We have been selling on eBay for years (on our business account, not this one) and have recently been royally screwed over by eBay from their promoted ads scheming. There is some well know questions over the efficacy of eBays promoted ads service, so I won't dive into this. As a business, our stance is to apply the minimum 2% on promoted ads, so we are at least included and can benefit from ad position. We factor the 2% in our pricing, so even with the controversy over how eBay may claim credit, we can still make a reasonable profit. Our typical process in setting this up, is to set up the listing via the web browser, which usually requires some time before we can apply any promotions/multi-buy. It becomes easier to waiting for the 'promote your listings' option on the mobile app for us to set this up. This filters out listings to those that need promotions applied, so is an effective way of doing this. This has worked for years with no issues. The app has gone through some changes and this is now down via a scroll tool, where we have to scroll a bar to the left to select the 2% option. However, we have noticed a significant reduction in our income over the last few months. Upon investigation, we have found that the 2% we set up on listings for the last few months, have been overwritten by eBay and increased as high as 18.8% dynamic rate. This has mean that out calculations on our pricing have failed, with us not just losing any profit, but making a 6-7% on every sale. As if the typical eBay fees were not bad enough. We contacted eBay and filed a complaint. Our argument was that we had set up the 2% on inception, as with hundreds of our active listings, so it should be clear that we never intended for the ad rate to be increase to such an extortionate amount. This is likely an issue with the eBay app, given the changes over the last few months, but nonetheless, we should be refunded the excess fees as they were clearly increased in error without our knowledge. We spent considerable time providing order numbers so they could investigate and work out a solution. Their response? Since we made sales from the promotion, they are declining our credit request. It was very clear from the spelling mistakes and poor grammar just how little consideration was given to our complaint. No recognition of how much we may have lost due to fees increased without our knowledge. Not acknowledgement that the rate we selected using the mobile app may have been increased in error. There's is certainly no attempt to resolve the issue or consider a refund of the excessive fees. See attached. As a business generating £125k a year and growing, we had hoped our complaint would handled with some level of seriousness, but eBay has, for some time now, been developing a reputation of not caring about their business sellers. Given the indifferent response, our reply is this; We will be discontinuing all promoted add services until they give appropriate regard to our complaint. Let this be a warning to anyone using the eBay mobile app. The promotional tools cannot be trusted. Check all listings using the web browser and ensuring no listings are set up with dynamic ad rates if you don't want them to be. Promoted ads is a great way for eBay to make money, even if it costs you as a seller. Do not expect them to have your back if things go wrong. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
