Fees charged on shipping costs

https://help.trademe.co.nz/hc/en-us/requests/new?id=fb1a5bfd-a2c0-11e9-a424-2dd53a8509e5&ticket_form_id=360000422051

Although you have a combined shipping option, do you ask on actual auction something like this, this is off mine,

Make sure you select correct shipping on your 1st won item Urban or Rural rates, then use $0.00 combining option on 2nd & following buys please. 

And in shipping : $0.00 Combining with other item, Seller to confirm cost , Yes note seller to confirm cost, so if the pick the cheapest shipping, they will be paying correct shipping,

Thank you - that is helpful. If it is the odd one I normally ignore it but I just checked the last 45 days and I paid fees on $580 shipping and the actual costs were $142 - so quite a lot of unnecessary fees. I do have a combined shipping option and repeat customers are "well trained" but I guess buyers don't realise the implication of checking the wrong box!  I will add a note to my auctions and apply for a return of fees. Advice much appreciated.

You can have have as many shipping options as you like, but as Jill says, the buyer doesn't know when they place their bids what auctions they'll be successful on. It's a real weak point of TM. Buyers should be able to select the appropriate shipping options AFTER the auctions close. It's just common sense, but it'll never happen. :)

Malcolm  a lot of my buyers choose combining on all, no problem, no fees, as I do state I will confirm cost,

choosing shipping after auction closes will be a nightmare for us sellers, like trying to get addresses out of buyers,that need to send them manually, Things need to be automated, and that includes addresses to on auctions that are bid on same as Buy now's,

I am over chasing up addresses to be sent through,

Another way of looking at it is thinking of online shopping.

If an online store added shipping to your order every time you added an item to your shopping cart rather than at the checkout - and then someone has to manually intervene to correct the shipping cost - that's how TM currently works - and it's wrong.

In fact Malcolm, how you describe an online store operating, is just like the Trademe Shopping Cart system. It's so easy to add a pile of things to the cart, then just choose the shipping at the end when you checkout. I used it just 2 days ago for 6 items and it's a breeze just choosing shipping on the checkout page. It helps of course if the seller has clear options for combining plus the Combine shipping setup correctly.

Unfortunately, it's not been setup for bidding auctions, but would be great if it was.

Gary, Jill (the op) was specifically refering to a buyers having multiple auction wins not multiple buy-nows.

Gary, I just saw the last line in your post. That's exactly what I was suggesting.

Malcolm  but it would not be an improvement, it would be a backward step, and some of us have been around long enough to see that,

We want all addresses to be automatically sent when an Auction is sold, no more relying on buyers to manually send them,

Malcolm   🤦‍♀️ Because what you are asking is similar to getting addresses sent manually, in the same Ball Park, a nightmare,

can you not connect the scenarios for both?, getting addresses sent manually after a buyer has won a nightmare, and then getting them to select shipping after they have won, same ballpark so to speak, A Nightmare,you end up having to send E-Mails to chase them up,

it is taking the system away from being automated, it is a backward step, and more headaches for sellers, we want everything automated like getting all addresses sent Automatically, so we do not have to chase up buyers after they have paid,

You just don't seem to get it,

I am concentrating, but are you comprehending what we are saying?? 🤦‍♀️

All TM have to do is add one simple option to the end of auction process - ADD TO CART  !!!!

The seller would then be notified that the buyer is waiting for more auctions to close - and they don't have to do anything else.

Once the buyer is ready to complete the deal they simply checkout their cart - JUST LIKE ANY OTHER WEBSITE !!!

If the seller has pre-loaded shipping options then the buyer can choose from these - otherwise there's a 'REQUEST SHIPPING COST' option  - just like the other big global auction site.

Malcolm   But there is already the cart option,

which most of us choose not to use as sellers for various reasons, different size items etc,

 ( what is good for the goose may not be good for the gander)

you cannot compare Trade Me which is an Auction site to Big online companies, we are not all big stores,

It is an auction side where bidding wars happen, not just buy now and add to cart,

It will work for some but not for others,

Wow, that's at least $25 worth of success fee, how can you let Trade Me get away with that? I always make it a point to ask for partial success fee refund, no matter how small the amount may be. Just flick them a "contact us" form and forget about it, they will get it sorted in a few days.

Hi L. The success fee refund is not automatic when you do a Ping refund, but the Ping fee is.

No change. It's always been like that, if my rememberer is still working ;)

Oooh I seem to have opened a can of worms there... but I picked up some interesting info, so thank you. This really came up because a buyer purchased about 20 items which were less than $2 each and chose $8.50 shipping on all of them, which caused me to look into this more thoroughly. Those that buy on Trade me a lot know the drill usually but not everyone. I too, thought that somehow I got a refund of success fees if I refunded via Ping but now I know that it is only the Ping fees, which makes sense now I think about it.

I think it is a failing on Trade me because quite often people want to pay by Ping, and then the overpaid postage needs to be refunded, which is still another action required on our part - and I now know that this does not help me with  recovering the success fees. And whilst I may be able to get the fees back by applying - there is still a time factor to deal with that.

I am not sure what the answer is. The cart option is not relevant to auctions. And I often let people build up a box of items before I send them, which can sometimes go on a while - and I have no problem with that, these are trusted buyers, who buy multiple items regularly. And the issue isn't happening with them, only new  or one off buyers who haven't learnt how things work.. I think there could be a viable option to chose shipping after the auction rather than before  - the current system does require the buyer to be clairvoyant about what they are going to win - perhaps they could chose shipping at the same time as sending the address via the automated system  - there will always be errors as there are humans involved but it might be an improvement, in my opinion.

Hi Jill. Not sure if you have $0.00 combined shipping option on your listings, but something I have done in the past when people have asked, is to let people buy as many things by bidding as they want to and choose $0.00 combined shipping on them all, then when they are all done and they want to pay by Ping for everything, I suggest that I can start a listing for the shipping amount, or they are welcome to buy 1 more item and pay the shipping on it. I only get maybe 1 or 2 buyers a year that get confused and pay more than 1 lot of shipping, requiring me to manually ask TM for fees back. The rest seem to be able to choose the combined shipping option ok.

Hi. Yes I have a $0.00 combined shipping option. I think I just had a flurry of new buyers ( a good thing!) who didn't know what auctions they might win and chose the bulk option on all of them. I have sent the info to Trademe so hopefully I will get the fees refunded. I really can't be bothered when it is a dollar here and there but in the last month it has added up to quite a lot. Hopefully I can educate people going forward. :-)