As everyone who’s ordered packaging with their eBay shop £10 or £20 voucher knows it’s been, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit of a mini Hoover moment.
eBay don’t appear to have prepared the seller for the expected volumes and in truth I’m guessing that eBay weren’t really expecting the demand to be so high. Quite why I don’t know, but it would be reasonable for them to have guessed that many brands and high street retailers wouldn’t have bothered as they’d have their own branded packaging.
Plus it’s unusual for 100% of vouchers in any promotion to be redeemed, I spoke to one friend on Facebook who’s comment was “I’d better dig the emails out of the deleted item folder” as he genuinely though his packing (and Listing Enhancement) voucher was spam!
It’s a bit obvious in hindsight though, if you have an eBay Featured or Anchor shop the packaging is then a bonus freebie once you’ve paid for your shop subscription. Why wouldn’t you cash it in? And, even if you don’t use it for your business shipments, you probably sell a bit personally on eBay and would be grateful for a few eBay boxes or mailing bags. In hindsight it’s difficult to see who would let the voucher go to waste as you’ve paid for as part of your shop (even if all you did was resell your free packaging on the worlds most popular marketplace).
Nonetheless the promotion has been phenomenally successful beyond eBay’s wildest dreams and they’re putting steps in place to make sure that things flow more smoothly.
“The demand of eBay packaging was incredibly high and exceeded our expectations. We are working with our supplier to fulfil any outstanding orders and apologise for any delay that this may cause. For the next voucher run in early May we have listened to sellers and we will be providing a wider product range of sizes.”
– eBay Spokesperson
38 Responses
Hang on what about this month? Most items have been out of stock for over a week and there’s no sign of any more. Some subscribers will not have used their first voucher yet. Feedback left (by the Company) reflects less than half the potential number of vouchers that Tamebay calculated.
Feedback reflects a large hangover of existing orders because eBay’s partner seemed to have sold stock that they simply didn’t have.
The current choice is just boxes.
No tape, no ‘Jiffy’ bags, no poly mailing bags, no bubble wrap ……..
Why don’t you ask eBay about the legality of a monopolistic situation where a voucher can only be spent with one company?
Had eBay themselves provided the packaging, then this would be reasonable, but a situation where a voucher is given which benefits only one selected private company is a blatant breach of the monopoly rules.
Offering a voucher that can be spent on packaging (i.e. a category) is not a breach of these regs. Offering a voucher that can only be spent with one selected company, where there appears to have been no tendering process or suggestion of consultation is very much unacceptable.
Why is the eBay packaging in the UK in Black & White? whereas the packaging offered to Sellers in the USA has the eBay logo in full colour
Plus in the USA they have a wider range of items including rolls of eBay stickers.
By my reckoning (using the sellers feedback left for others) only around 1500 of the 8500 vouchers have been redeemed so far yet the shop has been sold out of all but the cardboard boxes since about the 10th. If an 18% take up on ‘free’ vouchers was ‘unexpected’ someone needs a massive arse kicking.
The most worrying thing is I suspect about another 1500 vouchers are waiting to be spent as soon as the shop restocks with the fake Jiffy bags, over priced bubble wrap and plastic bags. I can see Swiftpak finally catching up towards the end of the month but being wiped out again by people needing to use their vouchers before next month. The new vouchers would then be issued and we’re back to square one.
I fear for Swiftpaks feedback if this does happen, embarrassing for all involved if they end up getting banned and sellers loose their ‘extra value’ vouchers!
Ordered 3 items. Received 1 item that was for someone else.
3 cases opened. 1 response to 1 case only.
Still no order or refund.
Crap.
why continue with the mistake just credit the value of any unused voucher .
then spend the time saved to think up another barmy way of making yourself look unprofessional ,
doubt many will be basing their business on branded packaging
an account with a supplier to the whole range of good quality packaging at a competitive price .
being part of the shop subscription would have worked much better
rather than a convoluted complicated voucher
Considering that the vouchers were issued (late) on the 3rd, and customers starting receiving the “unexpectedly high demand, out of stock” messages on the 6th, that isn’t so much an unexpected success, as a clear case of listing stock that doesn’t exist.
The company has a monopoly on the stuff, which is presumably printed to order.
There’s no excuse for them not knowing how much they’d got.
Like other eBay sellers, they had plenty of options, like:
– follow the rules and refrain from listing non-existent items
– put a realistic dispatch time once they realised the problem, instead of leaving it as one-day dispatch
– stop marking items as dispatched, with false tracking numbers, when they are not dispatched.
The last one removes buyer’s rights to claim INR where one item out of a multi-item order is dispatched, as the tracking number for the one item that WAS delivered will mean the buyer’s truthful claim of INR on the other items, which were not dispatched, will be thrown out, leaving an unjust “fraudulent claim” blemish on the buyer’s eBay account.
Any other seller breaking the rules in this way would be held to account.
To call this successful is spin of the highest order. It’s a total disaster.
Would save much embarrasament if they just gave us more so called “FREE” listings instead of a voucher for one seller with 62 Negs, 35 neutrals & 93% positive over one month. They are bordering on NARU territory.
In USA there are many sellers selling eBay branded packaging but in UK they give the business to just one seller who can’t cope.
Amusingly this seller is making a profit out of them.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/eBay-Branded-Mailing-Bags-Pack-of-50-10×14-Scarce-Out-of-Stock-Everywhere-/162473021062?hash=item25d4258e86:g:0iMAAOSwTM5Y75XW
62 Negatives in the last month! Ouch…
xxxxxxxxxxxxx should of seen this coming. With his links to ebay
[edited by admin to remove personal details]
@steven yes, it’s a little alarming.
I asked eBay to step in, all 3 cases now closed in my favour. I’ve also had a cash refund for the voucher value, but no refund for the postage paid. All a bit weird.
One thing is for sure we won’t be bothering next month if they are still in existence.
For those of you lucky enough to have received the eBay vouchers then I feel sorry for you if it’s ended in disaster. For the rest of us down trodden sellers who haven’t received a voucher, well we can only watch from the sidelines, laughing at yet another epic eBay fail. You couldn’t make it up, you really couldn’t.
Swiftpak management must have been ‘blown away’by their new found ‘experience’.
RIP off selling the tape gun for £10+ when on ebay you can find the same gun for £3.75 with free postage!
I think inflated prices are a way for eBay to pay less to swiftpak (now slowpak) so each £10 voucher is really costing ebay just under £5!!
Ebay is on the decline with no views on fast selling low priced items. its almost like ebid, both a subscription scam.
Just looked to see what they have in stock today and not a single item in the shop….. Haven’t had my voucher for this month either, anyone got May’s yet?
Prices are now so high that even with the voucher there are cheaper bags without the eBay logo.
Perhaps time to stop the cheerleading Chris and time to question eBay over some of the points raised above regarding that blatant scam.
its all got a funny flavour with a sleazy aroma
because of
ebays fee structure a shop is necessary, we dont give a monkeys chuff about added value or vouchers
This is scandalous, They have doubled the price on many items.
Yet another con job from ebay
100 270 x 335mm padded mailers.
Price at start of April £12.00
Price at start of May £21.80
They’ve basically added £9.80 to the price to account for the £10 voucher, disgusting.
These rises are echoed across their entire range. They must think ripping off 1000’s of small business owners is a good business strategy – Swiftpak will not get a single penny from me from now on due to their handling of this situation, I’ll use the voucher but that is it, and to think I felt sorry for them 3 weeks ago, I wish them nothing but the worst now.
I am just using the voucher to the closest amount to utilise the £20.00.
Last month the two items i purchased came to £19.76, this month the same two things are £26.72
Carries on like this, there will not be anything to buy outright with the voucher.
Prices have more than doubled for some things. The feedback makes for interesting reading too, 92.8%
Its nothing more than a con from what I can see:
50x 430mm X 500mm self seal postage bags have gone from £4.32 to £9.05
6 rolls of tape have gone from £9.17 to £13.95
Thats the £10 voucher right there…..
Would not use the seller Ebay directs you to for this packaging with 92% feedback . The negative feedback is hammering in from customers buying from them for slow delivery and rip off prices.
So this packaging voucher is actually worthless as it stands unless they sort out the issues here.
There are also reports that the voucher “valid until the end of the month”, actually expires mid-afternoon on the last day of the month.
ebay once more provides exactly what we expect from ebay, lies cons and sneaky shafting with a complete failure to communicate. at least they’re consistent.
How is it that everybody complains about ebay all the time. They know they have people hooked and they are using sellers the way they want to. I have had enough and now I’m doing something about it and building my own woocommerce website and start advertising on facebook, twitter, instagram and the like. Even Google are very much like EBay and Amazon, as long as the money keeps coming in they are not bothered who they upset. it’s like most things in life, if you are not happy about something, walk away. It’s the only way people at EBay will start asking why when people start leavin. And Amazon leave it to other sellers who want to sell at rock bottom prices as they will still be there in years to come still working for nothing.
Wow, last month I got 300 250x345mm Poly Mailers for £10.80 shipped, less £10 voucher, so only cost me 80p
This month, went to have another look at the available products, cannot detect any material change in the number of products available but this month, the price of the mailers has sky rocketed. This month, 100 will cost £11.67 shipped.
So, nearly 300% increase….. I also note that having started to order 100 of the mailers, the voucher is only offset against the item cost, not the shipping.
I am struggling to understand how these increases are possible, must be Brexit surely !! 🙂
Oh well, I think the voucher e-mail will be automatically directed to the junk folder in future.
I am on board with Tony here, I started my own website at the beginning of the year and now things are starting to settle down, its time to put all the effort into advertising that.
I don’t understand why there is so much confusion on eBay.UK, getting this program up and running. We sellers in the USA have been receiving vouchers for our “free” shipping supplies since May 2016.
We’re into our 5th quarter now under the system. And things seem to be going fairly smoothly, according to the people I talk to in Facebook Groups. There’s an occasional glitch now and then, but that’s to be expected.
Now that I’ve been in it for 5 quarters, I have ordered some of just about every one of items they sell. (They continue to add new items each quarter.)
A lot of us in the Facebook Groups are swapping supplies back and forth, because sometimes we just don’t need 100 boxes of a certain size … but 10 is good. We’re also sharing them with our less fortunate friends, who don’t qualify for the supplies.
We’ve also found some creative ways to use them. 🙂
I put the voucher code in – the money comes off my purchase from these guys, the delivery arrives within a few days. Everything good. I dont see the problem.
OK there has been a few teething issues but i think that has to be expected. There has also been fluxuations with prices but hey, we have made errors in prices before in our ebay shop so i wont cast any stones.
I dont understand the hatred for this initiative. I had occasion to contact Swiftpak last week about an issue and it was resolved efficiently and promptly. Give these guys a chance. i was looking at their feedback score – my opinion is that they dont deserve a lot of it when you look at the comments. its almost “trendy” to hate ebay and because they have connections with ebay – sellers are taking some of this (undeserved) frustration out on them.