TAKEOFF20 Promotion - Invoicing / fee question

[kallzeh]

Hi all

I'm a new business seller and recently participated in my first side-wide promotion (TAKEOFF20) in which I made several sales, for which I believe the coupon is used. I have a few questions around this that I hope a more experienced seller can help me with:

1. How can you actually tell if someone used the coupon for a sale? It doesn't appear to me as a discount in the Order Details screen.

2. I'll have paid fees based on the pre-discount price, will eBay refund the fees based on the lower sale price?

3. When and how will I pay my 'share' of the discount?

Any help much appreciated. The available guidance on this matter seems to be quite poor and it's not something you can easily Google.

Thanks

Callum

[rainbowtrax]

I can't answer 1.

2. No, you pay fees on the full amount. Tbh, I think that's why they make it so complex in paying you the full amount then taking your share of the discount back at a later date. Doing it this way means you pay more in fees, as you've noticed. Most people don't notice.

3. They bill you and take it further down the line. Don't worry, they won't forget!

[valueaddedresource]

@kallzeh  you've hit on all the reasons why I typically do not recommend for sellers to take part in these eBay sale events.

1.) You can't tell if/when the coupon has been used. The buyer may receive the discount on their side but you will see the order come through at full price (because that's what you pay the fee on) and eBay provides absolutely no reporting for you to determine how many times the coupon was used, let alone which specific orders it was used on.

2.) You agreed to pay the fee on the full amount by signing up to be part of this promotion - there will be no refund to.

3.) eBay will invoice you one lump sum for what they say you owe as your portion of this promotion at a later date, typically ~60 days after the sale event ends.  Again, eBay does not provided any kind of breakdown or reporting to show how many sales had the coupon applied, let alone which sales they were - they will simply tell you that you owe a certain amount and you have to trust them that it is correct.

As you can see from all of that, there is absolutely no way for sellers to be able to determine Return On Investment (ROI) for participating in these event and no way to verify that eBay is charging you accurately for your portion.

[kallzeh]

Thank you both for your answers, that's really helpful and a shame that eBay's solution is quite barebones. I'll feed it back to my account manager, for whatever good that'll do.

I also noticed that my items included in the promotion were displayed differently to users than other stores. My lead photo didn't have the details of the discount above it nor was there the green text showing what they could purchase the item for with the coupon applied. Any thoughts on what might be causing that?

Thanks

[kallzeh]

One further thought I've had.. will eBay refund the seller's share of the discount if a buyer returns an item?

[fashion*fruit]

I do use these site-wide coupons and find them useful for boosting UK sales. I’ve been running them for about 8 months now, and I usually pick the ones that fit best with my own in-house promotions schedule. As far as I know, they don’t work for international buyers.

As for your questions:

1. As others have said, you can’t see in real time which buyer used a coupon. The reporting is very poor. The coupon page updates after 24 hours (sometimes longer) and only then shows performance. You’ll see Total Sales Value, Coupon Discount Value, Seller Share, and the last date used. For me, as a low-volume seller, it’s easy enough to guess which buyer used the coupon, but I imagine it’s much harder if you’re selling in high volumes.

2. Again as others have said, you still pay final value fees on the full transaction price, not the discounted coupon price.

3. eBay usually bills you for your share of the coupon funding around 60 days after the transaction.

For your question regarding refunds. If a buyer returns an item, you won’t be billed for your share of the coupon. Since eBay only charges you about 60 days later, returns are normally processed before that window ends, and the transaction is never counted as part of the promotion.

In my experience, eBay’s billing has always been accurate. I track sales using the total sales value, and the billed portion (Seller Share) has always been correct.

All of this has been discovered through my own observations and tracking.  I too was surprised at how poor the reporting is from Ebay's end and something they could so easily improve upon. Ideally, sellers should be able to run a report linking coupons to specific transactions.

That said, I still think site-wide coupons are worthwhile as buyers will likely expect to see more and more sellers running them as ebay advertise them on the home page. 

Lastly, and probably one of the most important benefits is that, with eBay typically funding about 40% of the discount, it works out cheaper than running the entire discount yourself.