shopping cart doesn't work internationally. Strategies to deal with this fact?

[rival-sky-games]

HI all, most of my sales occur internationally. Ebay.com.au's shopping cart only works if buyers are logged into the .au site though. 80% of my customers are in USA and UK, and they will be logged into ebay.com and ebay.co.uk They are unable to see the shopping cart, meaning they HAVE TO pay shipping on every single item they buy! Most of my products are game pieces which cannot be used alone, meaning all of my sales have multiple items in them, so combined shipping quoting is essential. But the shopping cart handles combined shipping. 

I am sure this is costing me sales. Every week though, I get sales from customers who have perservered, and made purchases from me even though they are charged for shipping on every one. (Normally $14.20 or $18.20 for each item!) So I have to go through and refund them all, minus the 30c fee paypal takes per transaction. So my customers are getting ripped off 30c by ebay's absent shopping cart. For 2 years I wasn't even realising the 30c was being taken out, so I was the one wearing that cost. 

What strategies have other sellers aware of this issue employed to get around this?

Clear advice in the listing encouraging buyers to log into .com.au? 

Free shipping on all items, with a statement in the listing that I will invoice all buyers for the combined shipping cost after they have bought the item? 

Both of these approaches rely on the customer reading the listing. But I'm sure only 10% of buyers actually do...

Any advice!?? 

Cheers

[allfixelectrical]

One option is to advise the international buyers to complete checkout for each item individually and choose a payment method such as bank deposit or money order and not make any payment until you resend them a combined invoice with the correct postage after which they can then go through checkout again and pay the combined total using PayPal.

This method only works if you can make it clear to your buyers before they start to make their purchases that you will not accept those payment methods as final payment as it is usually uneconomical to accept those methods from overseas buyers.

Another way is to set the postage method to freight and then everyone who purchases from you will be forced to ask for a total before completing the sale.

You could add the expected actual postage cost in the description of each listing for various regions if that is practical.

One downside of this is the app shows postage as free even though it is not.

The problems with the cart extend to far more than just international purchases and are certainly a big cause of lost sales.

[go-tazz]

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

The cart does not work...full stop.

I am an Australian registered buyer, buying from Australian sellers and I cannot put anything into my cart.  It has been happening to me since Christmas 2014

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I had that happen yesterday and after trying it again it came up that two items had been revised since I had

put them on my watch list and into the cart,(I left them in the cart and came back to it later).

So I checked them and all seemed fine then went to pay and still couldn't.

Had to take out the two revised items and then put them back into the cart again before I could go through

and pay for the lot.

No wonder members have hassles with it,

[wontthatone8]

Hello,

I can't really help with the shopping cart problem for overseas sales, but reading your post I notice that whilst you made mention of Paypal refunds of 30 cents, you did not mention ebay Final Value Fees which they would be charging on individual shipping costs (cost to you). My partner and I sell maybe 20% of products overseas. On occasions, a buyer will buy two items and pay for them individually. We charge $25.00 for Registered Post International. In nearly every case, the buyer buying two items will pay separately and end up paying two lots of $25.00 shipping cost. (We can send two items for the same postage price as one). We refund the second lot of postage to the buyer (most of them are unaware that they have paid twice and we get very little acknowledgment of our honesty-thats another story), but the issue for us is getting a refund on FVF's from ebay. When we refund postage by Paypal, the buyer gets the full $25.00 back including the 2-3% Paypal took out in the first place. So I am not sure, why you have to take 30 cents out for each buyer as as far as I am aware Paypal automatically refunds their portion of the postage cost. Ebay do not. Each time we have multiple sales to the same overseas buyer, we have to approach ebay for a refund of the FVF they took out of the second lot of postage that we refunded to the buyer. Typically, this is about $2.30 on the $25.00 excess postage.

You should check your ebay account to see what is coming out in FVF's and if anything is refunded when you return postage to a buyer. The last advice we had from ebay was to submit one claim per month for a refund of FVF's on refunded postage. This is not really satisfactory as we consider that ebay should automatically refund FVF's the same as Paypal refunds their fees.

I hope this is of some help. Your problem with the shopping cart makes me think thats why our buyers have to pay separately when making multiple purchases from us. The only solution that I can offer is a prominent note in your item description TO WAIT FOR A COMBINED INVOICE BEFORE PAYING. Our overseas sales are seasonal so have not had the above problem for a little while. Regards wontthatone8

[wontthatone8]

An email to ebay regarding refunds of FVF's has worked for me (see my post further down). Because I was contacting them each time it happened, they asked me to only contact once a month. Because the individual amounts are small, they are hoping you don't bother. As you can see, over time it adds up big time. Don't let them get away with it. Cheers, wontthatone8