eBay have started to email users affected by last week’s 20% coupon offer glitch refunding money into their PayPal accounts.
The email reads “Last Monday’s 20% coupon offer was very popular and due to the high demand we were unable to fulfil the discount at that time. We are sorry for any disappointment this may have caused. We’ll be refunding you the amount of £xx.xx into the PayPal account that’s linked to your eBay account within 14 days. This is the discount amount that should have been applied. The coupon was valid for one transaction, if you tried to use the coupon more than once we will apply the discount to the highest value transaction you made on the day“.
Here at Tamebay we have no idea how eBay’s promotions are budgeted, but eBay themselves said in a statement that the promotion “proved to be hugely popular with customers and the promotion exceeded all our expectations. Due to huge customer demand, the promotion was suspended“. One can guess that there were a certain amount of marketing dollars set aside for the program and due to the massive (probably unexpected) distribution of the promotion on social media that the cash earmarked for discounts simply ran out.
Discounts have to be one of the best ways for eBay to invigorate sales on their marketplace – nothing gets people spending like the offer of what’s effectively free money and the returns are probably way better than spending on a TV ad for example. eBay discount coupons are always welcomed by buyers, but somehow this one was way more successful than eBay predicted.
One Response
if you dont want it being shared on social media, then you use a unique per-customer code. CTWENTY was supposed to go viral, ebay did it on purpose this way, and then still pulled the plug on it.