Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

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June 09, 2009

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

By: Ina Steiner

Tue June 9 2009 21:00:44

Dear Ina:
So I go in to do feedback for a seller last night, and GUESS WHAT?

It tells me right before the feedback (pos/neg) that "This Seller Offered Free Shipping on This Item." - Um NO, he didn't, and OF COURSE I don't mind, because I also don't believe in the tooth fairy, or the Easter rabbit. Shipping is NOT free, whether they offered not to "charge" you or not. (you paid for it in the price of the item, whether you think so or not, because shipping's not FREE.)

And it's been doing this intermittently on payments also, when you pay for more than one item, this shows up every so often. (YOU GOT FREE SHIPPING - and then at the bottom, it includes that seller's shipping in the total, making it look like the seller is ripping off the buyer)

If anyone wonders why the DSRs have been TANKING all of a sudden, this would be it. Can you imagine the buyer wondering GEE, I wonder why I DIDN'T get free shipping???" Sniff, sniff. And then SLAMMING the DSR score.

Apparently eBay is finding new and faster ways to make more money, by taking away our discounts.

I have consistently been in the 4.89 to 4.90 range until the last two weeks, now it's 4.72. Told them about it, but doncha know - it'll get fixed on about June 14th.
Nancy

Comments (13) | Permalink

Readers Comments

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: ebay=penny stock

Tue Jun 9 21:46:04 2009

Ebay programers are incapable of fixing the error and DonnaHole doesn't care.

The whole ebay corporation is incompetent corrupt
greedy idiots. There isn't half a brain cell between the whole outfit.

And if you added in the analysts and the stockholders you still wouldn't find half a brain cell between the whole bunch.

Sad state of affairs but normal for big business these days.

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: Marvin

Wed Jun 10 05:01:13 2009

Holy Moly I thought me and my next door neighbor were the only ones having problems.

If you think this is bad wait till paypal sticks it to you.

I guess with the economy the way it is it makes perfect sense. See, ebay by making it easy for your reputation to be destroyed hopes you will list more and sell it to offset the damage. Paypal hopes it will generate disputes so they can seize your funds or your ratings get so low they have to put a hold on your money to protect buyers because you are so untrustworthy.

Oh well, beats robbing liquor stores I guess.

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: Shipping is Free!

Wed Jun 10 15:06:18 2009

Re: Shipping is NOT free, whether they offered not to "charge" you or not. (you paid for it in the price of the item, whether you think so or not, because shipping's not FREE.)

This is not true in all cases. When we offer free shipping, it is at our cost. It is not included in the cost of the item. We have to price the item competitively or have to set the price at the manufacturers suggested price. As the seller, we pay for the shipping. Buyers now take that for granted and want a discount on top of the free shipping. Buyers need to be more appreciative. It costs alot to offer free priority shipping!

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: Philip Cohen

Wed Jun 10 15:31:31 2009

Hi "Shipping is Free!"

You must have got your MBA from the same scam on-line university site as Donahoe got his!

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: brecklundin

Wed Jun 10 15:37:06 2009

Amazing...but what does anyone really expect? It seems to have gone under the radar but a lot of the current long standing site programming probs have gotten worse, not since ebay entered the Chinese market (can't finger point in that direction this time) but rather opened up shop in INDIA.

I guarantee you the true motivation for ebay's intrusion into the market in India was NOT for auction sales on the ebay India site, it was to politically pre-position MEG as not having off-shored 1000's of programming, technical and support jobs to INDIA. She simply shifted them to a different branch of the company silently and under cover of darkness along with smoke and mirrors.

I love India as an interesting culture and people but they have arguably the WORST programmers in the world. Having had to interact with a coding sweatshop in India a number of years back, because a client hired me to figure out why the software they paid over $200,000 for would not work...after several interactions with the managers and coding staff over there, I found out why, the programmers there simply are not that bright or do they care or more likely, are not allowed to care simply because of the work environment. But rarely did the person who supposedly wrote/designed a certain portion of the code even remember wtf it did, or why. Even when they did "remember", they did not understand the actual purpose of that function/module.

That is not to say there are not some very talented folks over there doing coding, there are, but toss in the management style, their caste culture and a few other significant issues such as designing and coding software reduced to a sweatshop/puppy mill level and it is a recipe for total disaster. It is also why corporations from all over the globe have slowly been pulling back from using these coding sweatshops because they end up spending 5x more than the project would have cost using better more experienced development people.

But, I can promise you that the programming/technical staff which brought ebay from the brink back during the server crash years (and they were very good actually), are long fired or quit because of the intra-company off-shoring of their entire departments.

So now we the customers of ebay are forced to deal with constantly changing and very POORLY coded and even more POORLY debugged code base.

I so hope this comes out when Megholio decides to try and be, may the gawds save us, CA GOVERNOR...

FYI, there are only three parts of the world I would trust the programmers. A tie between first and second is the US and Russia (plus Ukraine or other former Soviet country) and then a close third is Ireland. But the folks in Russia, Ukraine, etc...they ALWAYS did AMAZING things with less access to tools than an single group in the world. Even back in the early MS_DOS days. And today the same craftsmanship still exists. Thing is, they are now more capitalist than you can imagine, because, in fact, the very system that was against it actually made them very astute business people.

But, India is flat out the worst place on the globe for moving everything from coding to medical record transcription to bill collecting...so, every-time you run into major problems or even draconian business practices from ebay, think of the ebay-India connection.

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: Patricia

Thu Jun 11 15:45:52 2009

Ebay is either incredibly stupid or its deliberately trying to get as many of us off the site as possible! I just noticed that one of my ended items that sold for 9.00 and will weigh just 2 ounces had priority shipping! I NEVER use priority shipping for this item -in fact the description says shipping is 1.55! So now I have to kow-tow to the buyer and hope he doesn't ding me over this. You CANNOT trust Ebay for anything....not for anything! As the provider of a service...they stink!

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: miss old ebay

Thu Jun 11 23:24:45 2009

I have seen the same errornious message regarding shipping and see the same coralation to lowered DSR score. I have written to support to it, but they think it is me, not them. They think I misreading something. Please report it to support. If they see many people reporting it maybe they will take it seriously.

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: miss old ebay

Thu Jun 11 23:26:48 2009

Regarding the comment about free shipping. It is not free. It comes out of seller's pocket. If you did not offer free shipping, you could have offered better prices than the competition, not similar prices to them.

The only entity that wins with so called free shipping is Ebay - they get more insertion and final fees. That's what Ebay cares about, not whether it is good for the buyer or the seller.

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: stampman.cowell

Mon Jun 15 15:55:54 2009

Free shipping means ''exactly what it says on the tin'' as the advertisers say. Buyers who complain that it is included in the price seem to forget that they have a choice to bid the price that an item is worth!
When I put an item on at $1 or £0.99 I sometimes sell it for that price and have to mail it for ''nothing''! I make the choice to offer free postage and take the losses &, of course, the profits. Come on buyers - grow up - realise that you have the whip hand and if you dont like the price - dont bid. Silly me - I forgot - there are loads of addicts out there who bid first and complain afterwards!
John Cowell. UK.

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: o.c.d.collectibles

Tue Jun 16 11:44:42 2009

This is no mistake! This is plan number 38. Peel of the next layer of sellers!

Pierre:
"We need to get going, the new buyers of ebay core are telling us to hurry up and pare down the site so they can buy us out!"

don't take it personally. by the time this next layer of sellers gets peeled off, there will be another issue that will come along..

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: Cuff

Thu Jun 18 09:55:58 2009

''Ebay is either incredibly stupid or its deliberately trying to get as many of us off the site as possible!''

They're transitioning and they want Sellers to leave. On the way out the door they want to place a hold on the money in your PP account to use it for free, and also to earn Interest on it. They like to show your money to their stockholders to keep them from bailing completely while they transition.

Leave ebay on your terms, not theirs! There are good Alt sites out there and the more we support them, the weaker ebay becomes.

The standout sites so far are Bonanzle, eBid and eCrater, in no particular order. Pick one and start listing. And, for god's sake, don't rely on PSU to show you which site is best. In my experience PSU is more about selling PSU Stores than it is about helping Sellers. The sites that are most likely to succeed are hidden, or have no forum at all, while the smaller sites that can in no way compete with ebay are highlighted as the busiest forums. Frustrated Sellers either go back to ebay in disgust, OR, they buy a Store and strike out on their own. How convenient to have stores so handily available when they give up on Alt sites.

Buyers won't shop where there's nothing to browse. 2 million listings is miniscule in comparison to the giant's numbers. Get behind a site... show the Buyers where to find you. They have no real loyalty to ebay, it's just what they're used to. If we don't get up and get behind the Alt sites there's a chance that the Buyers will go back to more traditional ways of Buying. Once they're gone, we'll play hell getting them back!

There's a window of opportunity here, but it won't be open forever. There's no reason to wait... ebay as we knew it is going away and they don't care if they destroy your business along the way. Why not list some of your best items on an Alt site of your choice, and persuade your Buyers to follow? Use the Buyer base that was created on ebay's dime. Don't let them slip away!

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: alG

Sun Jun 21 10:00:55 2009

@ brecklundin

RIGHT ON! I'm a retired [by my own volition], former systems programmer who started out when programmers wore lab coats and were viewed in the computer centre through glass windows.

The crap I've seen in eBay's programming would have gottem me fired instantly, had I not committed sepukko before my boss found out.

There is no sense of craftsmanship it seems. Turbo Lister, which I use the upload interface is poorly! documented [try to find the schema on eBay's site - its there, but if it is your first time it'll take 20 minutes of persistence], rife with bugs, clunky to use and s-l-o-w.

Whatever database they use [on my PC nonetheless] makes MS-Access look like a speeding bullet [look, up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... plop ..... a bird]. It looks like they re-index it every time you change views, doesn't remember where you came from, what options you set, on and on and on.

I've dealt with their help desk and the result is basically just compress the database & remove all of your listings because one is corrupting the system.

No to send me your data, no what version are you using, no ship over the error or trace log [if they have one]. No interest in solving your problem.

I'm afraid every time I get a new update, it'll stop working.

Anyway, the result of this diatribe is to confirms how bad eBay's programming 'staff' has become.

Life goes on....

Unbelievable to say the least. I did offer my services to help them fix the problem at current market rates of course, but I never even got a chuckle back in reply.

Incorrect 'Free Shipping' Messaging

by: SneakyDave

Tue Jun 23 18:51:06 2009

If you're really focusing on the buyer experience, offer all your stuff ''free shipping'', and include the shipping in the price. All buyers I know will pay more for free shipping than get scammed with these sellers complaining about not being able to jack up the price with shipping charges.

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