If you're familiar with eBay you probably know what Commit to buy is. Basically it's an agreement between you and the seller that once you click on that commit to buy button you have pay for it no matter what or else, well you get a bad reputation at eBay. So I made the mistake once of clicking the 'commit to buy' button and me being too confident, stupid and foolish never really thought about the shipping. So when it comes to payment time I was taken aback by the whole order since the price was practically doubled because of the shipping fees. And I was really bummed out. But it's my fault anyways. Stupidest mistake you can make online.
oh no. Its always a good thing to check the shipping cost. I usually always click the thing in the search to look for items that have free shipping so I don't have to worry about trying to add it up. Mistakes are easy to make. One time I was looking at a bundle of dvds that I was thinking about getting my daughter for Christmas and I accidently clicked the buy button ended up costing me a bit of money cause there was a bunch of dvds in that bundle.
Buyer beware, but I would have never thought ebay would allow such a blatant practice to charge exorbitant shipping fees to buyers who are in rush or whatever buying something. I really think this specific commit to buy thing shouldn't exist as most times you do get a bad rep if you don't end up with your side of the deal.
Yeah there's also something you have to watch out for as well: when a seller insists that they combine shipping, you still have to confirm your purchase before they send you an invoice with the new shipping cost and total. I feel this is really unfair as the seller can go back on their word and not discount the combined shipping. I always make sure the price is still worth it even if the seller doesn't discount shipping, so I won't feel too bad if I'm cheated.
I believe your rating goes down but you have to do it several times before you are black listed. When you commit to buy can you return an item ? If rating is that important then maybe you can do that. Personally I don't use eBay much these days so I would just take the bad rating and not buy the product. Do the ratings fall off over time ?
Well after that incident I pretty much never came back to eBay. I had to pay for all of it since I really need the product so there's really no way out and if I switched to Amazon at that moment the price won't make that much of a difference either. I think the ratings won't be as bad if you only make one or two mistakes of not paying but I never stick to find that out for myself.
Yeah, it's definitely something you need to know to look for before clicking buy. A seller can technically make a legal claim against you for pulling back on the order, but more often than not they won't bother with it. Sellers will usually place a too-good-to-be-true price on an item and then charge a heinous rate for the shipping to make up for things, hoping that people won't notice or won't have the guts to cancel the order.
Was this recently? I've been on eBay for years. I noticed most of the new Buy it Now listings require you to pay immediately. So you can press the buy it now and if you dont pay then you don't commit to buy. Also now sellers can set up combines shipping so that the discount reflects automatically when you add more than 1 item to the cart.
While you did definitely commit to buy and you're responsible for that, some sellers are pretty understanding. Back when I was selling, I had a couple people tell me that they hadn't meant to buy it (or their son has purchased it, etc), and while I was disappointed by it not selling, I did go ahead and refund their money and then offered it to the next highest bidder instead.
Whenever I order something online, be it from ebay, amazon or other sites, I carefully check the shipping price. I have once committed myself to buying an item on ebay, and realised later that I had made a stupid mistake. I immediately contacted the seller and apologised. The interesting thing was that he agreed to cancel my order, but he wanted me to give him an excellent review in return. I didn't do it. I thought an apology was more than enough, and that he was rude.
Maybe you just need to PM the selling. If the selling is understanding just like Jessi said, they might consider. Sellers are also concern of their feedback so i'm sure they won't want one in their profile. I never really notice the commit to buy button though.
I try to always check the shipping price too. Some sellers try to trick you by offering the product for a low price but jacking up the shipping cost to an unreasonable price. I don't use ebay at all anymore though. I prefer to find deals on other sites like amazon.
I doubt I will make that mistake, because the first thing that I actually search for are the "free shipping" items. Then if the item that I need has an expensive shipping charge, then I don't buy it. I don't think any seller will force you to buy an item that you bought by mistake, since they are gracious enough to cancel your order.
I had a similar experience as yours a couple while back, though it wasn't related to this "commit to buy" button. I remember that I had bought an item which I didn't check the shipping options for (all praise impulse buying!!!), and when the guy contacted me and asked me how I want it to be delivered out of two options: One which costed more than the item itself, and another one which costed half of that price. Of course I didn't want to buy it anymore but I got a bad reputation from that seller, understandably enough.
I really take my time to look at shipping costs because often times, I'd rather the shipping be included in the price of the item so I don't have to fuss with it. I also think that the sellers that I pick from are sometimes pretty lenient - you have a few days to pay and if you have a question or you need to cancel, you can do it within that time frame. Maybe you should look for different sellers if possible because some of them allow this type of thing.
I could understand how you made that mistake since it's rare for us as shoppers to assume that shipping costs would run up that high. I myself would probably have made that mistake if I did most of my online shopping locally but since I buy lots of things from other countries too because a lot of items are hard to find here, I've been able to do more research and have read a lot of horror stories when it comes to shipping so I was able to train myself to be more careful.
Like @Jessi, I would prefer the buyer to contact me immediately and explain the mistake. Depending on the circumstances, I would consider cancelling the transaction, so that the item would relist, and other potential buyers could proceed with the purchase. That being said, I don't overcharge for shipping, and I recently came across a couple of people who do. If the shipping charges really were super inflated, that seller probably set the shipping intentionally high to trick buyers, so would be unlikely to work with you as far as cancelling the transaction.
Being overcharged for shipping is definitely a huge thumbs down for shopping on eBay. It is just ridiculous to see how shipping sometimes costs up to 5 times that of the actual product! Always remember to look out for shipping just as you would read the item's description! That said, like what the others have mentioned, if you realise your mistake about committing to buy, quickly drop the seller a message, I have done that before and more often that not, they are happy to cancel the transaction. Staying quiet and not paying is what gets to the sellers because you effectively are holding on to stock that could be sold to someone else. As a side note anyway, to save on shipping, try to get the product from a local dealer on eBay, meaning from your own country even if it is in different states. They often have free shipping and you can also get your item much faster than if the product came from another end of the world!
