Henrietta / June 18th, 2008 at 11:09 am

Since you were there and ‘we’ were not, it would be nice to have some information on the snippet
“there is a business limitation in that only 1 answer can be given to an individual question” limiting communication between buyer and seller.

Mechelle / June 18th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

@Richard

First – you took a picture of a coffee cup- was there something interesting about the cup of coffee?

Second- “The business limitation right now is the spam concern that a buyer could be contacted proactively by a seller, unsolicited.”

Is this a concern if they change the system? Or, is it supposed to be why at this time we can only reply once the buyer initiates?

If you mean the latter then that is BS- the reason they cap it now is an effort to prevent outside sales. There is no reason why what I experienced should have occurred, because the buyer was initiating the contact. I should have been able to respond as many times as she wrote- not be cut off after 3 exchanges.

Since you are taking questions

I use ecb bucks to encourage return customers. Every 10 dollar increment earns 1 ecb buck which of course is the equivalent to one dollar US- I have some customers that really love makeup so in one order they can earn quite a few ecbs. The record of ecbs redeemed by one customer was 32.

So, after launching this promotional strategy and the first repeat made her second purchase and had 8 ecbs top redeem I went to adjust her invoice and learned that I cannot discount the invoice more than the shipping cost. In other words – the shipping price is 4.60, but she had 8 ecbs, but eBay’s system doesn’t allow me to discount 8 only 4.60. So I had to explain this (which was mortifying) and ask if she was alright with my refunding her the difference after she paid. Now, this is entirely unacceptable and really peeves me every time I have to first explain it and second perform the refund.

I can’t help but think this is another example of eBay’s short run business strategy. It would make more sense and be more to their advantage if they would just get out of the transaction and let me do what I need to do to retain my customers. Given this concept of retention is supposed to be at the top of the agenda maybe this is something they should fix as well.

So the question
Can they see this is counterproductive and would they consider fixing this issue if for no other reason than it benefits them?

Sandi / June 18th, 2008 at 6:46 pm

I went to adjust her invoice and learned that I cannot discount the invoice more than the shipping cost. In other words – the shipping price is 4.60

And after ebay fixes it, Paypal also has to adjust. I a promotion on another site that if they bought 15, free shipping. Paypal refused to let the buyer pay because there was zero shipping.

It happened twice, I had to manually retype an invoice direct from Paypal for one buyer. The other buyer had google, so when Paypal refused to let her pay, she just went to google and paid.

I now list discount if they use google to pay, and explain Paypal does not have the option of putting discount on invoice.

Amber / June 18th, 2008 at 8:44 pm

That’s one known glitch among many for the ebay invoicing.

Another is the inability to send a combined invoice when a buyer purchases from more than one ebay site.

For example:

I list a book on ebay au. A buyer wins it at auction, then buys 3 more books listed on .com I cannot combine the invoices except by sending a Paypal invoice.