eBay sellers were flummoxed after they lost thousands of free listings in select categories on August 1st. Sellers were left wondering if eBay had decided to end the promotional perk for Stores without notice or if it was a glitch, and they reported eBay customer service reps were offering unsatisfactory answers when they inquired about what was essentially a problem of overbilling.
An initial post from an eBay moderator who responded in a thread about the problem was not reassuring. “Since some people have it and some don’t, my assumption is that the promo ended as some others have noted here. Promotions vary and are provided to different groups of people at different times. Having said that, I’ll reach out to the tech team to be on the safe side, and I’ll let you know what I find. “
The matter was urgent for sellers since the listings they would normally see as free under the long-running promotion were being counted against the number of free listings that come with a store subscription.
“This is something eBay needs to make clear as soon as possible, since some will sign up for the store based on what it says you receive,” one seller wrote.
The eBay Store help page lists insertion fees for various store levels. For example, a seller with an eBay Basic Store receives 250 auction-style listings in select categories, after which they pay 25 cents/listing. They also receive 1,000 free fixed-price listings in all categories and 10,000 free fixed-price listings in select categories.
The moderator returned 2 days later to confirm it was glitch: “I’ve heard back that they were able to find an issue on August 1st where some sellers did not get the benefit of the “select category” free insertions. This was an issue and not a sign of things to come.”
The moderator said eBay was proactively crediting sellers and, she said, they would “be checking again towards the end of the month, for any sellers who had activity on August 1st in the select categories but incurred insertion fees (in any category) later in the month as a result of this issue.”
That indicates the sellers who did experience the “issue” could run into the same problem next month, potentially ad infinitum.
The rep I spoke to on August 1st said that once the issue was fixed, any listings incorrectly deducted from the 1,000 (that should have been deducted from the 10,000) would be AUTOMATICALLY corrected. Now, they are offering credits after the fact, but they are supposedly limiting those credits to the amount charged as a result of the issue. How am I supposed to know whether I need to end listings early or not when they are not correcting the counts in seller hub? This is designed to trip sellers up so that you use more listings than you have available and then they can use the excuse that it wasn’t caused by the error. However, if there was no error, I would have been able to know how many listings I need to end early.
The only way to stop this is to create that “Mall” website I spoke of a few years ago.
Each page of the site has a “wall” full of links to “stores” aka Sellers private websites.
It’s a varitable book of American Stores.
Ebay and Etsy are outdated concepts.
We’re all grown up now, and have mastered the art of attracting our customers to OUR sties.
I had the same problem and called on Aug 1 and the CS immediately stated that it must be a gliche. Why don’t they just leave things alone (things that work) This feature draws in potential sellers. Still no response from eBay and they wanted my feedback. For what?
@ The End- wouldnt that be great, i hope i live long enough to see it.
but, until people put their searches in the browser search bar instead of some
gateway (e-marketplace) i dont see it forthcoming anytime soon.
great idea though, i’m all for it!