eBay began incorrectly charging sellers insertion fees this month simply for revising an existing listing, something that should not incur costs. A seller posted the issue on August 1st, and an eBay moderator confirmed it was a technical issue.
The original poster said an eBay customer service rep promised to credit the fees that eBay had incorrectly charged, but the seller said they were never credited. That post got eBay’s attention.
An eBay moderator confirmed on the morning of August 4th that eBay had issued a sitewide alert on late Saturday (August 2nd) under ALERT16099 “for insertion fee’s being charged for revising the listings, though the seller has free listings left on their account.”
eBay also updated its Tech Issues thread pinned to the Technical Issues board to add the issue on August 4th. The updated reads, “Insertion fee is charged for revising the listings, though the seller has free listings left on their account – ALERT16099.”
However, as an astute seller noted on the discussion board, it was irrelevant if sellers had free listings left on their account: “Even when a seller has free listings left, they should not be charged for a listing fee when they simply revise a listing without doing any listing upgrades. And if they did that, they would be charged for the listing upgrades not the listing fee.”
The fact the alert incorrectly indicates eBay should be charging insertion fees for revisions is somewhat concerning.
The “glitch” isn’t new – as we documented last year, overbilling has occurred in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2024 – and it may have occurred on additional occasions.
It’s unknown whether eBay automatically fixes the billing error by crediting sellers’ accounts, or if eBay requires sellers to report it.
These are not glitches.
Nothing happens on eBay without someone writing the code for its to happen.
Its part of eBay’s long term efforts to bill sellers for services that they did not order in hopes that seller will not notice the charges.
If sellers do notice the charges many will simply pay them rather than face eBay’s intentionally useless customer service.
Yeah, sure you may get “X” amount of charges removed, but you’ll have to call them multiple times, they will phone tag with you, hand up on you, claim they need “X” amount of time to research it, tell you that they will contact you by phone, email or eBay message in 24, 48 or 72 hours and other techniques designed to get rid of you.
The move to Managed Payments was in part to prevent you from contesting any of these charges, such as disputing them on your credit card, as they are now deducted from your funds. Back eBay earned themselves several chargebacks for putting gallery plus fees on random listings of mine.