A few sellers reported they had not received insertion-fee credits eBay owed them, which appeared to due to a glitch. The discussion board thread where they reported the problem shows how difficult it is to get such issues resolved.
"With my eBay store I'm allotted 250 free auction listings per month and then after that it costs $0.25 per listing. If the item sells the $0.25 has always been credited back to my account.
"Last week I listed 260 auctions at $0.25 apiece and 75% of them sold...I haven't received a single credit for any of them. Did eBay take away the auction fee credit or is this a technical issue that is being worked on at the moment?"
Nine minutes later, a seller replied that they, too, hadn't received the hundreds of dollars in insertion fee credits eBay owed them:
"I am experiencing the same problem with auctions. I have listed thousands of auctions this month and not one single insertion fee credit was received after the item sold. I am out hundreds of dollars in insertion fee credits. I have contacted eBay several times about the issue and they keep telling me it has been escalated to their technical team but they acknowledge the problem. However, no resolution has been provided to date and they will not give me a timeframe as to when the issue will be fixed."
The original poster said eBay customer service (through Facebook) required the seller to provide all item numbers affected by the issue - "so I'm supposed to go through all 260+ auctions and copy and paste the item numbers to give to them...," the seller wrote.
The following day, an eBay moderator responded, writing, "In this scenario, the best course of action is to continue reaching out to customer service so they can work with the technical team and for further steps regarding credits. I have confirmed there are no open ALERTS at this time."
It's worth noting that multiple sellers must report problems to customer service - and that customer service must then report the issue to eBay's technical team - before an alert is created.
A third seller wrote about an issue on October 10th related to insertion fee credits for items listed using "sell similar":
"I have been selling on eBay for 27 years using the same strategy of "sell similar". However, over the past 10 days I've been told by eBay that when you are over your allotted amount (in my case 250 auctions style) and you list as a "sell similar" item that ultimately sells you are NOT entitled to the insertion fee credit. Like many of us I list most of my items as "sell similar"."
The original poster (OP) replied, "I always use sell similar for every single item that I list for sale and I've always been credited the insertion fees...all the way up until this month."
Two days later on October 12th, the OP reported that they received a credit - for a single listing - "so I got credited a total of $0.25 out of the 261 auctions that I had listed ... Sigh ...this is just getting stupid."
Today, however, the OP reported eBay credited their account for all of the remaining insertion fee credits eBay owed them. "Check your accounts to see if you have received them too."
Two weeks may or may not sound like a long time to get the issue resolved, but the struggle to get answers from customer service is frustrating. If the seller hadn't been persistent, would eBay have credited their account? (And did it credit all sellers who were impacted but may not have noticed?) And, will the same problem occur for the month of October?
eBay Glitch Results in Missing Credits for Sellers
by: Rexford