Why eBay’s Daily Deals team needs replacing

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I’m not a fan of eBay’s Daily and Weekly Deals at the moment – they’ve been pretty pathetic over the Christmas selling season. I’m not particularly a fan of protein supplements either which eBay are hawking under this weeks . What I’m really hacked off about though is that eBay are allowing Daily Deal sellers to promote off site sales in their Daily Deal listings.

Clear as anything in the descriptions are the words “? If you want to try before you buy click here.” Of course the word “here” is not linked to an eBay listing for the sample, oh no – it’s linked to the seller’s own website. It’s not linked to a page for the purchase of samples either, why would they do that when they can get interested buyers browsing their website?

Whoever is running the Daily and Weekly deals program quite frankly needs to be replaced by someone who can at the very least vet deals and make sure they comply with eBay site policies (and the law), even if they can’t find more interesting products to promote. Mind you, eBay may have realised this seeing as they’ve a job vacancy open for someone who knows how to merchandise products properly.

Is there anyone out there that thinks they could do a better job of running eBay’s Daily Deals? Could you find interesting products, not take the easy option of hoodies from high street retailers, make sure deals are genuinely good prices with real discounts off the normal selling price instead of quoting stupidly unrealistic RRPs and ensure that the listings are legal and comply with eBay’s policies? If so please apply here because if someone doesn’t get a grip soon they might as well scrap the Deals program and concentrate resources on something eBay can excel at, instead of a program that is out of control and failing.

Interesting side note… how come eBay’s raft of PR companies didn’t appear to promote eBay’s Christmas deals in the press this year? Remiss of them? Or dodging the issue because the deals were rubbish?

16 Responses

  1. There are a number of issues that require a significant change in direction otherwise this will continue.

    Are the deals to drive traffic or revenue?

    There is a very high turnover requirement. The deals team have targets to hit so would rather sell £20k of hoodies than £5k of something really interesting.

    It makes more sense to me to go for high volume rather than high value as this means more people are getting a deal.

    I no longer propose daily deals as I am not prepared to take the risk of the promotion not working and me getting left with lots of stock.
    The requirement is so high people are unlikely to ‘buy stock in’ so we will always end up with stock that people already have being promoted. This is always likely to be high street outlets as no one else would have so much.

    Then there is the discount that is required. Again this is so high that we will always end up with clearance, where the seller just wants to get what they can, rather than deals on lines that are attractive.

    Then there is the fact that the daily deals team prefer to deal with the outlets. I had a deal turned down for a few reasons, not enough stock – price too high.

    A couple of weeks later an outlet ran the same deal with less stock and the same price.

    Having said this, I understand that ebay are finally recognising this and there may be some good news soon.

  2. That offsite link is quite naughty and for them to promote this listing rather than ban it clearly shows where their priorities lay.
    Another case of certain people being above ebay’s own rules.

  3. Clearly the link that enables you to purchase sample products “off ebay” is a breach of ebay rules.

    However offering free samples within your listing through a link that promotes your own website may not be. As long as the page you send the visitor to does not offer any products for sale.

    Maybe ebay missread the listing and have taken it to be free samples offered?

    Poor proof reading on ebays part.

    Even so it should not take you to page that offers products for sale. Nothing wrong with you putting links on the “off ebay” page offering the freebies which direct you to pages offering items for sale.

    (PS my first comment of 2012 so happy new year!)

  4. Don’t all fall over at once but I’m going to defend eBay about this off-site link.

    The link in question is to this page:
    https://www.myprotein.co.uk/products/mp_max_total_gainer_(sample) – that product may have been live when the Deals Team vetted the listing but it is now a straight redirect to the front page of the myprotein.co.uk website.

    To give eBay the benefit of the doubt I’m guessing a bit of jiggerpokery went on and the sample product was there and free when the listing was vetted but then disappeared. None of the samples now on that website are free – see here: https://www.myprotein.com/uk/pages/search?SearchTerm=sample

    eBay hoodwinked or someone just not thorough enough with vetting? Either way I’d agree the Daily and Weekly Deals are rubbish and not even worth a look these days. And with just 68 units sold on this product it looks like everyone else thinks the same. 🙁

  5. This protein seller is owned by the hut ebay store The-Hut-Outlet, who regularly features on daily deals. The brand Myprotien is not famous in the UK and has been launched by the hut.

    Goes to show its not who you know or how good you are, but how big you are to ebay.

    Lets face it ebay sux !

  6. As of note The-Hut-Outlet no longer sells on ebay, has left with feedback of 97.2. Still has an ebay store, with 0 listings and now is being promoted on deal of the day and therefore best match via their alternative protein company.

    Good to know ebay improving the buyer experience and giving a fair chance to all sellers. NOT!

    How about the protein sellers who have been doing it for years promotion chances. A BIG FAT 0 !

    Its all bull. All lies, a big joke what they tell us as a company and the actions they take.

    in mu opinion ebay is just a poor, poorly run company, with little or no ethics and simply makes money due to having a massive monopoly. Sure people can assume some people always complain and moan.

    But i dont moan at all about our other selling platforms. Which currently out perform ebay product for product.

  7. I wonder if the question we must demand an answer to isn’t a simple one: What is the Daily Deals feature for?

    I fret less than Chris about Daily Deals because I think the whole homepage is broken. Look at it with a critical eye. It’s abysmal.

    As a seller, does it serve you? Is it comparable to other industry examples? Does it say the right thing about eBay and what eBay should be?

    Those people at eBay, clever people, need to be told what a crashing old bag of shite the homepage is for sellers, and buyers, in my opinion.

    If you pay fees, you should be getting militant about it. Who’s in?

  8. The UK daily deal page looks pretty good compared to Canada where ebay hasn’t attracted many mainstream retailers.

    Present deals include health scam products “negative ion balance bracelet” and “alkaline water sticks”. Plus a lot of non branded, without tags (eg same stuff on cheap chinese websites) watches, jewelery and fashion. On top of the fact almost everything has a faked regular price and % discount.

    A lot of the sellers they have on there have feedback that doesn’t qualify for “top rated” status

  9. Howdy,

    Lack of love there for MyProtein, personally I found them to be absolutely brilliant and look forward to more daily deals from them. As for the samples, I’ve bought numerous in the past, trying to find out how an item tastes remotely is impossible and have fallen in love with both the chocolate & banana flavours and as for strawberry…

    On a more serious note, it really would not have taken much to make a multi variation listing with the samples in it and then linked to that listing instead, in-fact hey, “why aren’t they doing that now?”

    A daft point is that if a sample was required, the deal would have been over and might as well have been better off not adding any note of samples at all in the first place. Bit of a fail all round.

    Note: This looks like it was a genuine mistake, if the link back to the site had been laced with affiliate tracking, then you could have easily argued the earlier point of whether the daily deals are there to promote sellers or 3rd party websites. But it wasn’t (from what I saw).

    Kind regards,

    Matt

  10. One of my gripes with DOTDs is that ebay does not apparently know the law concerning misleading price indications. In particular, an own branded item cannot be shown as a discounted price against its own RRP which the same retailer has set. For this to be legal, there has to be a competitive market in the item, and an own brand sold only by that retailer doesn’t achieve this. There is a particular range of TVs that features regularly in DOTDs with a seemingly impressive RRP “saving”, but you can’t buy it from anybody else.

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