't calculate these discounts).

If the seller's items do not require immediate payment, there's nothing stopping you from committing to purchase each item, then requesting an invoice from the seller in order to pay.

[extra-keen]

I find that most strange, as a seller I love customers who wait until I've fixed their invoice up so it is correct. Much easier than giving refunds later.

So I can't asnwer why this seller likes it that way.

[michellebartley]

I contacted the seller and they said it was ok for them to do a manual invoice for me. So I was happy about that.

[davewil1964]

If I had as many issues with buying online as some seem to have, I'd just buy from B&Ms

[lane-ends]

Just a tip if you are interested in multiple free post items, the seller cant discount on postage via the ebay invoice system,. But you could suggest they add in a best offer option on one of the items prior to purchase and you could accomodate a negotiated discount on that item. Better than going the post sale refund route.