eBay Explains Why It Charged Ad Fees Months Later

An eBay moderator explained last week why eBay had charged Promoted Listing ad fees in June for months-old orders. Quoting the team who handled the issue, she wrote the following:

“We recently discovered a system error which led to missed ads attribution and charging for certain sales promoted with the general campaign strategy that occurred from clicks across our Recommendations section. This error has been corrected as of May 8. If your account was one that was affected by this error we apologize for the delay in charging and any inconvenience this may have caused.”

EcommerceBytes had written about the problem and noted that some sellers had said eBay had never charged them for those sales, others had said they had previously paid ad fees on the orders and eBay was now double-billing them.

Sellers had expressed concern that some people would never learn of what they had believed was a double-billing issue, at which point a different eBay moderator had said that typically those kind of situations, eBay rectified them through automated credits, processed in batches. “Generally, the only time a seller needs to contact CS for a credit, is when the situation is specific to their account.”

Since the eBay moderator has since claimed no one was overbilled, that isn’t an issue in this case. Just like the ads themselves – as one seller commented on the EcommerceBytes Blog – there’s no transparency into how a buyer found a listing. “I have repeat buyers, who purchase the same item over and over again, yet sometimes, they are found to be “sold via promoted listings,” the skeptic wrote.