Customer response

[garyterence01]

I try to direct people to my stamp store whenever I can... here is the response from a first-time user

" I gave eBid a go. Sorry. Not impressed. Sure, stamps are hellishly cheap.
Navigation is terrible. It appears you have to buy each stamp individually. No ability to put something in a shopping cart and pay at end.

Postage isn’t combined.

At the end of the day, it appears its more expensive than eBay. And, boy, do they load you with emails.

I bought a handful of stamps. Eight maybe? No way to quickly check. I received no less than 17 separate emails from that one order from one vendor. .

Very cumbersome.

So, thank you for introducing me to eBid, but I think I’ll stick with eBay and maybe check in occasionally if I can’t find what I’m looking for on eBay."


I have to agree with him about the amount of ebid emails that arrive...overall one disappointing visit means this customer is unlikely to return to Ebid again

[tony41]

Unless you know the way the site works, the response of your first time user is understandable. Yes, as things stand, you have to buy each item (stamp) separately but you do not have to pay for each item separately. You can pay at the end using Multiple Item Checkout. BUT you have to know that. Sellers can set up their defaults to automatically combine postage on MICs. I have done this and have a number of buyers who use this. So combined postage is the responsibility of the seller. I cannot comment on the number of emails.
I do think that a basket or shopping cart is a good idea and would certainly make buying easier, especially for new buyers. I would like to see this introduced. Combined postage would still be a responsibility of the seller. Combining postage is easy for stamp sellers (like myself) but would be problematical to implement across all categories because of different weights, sizes etc of many of the items for sale.

[rocks2dust]

I agree. Do check your "My Defaults" to be certain that you do not "Require Immediate Payment" if you allow combining multiple purchases. Also tell the buyer in your description how to request an invoice in order to get the combined postage. Most of my buyers here haven't had any problem. Although a cart is nice, they don't necessarily correctly calculate postage for multiple items, and for other auction sites they really haven't worked any differently than to just hit the buy buttons and then ask the seller to issue an invoice with a corrected postage before paying. The cart of another big auction site still allows paying for multiple items even without the seller correcting the shipping cost - plus I've personally had their cart deny me asking for an invoice to show the combined shipping cost. So I think a cart here would be mostly to accommodate people who are used to them. Another list similar to our current Wish lists could probably be used as a cart, with the addition of a "Commit to buy and request a combined shipping invoice" button to mark the items as Sold and send a message to the seller requesting issuing of an invoice. I personally am not a fan of carts, but for those who do use them...

[garyterence01]

Have checked my defaults and do not require immediate payment but buyers seem to have trouble anyway....I will add something to all of my listings in Large print to try to get the message across

[tony41]

In My defaults - My general defaults you can enable Multi-item Checkout as you think appropriate. Also in My defaults - My shipping defaults you can specify the additional shipping charge applicable to any extra item again as you think appropriate. In my case as a stamp seller I have specified that each item incurs no additional shipping charge.
Like Rocks2dust I have found that my buyers have not found problems.