topic Re: eBay dictating again! in Selling

eBay dictating again!

designers*n*more — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 01:05:44 GMT

I've had several buyers complaining that the must use I immediate payment when trying to buy items. I don't have this payment method as a setting as I offer local pick up with cash on pick up.

i wrote to eBay asking why buyers are getting immediate payment messages. This was the response.....

we currently implementing a new process in eBay which we call Retail standards. Its goal is to reduce Unpaid item cases by 80%. With this new process, we have a threshold of 650 AUD which applies to single quantity fixed price items:

• If an item is above $650, buyers will be taken to the Commit to Buy screen where they can then continue to checkout and complete their transaction.
• If an item is below $650, buyers will have to pay for items immediately.
• If the buyer is purchasing two items collectively priced above $650, Retail Standard will apply and they will be taken to the Commit to Buy screen where they can continue to checkout to purchase both items.

Surely as the seller it is my choice as to Whether I want immediate payment or not? This forces PayPal or Paymate or the likes and stops the option of Pay on Pick Up.

I guess the only way around this is to accept the immediate payment, refund it and ask the buyer to pay cash!

Re: eBay dictating again!

kopenhagen5 — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 01:46:40 GMT

Well lets hope they make pick up items exempt from this new process.

Re: eBay dictating again!

clarry100 — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 01:59:58 GMT

Immediate payment will stop non payers for sure.
But it costs you an extra 30-cents PayPal transaction fee for each one.
The non payers don't worry us too much. I just open a UID case on day #4 and close it on day #8. Works for us.

Re: eBay dictating again!

designers*n*more — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 02:05:09 GMT

As I pointed out in my response to EBay's response, the option of immediate payment is already an option and should be the seller's choice if they want to use it.

Yes, there are a lot of non payers but that's what the Unpaid Irem Dispute is for.

And when did the increase in non payers start......around the same time eBay removed the option to leave negative feedback for buyers. In fact the number of non payers skyrocketed, because sellers couldn't leave negs, so buyers didn't care whether they paid or not

Re: eBay dictating again!

designers*n*more — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 02:03:29 GMT

Exactly my point Clarry. These options are already in place so why does eBay continue to start dictating!

Re: eBay dictating again!

lane-ends — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 03:29:29 GMT

I think you can override this by going through preferences and choosing allow buyers to make combined purchases, or at leat you could. With pick ups you need to have selected cash on pick up as a payment option.

Unless of course they have overturned these options. But yes immediate payment is the default setting now. If buyer doesn't pay before pick and you haven't selected this then exchanging contact details is gonna get you pinged.

Ebay is such a minefiled now, how is a new casual buyer not going to get kicked off for something or other?

Re: eBay dictating again!

merfar2107 — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 04:40:24 GMT

Hi Lane,

I'm sorry for asking what is probably a silly question, but if you tick offer combined postage in the preferences and someone buys say, 2 items, do ebay wait for you (the seller) to work out the combined postage and adjust the invoice for the buyer, or do they have a 'guess' what it might be and adjust it somehow themselves?

I'm a bit concerned if it's the latter. TIA

Re: eBay dictating again!

character_parties_aus — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 07:32:19 GMT

How is this supposed to work on listings where there are variations and buyers need to ask for a combined invoice? I have several. I really dont care as they will go elsewhere and purchase on my website for flat rate and no need for all the combine BS. eBay are doing themselves out of business with my listings.

Re: eBay dictating again!

merfar2107 — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 07:36:34 GMT

I don't know. that's what's worrying me. Hence my question above.

Re: eBay dictating again!

digital*ghost — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 09:08:02 GMT

Edited to add: Just realised the primary complaint in the OP is because the items have pick-up available, with cash on pick up as a payment option, which makes most of below irrelevant to the actual topic , but leaving it here in case it's food for though for others.

I have a slightly different perspective on this, and actually agree with eBay on one point - that immediate payment is indeed industry standard (for retail, at least, not so much for wholesale), and in the grand scheme of things, sellers would more than likely be able to work with it if the site.... well, worked.

The issue isn't so much eBay forcing immediate payment, it's that they way they tend to do things like this creates more problems than they solve.

I suspect most sellers, no matter what they sell, would be able to find a workable postage solution with any one of eBay's options - flat rate, calculated, or rate tables (which itself has a couple of different ways they can be set up), in conjunction with combined or promotional postage rules, and / or promotions (pricing) manager, there is a full range of options that have the potential to eliminate the need for buyers submitting orders, not paying, and sellers manually issuing invoices.

But, and there's always a big, smelly but where eBay is concerned, the above would only be true is the cart function was intuitive and worked properly, consistently. Which it doesn't.

In spite of that, though, to sellers with stores, or who list regularly, I would suggest thinking about how you would approach postage issues if you decided to sell on another site where there isn't (and hasn't ever been) an option for buyers to confirm a purchase without paying. Even just as a hypothetical thought experiement, try letting go of the sale-by-sale calculation approach and work with revenue / postage costs as single line items and see if that gives you any new ideas / strategies, because honestly, I see this as a shift that is being handled very badly (and to the detriment of all), but it's possible that sooner or later the tech issues and teething problems are ironed out and people will be able to adjust accordingly.

PS - from memory the option you can tick to allow buyers to combine multiple purchases is there so that it happens (or is supposed to happen) automatically at the checkout stage, without the buyer having to request a manual invoice. I know I had mine ticked, and set at 7 days - meaning, purchases over a 7 day period would automatically be combined, with my postage discounts applied. If someone bought another item 8 days after the first item, those would not be automatically combined, however I can still manually issue and invoice to override the setting. At least, that's the way it worked in the past, things may have (and often do) change.

Re: eBay dictating again!

davewil1964 — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 13:14:32 GMT

Postage rules/discounts only tend to work when all items are a similar size/weight.

Depending on the books, I could fit 4 in a 1kg satchel, or 2 in a 3kg satchel.

No real way to set up rules for those scenarios.

Re: eBay dictating again!

digital*ghost — Sat, 09 Sep 2017 16:03:27 GMT

My question remains valid, even if you believe its unworkable. i.e., how would you work with a site where it was impossible for a buyer not to pay for their purchases immediately?

Re: eBay dictating again!

brerrabbit585 — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 01:40:27 GMT

You're not even comparing apples with oranges here. You're comparing meat with apples.

Of all the other websites I've bought from (there have been many) I've never been able to buy items without putting them in my cart first, then they're all combined when I go through checkout. Most I've had to trust that they'll only charge the combined postage that they've specified and refund any excess through pp or only charge the proper amount on my credit card. There have been no fees on postage to complicate the issue. Ditto for my own website - I refund any excess postage through paypal, same as I did when I sold on etsy. All these websites, including my own, have a cart and you can't pay for an individual item without putting it in the cart first.

The answer to your question is that you'd send the buyer an invoice through paypal.

Re: eBay dictating again!

digital*ghost — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 02:00:31 GMT

What have I compared?

I did say immediate payment was industry standard, and then I suggested people simply have a think about how they would work with a system like that, but taking into consideration all of the tools eBay provide when they do.

I had to think about how to make it work, when I started selling on another site that requires immediate payment, and there were far fewer tools available to me to allow a decent amount of accuracy in the postage calculations. As did many other people who sell things of vastly different weights and sizes.

My actual point is, eBay's postage and payments system is / was imperfect even without all these new issues, but the workarounds are so normalised people don't see them as imperfections but rather standard practice, so when something new comes along the imperfections suddenly seem dramatic and the workarounds a complete burden to even think about, so "can't do it like this" becomes an unneccessary stumbling block. Just having a think about how someone would use eBay's tools to their advantage with immediate payment in play - I think - is a constructive way to try and overcome that way of thinking.

Re: eBay dictating again!

brerrabbit585 — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 02:04:35 GMT

Sorry, I mis-read your question. I already partly answered the question though - you just refund any excess postage. Every website I've ever used requires immediate payment in the sense that you have to pay straight away, but you put everything in your cart and pay for them together. The only site I know of that makes you pay for each item in a separate payment is ebay. I wouldn't be surprised if ebay and paypal have put their heads together over this one but it'll backfire big time!

Re: eBay dictating again!

brerrabbit585 — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 02:19:08 GMT

What have you compared? You've compared sites like etsy that don't charge fees on postage or insist that each item is paid for separately, with ebay that does charge fees on postage and force each item to be paid for separately (for some sellers).

There's a vast chasm between the two sites and what works on one isn't going to work on the other.

When I sold on etsy I spelt out exactly what postage would cost for all different combinations, then I refunded any excess because there was no way to set the system up to charge the right postage.

How do you work around all the extra fees then, including the extra 30c pp fee on each item? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to know this. If Dave hasn't figured out how to set up combined post rules that don't lose him a lot of money (or cost the buyers extra) then I'm absolutely certain it can't be done for his items. Maths is my strong point too and there's absolutely no way I can set up postage rules that work for my items.

Just as a side note, a lot of buyers have never used the cart and never shop via a seller's store (if they have one). My friends and I always click on 'see seller's other items' rather than going through the store because we find it a lot easier.

Re: eBay dictating again!

digital*ghost — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 02:21:19 GMT

@brerrabbit585 wrote:
I wouldn't be surprised if ebay and paypal have put their heads together over this one but it'll backfire big time!

Neither would I, sadly. There's a lot of practices that suggest to me eBay is focussed on short-term gain at the cost of long-term loss.

My question is all well and good (as in, hopefully prompting some practical thoughts and possible solutions), but much less worthwhile when some of the flaws make it a moot point, which at the moment they often do (case in point, I opted, essentially, for flat rate postage, in the hope that people can just buy and pay, not have to worry about varying or increasing postage costs, and not have to wait for combined invoices. It works that way often enough, but I still get a lot of separate payments, and people buying then waiting for invoices. Sometimes the discount isn't even applied when several items are in the cart - the app is the bane of my existence).

Re: eBay dictating again!

digital*ghost — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 02:27:15 GMT

@brerrabbit585 wrote:

How do you work around all the extra fees then, including the extra 30c pp fee on each item? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to know this. If Dave hasn't figured out how to set up combined post rules that don't lose him a lot of money (or cost the buyers extra) then I'm absolutely certain it can't be done for his items. Maths is my strong point too and there's absolutely no way I can set up postage rules that work for my items.

You approach the problem differently than thinking postage (or even prices) needs to be an exact calculation for each and every sale.

As I said above, I use the flat rate model. People pay the same postage for one item that they do for 100. This has often meant I get paid something like $3 for shipping, but I actually pay $30-odd instead. I don't take a loss on those sales.

On Etsy, where there is only the option to add X amount for each additional item, I maintain the flat rate for Aussies, and add a small amount extra for each additional item for international buyers - the international postage services I use range from $3 - $30 just for packages under 500g. I occasionally take a loss on an individual sale, but overall I definitely don't.

Re: eBay dictating again!

brerrabbit585 — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 02:28:09 GMT

@davewil1964 wrote:
Postage rules/discounts only tend to work when all items are a similar size/weight.

Depending on the books, I could fit 4 in a 1kg satchel, or 2 in a 3kg satchel.

No real way to set up rules for those scenarios.

They don't even work then. I can send two items for the same price as one, but three items cost twice as much as one or two items.

This is for letterpost. On another ID I mainly use satchels and I can send two for the same price as one, and I've got it set up to charge the right amount for that, but I CAN'T set it up to charge the right amount for three. If they bring in immediate payment on that account I'll have no choice but to stop selling because the extra fees will make it unviable, not to mention that if someone pays separately for two items I'll lose seller protection for one item if I post them together.

Re: eBay dictating again!

brerrabbit585 — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 02:37:30 GMT

@digital*ghost wrote:
@brerrabbit585 wrote:

How do you work around all the extra fees then, including the extra 30c pp fee on each item? I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to know this. If Dave hasn't figured out how to set up combined post rules that don't lose him a lot of money (or cost the buyers extra) then I'm absolutely certain it can't be done for his items. Maths is my strong point too and there's absolutely no way I can set up postage rules that work for my items.

You approach the problem differently than thinking postage (or even prices) needs to be an exact calculation for each and every sale.

As I said above, I use the flat rate model. People pay the same postage for one item that they do for 100. This has often meant I get paid something like $3 for shipping, but I actually pay $30-odd instead. I don't take a loss on those sales.

On Etsy, where there is only the option to add X amount for each additional item, I maintain the flat rate for Aussies, and add a small amount extra for each additional item for international buyers - the international postage services I use range from $3 - $30 just for packages under 500g. I occasionally take a loss on an individual sale, but overall I definitely don't.

Your model might work for a seller with lots of small items or where people buy a lot of items together, or in certain other cases, but it's still not going to work for a lot of sellers. You mightn't lose in the long run but a lot of us would, or else our buyers would feel ripped off and would be more inclined to feel like ripping us off in return (by saying the item didn't arrive). No way do I want to invite that sort of thing! I prefer my buyers to know exactly what things will cost and so far it seems to be working.