HELP: selling with variations

[iherbal2012]

I am selling products that comes in 9 flavours. Quite often the buyer does not leave a note specifying the flavour they want. 

So I am trying to list the item with variations so they can select the flavour on the dropdown options. On the listing, I need the buyer to specify TWO flavours. But when I do this, ebay requires the quantity available for each combination. 

For eg.

Theres two flavours - choc and strawb

It wants me to input the quantity available for each combo rather than each individual flavour

Theres choc/choc, choc/strawb, strawb/choc and strawb/strawb. So there are 4 different combinations. But when you have 9 different flavours, that becomes 81 different combinations. I cant place quantities for 81 different combos because my number of free listings is very limited.

I cant list the items individually either because they are part of a package. It needs to be two flavours in one listing.

Any help would be appreciated.

[digital*ghost]

One listing will only count as one from your freebies, but all available items will count towards any selling limits you have. Sounds like you might be better off only using one selectable variation for two flavours rather than two selectable variations for one flavour each. 

Just as an aside, when you create selections and eBay lists all the possible combinations, you can delete superfluous ones - using your example, while the system will automatically create both a choc / strawb and a strawb / choc combo, you can delete the extra one from the list before continuing.