In December eBay ran a listing promotion offering free subtitle for sellers with a Featured or Anchor shop. Originally the promotion excluded items listed using the Good ‘Til Cancelled (GTC) format but sellers were offered free subtitle on GTC listings via the Sell Your Item form. Because these listing never end sellers would be billed for subtitle every 30 days for GTC items until they either sold out or were manually ended.
Normally once a listing has had a sale it’s not possible to remove a subtitle, but by the even if the listing has had a sale. Sellers will need to remove subtitles from GTC listings by the 15th January as from this date they will be charged when the listing renews for another 30 day period.
Subtitle fees incurred between 1st – 15th January will be refunded for any sellers who who created a new GTC listing with subtitle feature enabled in December or added a subtitle to an existing GTC listing in December. Currently a date for refunds (if applicable) hasn’t been announced.
eBay have also announced on the (log in required) that they will be processing the refunds promised for sellers who ended and relaunched listings in order to make VAT rate changes. Credits should appear on users accounts by mid to end January.
January seems a long time to wait for credits incurred on the 1st December, but to be honest for most sellers with shops the fixed price listings concerned would only have costed 5p or 1p. (For myself the additional fees were only around £5.00). Sellers who use expensive listing enhancements such as Featured First will have a much larger credit due.
Whenever eBay run a listing promotion where the credits will be refunded in the future (rather than at the point of launching the listings) sellers should always ensure they have the cash flow to wait for credits. Invariably they won’t fall in the same month as the fees are incurred.
