eBay Multi-Item Variation Listings Charging Wrong Prices
An eBay glitch is impacting pricing on multi-item variation listings, causing some sellers to take a big loss or risk a ding for order cancellation.
One seller believed it was possibly something impacting international orders, but others have chimed in to say they are also experiencing the issue on domestic US orders as well.
I have many variation listings. I am in USA and I offer direct shipping to Canada and Mexico. I had a buyer from Mexico add a couple items to their cart and request an invoice. Great, until I saw that one item was $3 and the other was $5.50. But in the listing the items are being sold for $8 and $12 respectively.
I can't send an invoice since the order is all messed up. I will call Customer Service tomorrow and see what they have to say. When I looked through the technical posts I didn't see any posts like this, so I wanted to get it out there so it can be stopped before it spreads further.
On the same day, 10/22/23, we experienced incorrect pricing on variations on domestic orders (US).
Our buyer ordered around 70 items that should have sold for a total of $267.14 but was charged $132.22 (before taxes and shipping).
I reported this to eBay, but it has not yet been resolved. In the meantime, we are pausing sales until it can be fixed. This is not a sustainable business practice.
Have others experienced incorrect pricing when there are variations in the listings?
Basically- I had a multi item listing. I spoke to someone interested in two items, listed at $95 and $48, and we agreed on a price of $110. I asked them to invoice me so I could charge them the agreed upon price, which they did.
Before I was able to send an invoice, I received a message saying they had purchased items. I looked and was surprised to see that they had abandoned one of the items we discussed and chosen another item- they kept the $48 item and added an item priced at $110.
The problem is that the receipt listed the two things for $80 total ($40 each) instead of $158 ($48 and $110). I know the buyer knew the prices listed because we had discussed them. Regardless of that, I still immediately checked to see if I had somehow made a mistake; my listings clearly said the prices I remembered. On mobile (which is what I normally use) the original price listing still appears on sold items and they said $48 and $110.
I made sure that I did not accept any offers, I did not send an invoice, I did not have auto-accept offers on. I did not make a mistake. For some reason, my listings sold at a price I did not list or agree on, for no apparent reason.
I really need to figure this out because otherwise I feel like I can't safely continue to use multi item listings. Since I have no idea how this happened, I have no reason to believe it won't happen again.
As it stands, I was forced to cancel and it looks like it was due to my negligence because there is no "cancellation due to technical issue" button. As far as ebay is concerned, it's either my fault or the buyers.
This seller went on to describe their very frustrating experience with eBay support that would indicate perhaps a basic math test should be part of the hiring process.
I tried for several hours, speaking to around 6 agents, to get an answer for what had happened. Everyone was technically very polite, but I felt very accused and demeaned after repeatedly receiving the same non-answers.
I was sent a link to my listing and repeatedly told something that made neither mathematical, nor logical, sense- that all my items in the listing were listed at $40 each- that because the person bought 2 items, the total was $80, but if they had bought all 5 items the total would have been $110. So in effect, the $110 price I was thinking of would be the total for all items. Aside from the fact that $40 x 5 is $200, and not $110, I can also see and remember that this is incorrect.
Respectfully, I explained why that is inaccurate- the $40 price they were seeing on the listing was due to the fact that on a multi item listing, the lowest priced item shows up on the main part of the page. After you click the "items" drop down the other items and their prices become visible.
One can not see the asking price of sold items on the desktop site, but you can see the asking price of unsold items- only one of which was for $40 (further disproving the theory that all items were listed at $40). I have multiple screenshots- from ebay mobile and from inside my listing on desktop, showing that the items were listed for $48 and $110.
eBay community staff have been made aware of the issue, but so far are deflecting to advise impacted sellers to contact support directly (the eBay community is not considered an official support channel, despite the presence of eBay employees monitoring and responding to posts.)
Devon@eBay said:
I have not seen any reports on my end for this. I would advise to reach out to customer support to have a ticket open on their account. I will also have this reported on my end as well.
We've seen an uptick in recent technical issues that seem to impact only multi-item variation listings.
For example, the new View Item page design that is being tested is causing problems with how photos are displayed in listings with more than 20 variations.
Liz Morton
Another recent glitch caused the variation menu to rapidly auto-scroll, preventing buyers from selecting their desired option.
Liz Morton
Have you experienced this pricing problem or any other strange technical issues with multi-item variation eBay listings? Let us know in the comments below!
