eBay gave buyer free postage for no reason

[charmony]

Just sold an item today (182199837858) and the buyer was able to pay for it with no postage charge included. The sales order says "Promotional Postage Service" $0 but I have no promotions running. It's really bizarre! I can't see anything wrong with the listing (it's recently been purchased by others and postage was added as normal) and this has never happened before.

Anyone know what's going on?

[charmony]

No, this is NOT my promotion.

The promotion is for $20 orders. This order was $16.25.

[collect247]

And 2+ items means any 2 items so it doesn't have to be over $20 which is the way I see it.

Is it just the orders over $20 or is your postage included in the orders eg $16.25 + postage cost makes it over $20 so then the postage becomes free anyway?

[imastawka]

Postage is not normally considered in that promotion.

So $16.25 order should not have gotten the free postage.

I honestly don't know how all that happened.

When you cancel the 2nd order, send her another invoice explaining that seeing

the 2nd order is being cancelled, she needs to pay for postage  ???

[collect247]

But what does (and 2+ items) mean?

To me that means any 2 items gets free postage included doesn't it lol

[lm-entertainment]

apologies, i misread the promotion as being for purchases over $20 or 2+ items, when it's in fact supposed to be when both of those conditions exist. my bad. i tried adding 5 of the item to my cart, and it does say that it requires another $3+ to be spent in order to get free postage. 

[collect247]

Shipping discount will be given when 2 or more qualifying items are purchased and when you click the qualifying items there are items that are $1.75- $2.00 so buy these 2 for $3.75 and get free postage.

[collect247]

Well then the promotion is totally misleading and whoever-eBay should immediately reword it correctly seriously lol.

[digital*ghost]

The free postage option is a combined shipping rate which can be set up via promotional postage rules and is displayed like other promotions.

To the OP... I have been getting PayPal notices in the last 24 hours or so which have $0 showing in the postage section, but the total still includes my postage amount. And the payment in my account shows shipping correctly. Is there a chance that's what has happened with your payment notices as well?

[charmony]

It's never worked that way before. It's $20 AND 2 items to get free postage. (I've been doing this for 5 years!)

The $16.25 order should've been $18.75 total.

[charmony]

digial*ghost, I think the timing of her payment must be the reason this didn't work.

She paid 1 minute after "buying" (not paying for) both items @ $16.25 each. (The second was apparently bought in error.) In the time it took for her to pay for one item, ebay combined the total to give free shipping, but didn't combine the invoice at her end - so she got to pay for only one item, and with free shipping.

Somehow.