eBay Promotion Not Working

[machinator248]

I scheduled a promotion for this weekend for 15% off everything in my store.  This morning the promotion kicked off and is shown at the header of my store but nothing is marked down.  Everything in my store is listed as eligible for the sale per the promotion link but it's all listed as full price.  I tried shutting down the old promotion and starting a new one but the same thing.  

Is anyone else having this problem?

[mynewfindstore]

I ended a markdown last night (or tried to) but I ended up just going in and changing all the prices so the darn thing would end because I wanted to start a new one for Black Friday, etc.  The new one started and only SOME of the items are marked down.....when you go to add new listings, it says "on sale" for quite a few of them....all grayed out but those items are not actually marked down!  When will that happen?  I added more this morning and they say "pending markdown" all grayed out.  So will the ones that say "on sale" and grayed out be actually put on sale sometime??  This is a huge problem.....missing out on sales!

[mynewfindstore]

So I fixed the markdown problem and it was a pain!  The sale I created on Friday went active but some of the items never got marked down for well over 24 hours.  I didn't think they would ever get marked down so I removed them from that markdown and tried to re-add them.  That did not work so this morning, I created a second markdown and added all the items that wouldn't work on the first markdown.  Happy to say, I FINALLY have all the items marked down that I wanted to in the first place!  

My theory:  The software could not handle the volume of items I was adding to the first markdown due to all the sellers creating markdowns right now.  Maybe in the future, it is better to create multiple markdowns in smaller batches.  My first one was originally almost 500 items....must have been too much for the system to handle even though it says you can have that many!

[autopiacarcare]

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@mynewfindstore wrote:

So I fixed the markdown problem and it was a pain!  The sale I created on Friday went active but some of the items never got marked down for well over 24 hours.  I didn't think they would ever get marked down so I removed them from that markdown and tried to re-add them.  That did not work so this morning, I created a second markdown and added all the items that wouldn't work on the first markdown.  Happy to say, I FINALLY have all the items marked down that I wanted to in the first place!  

My theory:  The software could not handle the volume of items I was adding to the first markdown due to all the sellers creating markdowns right now.  Maybe in the future, it is better to create multiple markdowns in smaller batches.  My first one was originally almost 500 items....must have been too much for the system to handle even though it says you can have that many!

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@mynewfindstore  - I'm glad that you were eventually able to get things sorted out and I hope your markdowns performed well for you over the weekend.

Your theory is not a bad one, but I will say over the last 2 months that I have been dealing with this issue I have tried everything I can think of to test out ways to get better performance and not have these delays.  I've tried promotions with 500 items and promotions with as few as 9 items, "start now" vs scheduled start times, a wide variety of start and end times/days (thinking some days/times might be more or less busy than others), checking each item to add to the sale individually vs adding them via a list of skus/item numbers, creating a brand new promotion vs copying an old one, etc.

Sometimes it would work better and I'd think I was on to something, only to have the next time I tried to do it the same way encounter long delays again.  Over 2 months of testing out theories and strategies, the results were never consistent enough for me to be able to definitively say any of it actually makes a difference.

I had a markdown sale with only 30 items in it take over 6 hours to start on Friday, which is just as long as it took for a markdown with 400+ items.

Sadly, my conclusion at this point is that sometimes it just works better than others and there is nothing we can really do to try to increase our odds of having markdowns actually start and end when we want them to.

[mynewfindstore]

Unfortunately the markdowns did not help sales much at all.  In fact, this weekend was one of the poorest we have ever had mainly due to the buyers who wanted to cancel transactions!  I got THREE buyers this weekend who could not seem to read what size the items were even though the sizes were clearly stated in THREE parts of each listing!  WHY ME???  UGH!

[dogsrus3]

I reported this problem early this am as I started a sale early this am for Cyber Monday.  It was processing 2 hours after it was supposed to start.  Called and was told it "usually" takes 24 hours for it to cycle through.  That is so not true; I run sales all the time and it never takes more than a few minutes.  I guess that is the standard response because I called 2 hours ago and got the same answer along with "I'll pass this along to the technical team but we aren't aware of any issues".  

I just got off the phone with them again and same response....I have a feeling the technical department is again overwhelmed.  Let's see....I still haven't finished modifying all my listings from the October 15th debacle from the technical department and now this.  Just who is in the Technical Department and what are they doing? 

[sunset-painter]

I ran a sale this past weekend that was SUPPOSED to stop Sunday night at 10:00 pm PST.  It's still running and there's nothing I can see to do to make it stop.  I sold a pair of boots that got the discount even though the sale was over.  Everything in the sale is still marked down!  And to top it off, there were some things that sold that WERE NOT in the markdown sale that got discounted anyway.  I am a little more than ticked off.  I don't think I'll be running any more sales in the near future.

[autopiacarcare]

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@dogsrus3 wrote:

I reported this problem early this am as I started a sale early this am for Cyber Monday.  It was processing 2 hours after it was supposed to start.  Called and was told it "usually" takes 24 hours for it to cycle through.  That is so not true; I run sales all the time and it never takes more than a few minutes.  I guess that is the standard response because I called 2 hours ago and got the same answer along with "I'll pass this along to the technical team but we aren't aware of any issues".  

I just got off the phone with them again and same response....I have a feeling the technical department is again overwhelmed.  Let's see....I still haven't finished modifying all my listings from the October 15th debacle from the technical department and now this.  Just who is in the Technical Department and what are they doing? 

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@dogsrus3- I've been chasing that bone for over 2 months and have gotten nowhere with eBay on this issue.

I have been directly told multiple times by eBay staff here on the message boards that this is not a "technical issue" but rather a "site security issue".  They say the processing time is for them to review listings for violations or issues and that processing times up to 24 hours are considered "normal operating experience."  They will not consider anything under 24 hours as a problem to be reported.

No amount of explaining how these delays are negatively impacting sellers and that they are not the normal experience sellers have had in the past has gotten us anywhere with eBay.

[thedesignerrack]

Second verse same as the first...

Who ever is responsible for this selling tool (Marketing) should be fired!!! On Black Friday we had placed all of our inventory (7000+ items) on sale ranging from 15-50% off. The sale (Promotions = Sales Event + Markdown) was to run the four days from 11/28 at 11:30pm and ending at 12/2 11:30pm. As of this morning (12/3) at 9:00am MST the promotions are still showing active. If we pay for a service (Ebay Store at a price of $299.95 per month) and Ebay fails to deliver on what we are paying for shouldn't they refund the charge? We missed out on sales on Black Friday as the promotion did not show-up until 10:00pm on 11/29 instead of 11/28 at 11:30pm (22.5hrs delayed). Now, we are still discounting items that should not be on sale and selling them at a discount when we were not planning on discounting. Shouldn't Ebay compensate us for an item that is sold at a discount when the promotion was to have been expired? Ebay has no problem charging Sellers 1.5x's FVF's when their metrics are high so how about Ebay hold themselves to the same disciplinary actions.

Here is a new concept... How about NO system updates/changes in the 4th Qtr..... EVER!!!

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@thedesignerrack wrote:

Second verse same as the first...

Here is a new concept... How about NO system updates/changes in the 4th Qtr..... EVER!!!

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Was in IT for most of my adult life, this is actually very common amongst large organizations.  No idea why Ebay won't implement it!  Of course testing is common amongst large organizations too LOL.