It’s not unheard of for eBay to make a mistake, but they’ve really gone to town on the subtitle promotion for which sellers who participated are benefiting.
Having initially disallowed Good Til Canceled (GTC) items from the free Subtitle promotion, which ran for the whole of December, eBay allowed users to include free subtitles on GTC listings. They then announced they’d refund any Subtitle fees incurred up until 15th January at which point sellers would be able to remove subtitles from GTC listings (even if they had sales) so that they wouldn’t be charged for Subtitle on subsequent relists.
Today eBay have announced that they’ve been unable to update the site to enable users to remove Subtitles from GTC listings and this will now be enabled by 3rd February. Consequently the fees for Subtitles on GTC listings will be refunded for all qualifying GTCs on relist for the period 1st January – 9th February 2009.
So what started as a promotion for December will no effectively benefit sellers for up to three months. Any GTC listings launched with Subtitle between 1st and 11th December will get two renewals with Subtitle and a full 90 days benefit. All sellers need remember to do is to remove the Subtitle prior to the listing renewing after 9th February.
10 Responses
erm, Ok. Makes perfect sense,,,I think.
Maybe I’m not following this right, but basically sellers are unable to remove subtitle which costs quite a bit of money. eBay is then refunding those fees at a later time.
Isn’t this just a short term, no interest loan that sellers are making to eBay? And by making this mistake they’ve effectively extended the loan.
Pantomime season in the UK right now – shame Tommy Cooper passed on many years back – he’d have been perfect as the promotions manager in this one ….
… altogether now –
Oh no you can’t
Oh yes we can
Oh NO you can’t
Oh YES we can
LOL
…. or should that be –
“Not like that, like this”?
#2 The original terms of the promotion clearly stated GTC was not included. If sellers had stuck to the terms there wouldn’t be a problem. Admittedly it was an eBay mistake to allow (and message that it was free at the time of listing on SYI) but they’re still not going to make you cancel listings losing Recent Sales boosts.
You can’t really complain if you took advantage of a mistake on their part and they’ve decided not to charge you for rectifying the matter. If it was the other way around and eBay charged you for a mistake on your behalf there’d be uproar!
I got charged 91p for subtitle on a GTC yesterday,
Yours,
Confused.com
@ # 6
I’m more confused about # 3.
I decided long ago not to try and 2nd guess or understand what the hell eBay are on about,
List & Hope, really can’t be arrised with much else 😆
so if i listed a 30 day BIN (not GTC) on 30th dec – am I going to be charged the subtitle for each week after 9th january?
#9 No, but if you relist at the end of 30 days without removing the subtitle then you’ll be recharged. If you remove the subtitle when you relist then you won’t be charged