I won six auctions this weekend from one seller. The seller had already sent an invoice for the first two books and later sent one presumably for all of them. When I went to pay for the books, the first two books were separated from the last four. This meant that two payments were required in order to pay for the books. I knew that I would pay too much postage, but I went ahead and paid. This has happened too often in the last year for me to try to figure out what is wrong.
After I paid, the seller mentioned not understanding why eBay separated the books. He further stated that he would send the books priority since I had paid too much postage. I was actually quite happy to be getting priority since priority is my preference for very hard to find books such as these.
This is not a new seller, so I feel confident that whatever was wrong with the invoice was not the seller's fault. This has happened to me as a seller several times in the last year. In those cases, I knew that I did the invoices correctly, yet the buyers reported problems like the one I just experienced.
When what should be one payment is processed as two, the seller gets more for postage, and PayPal gets additional fees. PayPal is owned by eBay, and eBay freely admits that PayPal is their strongest asset and the one part of the company that is growing rapidly. It is probably just incompetence as usual, but I do wonder.
I made a few comments to my seller which included verifying that the books were separated into two invoices, thus causing the multiple payments. The seller replied with a few comments. He stated that eBay frequently underestimates the postage and that he often takes a loss. He also stated that eBay is all we have right now. It is so true, and so sad. It is a shame that veteran users such as he and I are frustrated with the direction that eBay has taken.
I told my seller about Bonanzle, and he thanked me for the information, stating that eBay has become very "seller unfriendly." I'm feeling rather pleased with myself.
1 comment:
The seller also could have offered you a refund of the extra shipping charge. Refunds are very easy to do and Paypal will automatically reverse the percentage fee for the refund amount, so the seller would not lose either.
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