Discount promotion negated by increased item price

[aland70]

What's the point of a discount promotion if a seller just increases their prices to negate it?

I had an item in my basket yesterday which I added pre-discount offer becoming active.

Today the item has increased in price and if the 20% promotional discount is applied, it mysteriously equals the price from yesterday.

If the sellers are not liable for the difference in price that the offer gives (I believe it's being funded by ebay) then surely this is just profiteering and extra money for the seller?  The buyer gains nothing but the seller does.

[tobiasd4]

Adding item to basket does not commit you to buy,

not sure why you would wait until today to pay.

Sellers can change price at any time.

Seller receives full amount, ebay pay the difference.

[aland70]

I added the item after having been lured by the banner offer.

The discount was not applied so I waited. (My suspicion was the banner went live slightly before the offer did.)

I returned today and the offer was now live but the seller had raised his price to negate the discount.

I was now being offered a discount off an inflated price that took the purchase price back to the pre-offer level.

As we've both noted, this offer costs the seller nothing so why inflate the price if not for greed?

All it's acheived is putting me off from purchasing from this seller due to their shady behaviour in manipulatiing the buyer's incentive.

[tobiasd4]

But you didn't pay for it.

[red_magpie]

That's a very interesting question. Unless someone else knows otherwise, I think it's the first time this issue has been raised here?

I don't know the answer, and without knowing the terms of the offer I can't make any suggestions.

However, this is yet another reminder that buying from unknown sellers on eBay is NOT like the shops. In shops, fraudulent or misleading promotional offers are against the law and can be reported to trading standards. Phoney discounts based on manipulation of prices are not allowed. EBay however is unregulated and takes no responsibility for the description or pricing of anything sold here.

[aland70]

It a banner promotion: https://www.ebay.co.uk/b/Timed-Offers/bn_7116144158?_trkparms=%26clkid%3D2612236857917733466

I did search on discounts and saw a thread from a couple of years ago where a seller questioned how ebay could arbitrarily discount their prices and the answer received was thet ebay was funding the discount and it would cost the seller nothing.

The seller of the item I had in my basket is a longterm member (15yrs) and very active (350k+ feedback).

If I hadn't had the item in my basket from yesterday I'd have been none the wiser had I looked at the item for the first time today.

Assuming it's not against the rules it still seems a dishonest move by the seller and I'm surprised ebay allows it considering it's them funding it.