Maybe add shipping on the display page?

[micromatikal]

Just thought it would be useful to display the shipping price on the main page with the auctions waiting for bids. Many times it makes a big difference for how much I am going to bid. I am sure it has been thought of but just wondering if it is difficult to code in? Wouldn't imagine so...

Thanks, Love the service
Tim

[Cupid]

Actually it has been suggested before, it isn't easy because shipping varies with the bidders location and when you set up snipes Gixen is not logged into eBay on your account.
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Mark

[Guest]

I second the need for having shipping displayed.

Even if sometimes it's not possible, many times the shipping is a flat rate and it would be possible to list it. Some would be better than never!

[Cupid]

Perasonally, I think it is better not to have information displayed than it is to have inaccurate information displayed.
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Mark

[Gixen]

[PRL42]

Having shipping displayed does not seem to be relevant to sniping.

With sniping, you make a decision about your maximum bid (based on the p&p cost amongst other things), enter the snipe and forget it.

Why would you want the shipping (which, as has been stated cannot be displayed accurately anyway)?

[Cupid]

Yes, I agree with you PRL42.. I have already taken into account the shipping cost when I decide my snipe (maximum bid) amount... after that the shipping is irrelevant, until I either win the auction and pay it, or I lose and don't.
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Mark

[portablejon]

having shipping displayed is a great benefit to those that want or need it. the determination whether or not to have it shown should be up to each and every end user to customize columns as they wish. i personally use jbidwatcher and love the program however i am looking for a matching solution which can be modified to my liking. my reason for looking into gixen is so i dont have to keep my computer on to have it bid. i would also make your desktop software support mac users (os x 10.6 snow leopard)

[mario]

portablejon, does jbidwatched extract shipping amount automatically, or you enter it manually? Manual would be much easier to implement.

As for Mac, I'd love to, but my XCode / Objective C coding skills are not up to task. I have a Mac myself, and love it, but it makes no sense for me to invest so much time and effort to develop something that would be used by less than 1% of Gixen users.

[crisleeloo]

IMO, better than have shipping displayed on gixen, which is difficult to implement accurately like someone said before, is a feature that would allow me to sort items by shipping price only directly on ebay.

That way I could easily choose items with low shipping to my country.

For people like me who don't live on US or UK (where I buy most) shipping is very important because for similar items you can have sellers with very different shipping prices.

Right now I have to sort items by price+shipping and manually browse the whole list to find items with cheap shipping.

I think this would be easy to implement to experienced programmers and would be of great help for anyone not living on major countries.

[rpcohen]

I strongly support the inclusion of a column showing shipping costs along with the item description. It's impossible for me to remember the exact shipping costs for everything I bid on so whenever I consider modifying my bid I first have to go back to eBay to look up the shipping costs. I've used other snipe systems that included shipping costs and it's a wonderful feature that's sorely missed on Gixen. I understand that the shipping costs may not be 100% accurate for everyone living everywhere, but perhaps because I live in the U.S. I never ran into an inaccurate shipping cost when using other systems. IMHO, the lack of shipping costs is the one glaring omission in the otherwise excellent feature set Gixen offers. Thanks for offering such a great service .

[mario]

Thank you rpcohen, I'll see that I add this, or at least to allow users to enter the cost themselves.

[rpcohen]

[crisleeloo]

[guest]

Can a seller change the shipping costs before the snipe goes through if no one has bid on the item yet? That is something I worry about alot and it would be nice to have the option to cancel/be notified if the shipping section has changed, hopefully that would be easier to detect then the exact cost.

In an ideal world if I could group a bunch of items together and type the amount I was willing to pay a box that said total price plus shipping that would apply for any item in the group.

[Cupid]

Yes a seller is able to change the shipping cost when there have been no bids on the item.

Since different shipping costs apply depending on where you wish the item to be shipped to the same problem applies to detecting changes to the amount that applies to your snipe as to detecting the amount in the first place.
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Mark

[guest]

[Cupid]

The shipping box appears differently depending where you are from, Gixen does not log in as you until it places the snipe.

I presume GetItemShipping is part of the eBay API?

Sniping services are not permitted to use the eBay API.
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Mark

[jdeibele]

[Jeremy]

Mario- Wow thank you for taking users up on this suggestion! I would like to chime in and ask that you please set it up so that it can import the seller's shipping cost for the item automatically (where possible) rather than one having to manually input the data if you are able.

Perhaps the field could be altered by the user if they wanted to manually enter a higher amount for a different shipping service (such as priority mail) or shipping to a foreign country but for me personally the vast majority of items I bid on (well over 99%) do indeed have flat shipping costs regardless of location. I think this is usually the case with First Class mail and anything shipped in Priority Flat Rate boxes.

Since some have asked why this info is important (since shipping costs are already factored in when placing the snipe in the first place) I would point out that the same question could be raised about the entire bid amount.

Things change, new listings appear, money is spent and less may be available...there are a variety of reasons why it may be useful to know the exact dollar amounts of the snipes you have placed.

In my own case someone is placing the snipes on my behalf and I peruse the list daily searching for possible errors - but I am fairly limited in my ability to spot errors in bid amounts since I cannot see the shipping cost. I realize this is a situation that will effect very, very few users but for me a shipping column would be a *huge* plus.

Thanks!

[lavonnekuy]

On the shipping cost issue. If gixen allowed you to import notes from your ebay watch list, or had a note column of its own, you could manually put in the shipping costs. That would be helpful. It would also allow any other reminders, such as this is the item my mom has, etc.

[mario]

Gixen has a "note" column, you just have to enable it on the Gixen settings page. I believe this is available to mirror subscribers only. Note from eBay watchlist is not imported, however.

[rcarson182]

Where I do see a use for this in sniping has more to do with reduction in shipping for multiple items. If I figure shipping in on all of my snipes, I'm not always making the best decision.
For example: Seller offers $10 shipping on first item plus $1 on each additional item.
After I have bought the first item, I may be willing to pay $9 more for each of the other items in the group.

[mario]

Why don't you use contingency groups? It would work as described for two items at least, with second item having $9 higher bid.

[Cupid]

I don't use contingency Groups for that purpose because I want a bid $9 lower on the second item if I do not win the first auction and Gixen does not allow me to have two different snipe amounts for the same auction.

So my only choice is to set the snipe independently on the second auction, at the lower amount. Then if I remember and if there is time I edit the second snipe to the higher value if I win the first auction.
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Mark

[rcarson182]

Same deal, It could be any one of the items I win first. I don't win at least one, then there is no point in increasing any of the other bids. I would end up overpaying. Imagine to items in the same senario. $10 shipping first item, $1 second. Three items, I would like to buy under $20 each. So my first bid is $10($10+$10=$20), if I win that item I would be willing to pay up to $19($19+1=$20) for the others. This still keeps my average cost per item at or under $20.

[Cupid]

Maybe we are developing a suggestion for a new type of Group... One where two bid amounts are set for each item, the lower value is used if we have not yet won anything in that Group and the higher value is used once we have won at least one item.
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Mark

[mario]

I may just indulge one day when I find time to implement 2 or 3 new types of groups. I know they would be rarely used, but it looks like it would be fun. I'll name this latest one by your last name Mark .

Don't be too optimistic about when this would happen, I'm extremely busy these days.

[Cupid]

Ooh... now that would be flattering ... Would I also have the job of explaining what it was for how it worked to all the confused punters

(Actually, to be honest I'd use it about once a week, I think... but on the positive side that is much more than I use the other Groups... I guess I'm just greedy.. I want ALL the bargains )
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Mark

[strong lead]

Well, it looks like posters finally figured out that Gixen does not login to their ebay account. I have to admit it's counterintuitive since Gixex DOES import our favorites list.

I'd like to bump up the idea of adding a manual shipping cost field. It's no added effort to enter the estimated shipping cost when we enter our snipe. It would be very helpful for me when entering new snipes for similar items so I don't have to open the original items to look at the shipping costs when I made my initial bid price decision.

Regardless, thanks for the service, Mario!

[Cupid]

[Guest]

[mario]

I avoid implementing pulling shipping info as it depends on many variables - buyer's location, seller's location, etc. It just seems very high maintenance, and I believe it would result in additional support issues and complaints if there are any problems with it.

I recommend that you turn on comments - and note the shipping cost in the comment field when adding a snipe. That way you won't have to check it every time.

[Guest]

Maybe it would be easy to pull shipping for the fixed rate only?
Less manual text entering, and another mirror subscription bonus...

[mario]

Sure, it's possible, however even then there are different rates for different countries, etc. Note that it's not just an issue of implementing this, there is a maintenance issue as well, as ebay changes things frequently.

[Cupid]

As I've said previously... I am of the opinion that if information can not be provided accurately for all users (and it can't, as Mario has explained, without considerable effort) then it is best not provided at all... otherwise it is just going to bread dissatisfaction, a great deal of maintenance (over and above the high cost of implementing an initial solution)... and many Support calls posted here when people don't like the results.
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Mark

[jd737stephanie]

Why can't users just type the shipping costs in the comments box, and stop hassling Mario?

[AAA]

Imported shipping information would be really helpful when entering snipes. I used a sniping site years ago that did this, I think it was called Snipe Station. Anyway, if they could do it, there must be a way.

I noticed that eBay gives shipping information based upon location even if you don't have an account logged in. Is this done through IP or a cookie? If so, then couldn't Gixen could use the same data to obtain the correct shipping amount for each user by storing the location information? Or using a location cookie or the IP of the user when looking up prices?

[Cupid]

AAA,

From my observation it seems that, when you are not logged in, eBay provides shipping information based on the site that you access the auction through. So if you look at a US auction via .com you get US domestic shipping even if you are located in the UK and if you look at that same auction via .co.uk you get the shipping for the United Kingdom, if there is one set up by the seller.

That is better than nothing, but not as good as you imply is possible... certainly not based on the IP of the user. Even if eBay did use the IP it would not be possible for Gixen to fake where its' requests are coming from, that is where eBays' responses go back to, so if you spoof that you don't get a response to a Gixen server which would be pointless.

I can't see any evidence that cookies are used for this, before you are logged in, generally cookies are only used on eBay after you have logged in, I am not certain of that, but I would need some evidence to be convinced otherwise.

So all that is possible is to pick up the shipping information that relates to the site being accessed by Gixen... personally I don't think that is accurate enough for the general Gixen user... and being inaccurate even for a minority is what I think needs to be avoided.

It is not difficult to implement a solution that is inaccurate for some, I would suspect that is what your previous site did, you may not have noticed the inaccuracies if you generally looked at auctions that were listed on .com and live in America or live in America and always bid via .com on international auctions.... but the Gixen community of users is international and they also buy from sellers not in their home country and bid via eBay sites that are not associated with where they live... that makes things considerably more complicated.
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Mark

[Guest]

[scootsah]

[browntown]

I'm no programmer, but when you "import watch list" you're logging into ebay for a second to pull down that list, ebay accurately shows s/h in the watch list based on the users info, can you pull down the s/h for watch list imports?

[mario]

[elvey]

[Paula]

this adittion would be oh so awesome, glad you are considering it!!!

[uberauctions007]

Would love to see this feature too.

[Sylvesterchester]

My vote is for some shipping inFo, whatever it be, my bids depend on that info, even if not always there because of calculated shipping... Thanks for your time and consideration.

[miacocinella]

I think it's simpler now to implement the shipping costs as long as Gixen users choose the country where to ship.

I think it would be a great feature for mirror subscribers.

Please check it out Mario.

[Whatever]

What is this madness??

Why ask more of a snipe? Do you not understand the service?

MORE?

Didn''t that li''l kid get kicked in the head?

Please. Stop messing with my Gixxy! It does it''s job.. all that it needs to.

No colourful up and downs, no "it should do this and that". It has a job, it does it, end of story.

You want more? Find a different service. Leave my Gixxy alone.