eBay is testing a new shopping basket feature on ebay.co.uk, and now you can try it out for yourself !

via August 2010.

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I tried out the eBay UK shopping cart. It seems shipping cost and estimated delivery time is isolated to each seller’s item. I’d be curious to see how combined shipping rates are calculated and presented when the cart has items from different sellers. Visually, eBay shopping cart should also group items from the same seller together and provide some sort of visual way to distinguish items from various sellers. From the initial review, I think eBay did a good job. If you look at Amazon’s shopping cart, they don’t break out the shipping cost per item which makes it very difficult to figure out which item(s) is raising the shipping cost.

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When eBay purchase many individual items which can ship via USPS First Class rates, how do you best quote a USPS Priority rate?

The shipping calculator will give you the First Class Mail rate until 13 ounces. If the total weight exceeds that weight, then eBay will calculate based on each item (or group of items) group together to reach 13 ounces or less. Although you may want the higher weight item to default to USPS Priority, other may want Parcel Post, Media Mail, etc. I think it might work better to include the alternate shipping method and then petition eBay to re-sort shipping by presenting least expensive shipping method first. This way, if USPS Priority ends up being less expensive, that will be the first option to be presented to the buyer. This has nothing to do with shopping cart though.