Promo fees - what a con!

[curvyu]

We've sold a high value item recently and ebay have charged £274 for a promo fee. We have listed on ebay for 15+ years and have never seen an option for this promo fee. they say that we opted for it when we listed the item originally and that it cannot be refunded as its our fault that we chose to have it.

Can anyone tell me how we get this promo fee back as its a considerable amount of money to lose? ebay say the only way to get it back is to contact the buyer, get them to cancel the sale, return the item to us, relist it and sell it back to them again!!

They don't have the option to just cancel the fee and refund us the money.

Has anyone else suffered this ? 

[jonatjonatjonat]

I assume it’s one of the diamond rings.

in which case it sounds like you had chosen to list with a general promotion which charges an additional percentage on the sale.

of course eBay won’t refund you the fees. If you opted into the promotion (inadvertently or otherwise) you’ve paid for a service. Someone clicked on your ad and someone then went onto purchase the product. I’ve never heard of eBay accidentally charging someone for a promotion.

i would look in the link below to check no other listings are being promoted

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sh/ads/dashboard/campaigns

[pillarboxred]

Some "options" are default so you have to choose to deselect them. Even if 1% of sellers, (new users or sellers in a hurry or trying a different selling format) make a mistake and don't deselect the "option", eBay makes useful money from 1% of millions of sales.

The upside in your  case is that you made a sale at a price of  more than 0.99p with free postage. That's some achievement these days. Any auction house or jeweller is going to take a large chunk for selling an expensive jewel: I think >40%, all told, and eBay is gradually aligning itself with the market at large although the rationale for online selling is it is more efficient, quicker and cheaper than old-style stone shops and antiques fairs.

[jonatjonatjonat]

As far as I know - Promoted Listings are Opt In when listing.

[pillarboxred]

So one thought and I've not experienced this issue but I have been caught out by other "enhancements" which became defaults. It stings when that happens.