In every issue, readers soundoff about issues important to them. From shipping issues to payment processing, from fees to online marketplace policies, EcommerceBytes Soundoff gives you a chance to air your views.
Dear Ina,
I just discovered an accounting trick eBay is using to make extra money on combined shipping orders. Here’s the details from one sample transactions:
Order is for 19 items with combined shipping of $5.00 total so their fee on shipping should have been $0.50
eBay takes the $5.00 shipping cost and splits it into 19 separate invoice entries at $0.26 each (which seems like a break, $4.94 total vs $5.00 shipping)
But then eBay takes their 10% fee on the shipping cost for each of those 19 items and rounds the $0.026 fee up to $0.03 fee for shipping on each item. So their total take on the $5.00 shipping is actually $0.57 vs $0.50 which it should have been.
Take that times millions of transactions and see how much that makes them by splitting up shipping costs!
Robert
Hi, Ina.
In your article on managed payments you wrote, “eBay is currently offering no phone support as it transitions its now work-from-home customer service reps in Texas and Utah.”
Just to clarify, every call I’ve made (and I’ve made a lot) goes to a call center in the Philippines. Not sure who gets to talk to an American, but I get someone in the Philippines who sides with the seller 100% of the time. It’s mind-numbing how unfair eBay is to sellers.
David
Hello,
Can you make an article about the fact that EPN (eBay’s affiliate program called eBay Partner Network) has become a barely functional affiliate network, and that this will reflect on eBay sellers as they will get less traffic as a result of bad management by EPN?
They don’t even have a director for perhaps a year now. Their support is slow, and they did not announce any plans for the future ever since the commission drops they made last October.
Thank you.
J.
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Robert, the letter writer, is astonished by eBay taking 57 cents instead of 50 cents on a 19 item transaction. Millions of transactions like this? No. Just Robert’s, and maybe a handful more. How many people order 19 items? And if someone ordered 19 items from me, I’d gladly donate a LOT more than 7 cents to eBay for finding me such a customer. They’ve EARNED it at that point. I’d pay double the FVF! Heck, I’d like to just GET 19 orders some day, one at a time is fine.
Wait until Robert gets into Managed Payments and eBay takes 25 cents to process EACH item on the invoice, PLUS the shipping %. Then we’re talking an extra $4.75 in fees instead of 7 cents. Boy, is he going to be rippin’.