Hello everyone....a couple of days ago, I, too, had been having trouble launching a %-off promotion, as I had done many times in the past, and when I couldn't get it done after about 6 or 8 tries, I finally called eBay Support (which took waiting nearly an hour for a call-back), and, after what ended up being a FORTY MINUTE discussion with the representative, I ended up just as frustrated as everyone else, who has been posting on here.
Ultimately, the representative DID confirm that this new 14-day ruling had recently been implemented, and there just seems to be NO way to get around it;...she said, "you'll just HAVE to wait the required 14 days, before you can put items on a promotional sale", and there seems to be NO way around it, that she could see.
To which, I said, "well, what about those sellers who relist their items often, like, every three to five days? Or, even 10 days? While they're waiting for the 14 days to elapse, what happens when they relist a few days later, does the 14-day-count start over??" And, she said, "yes, the count WOULD start over, at that point"....which I think is friggin' ridiculous!
I pointed out, and tried to explain that, if we typically relist items for anything less than 15 or 30 days' duration (for most of OUR items, we typically relist every THREE days; occasionally, five days), there is NO way that we could EVER meet the 14-day requirement, so we would NEVER be able to use the Markdown Manager ever again, and I think that's kind of like a discrimination of sorts, against those sellers who have these shorter-duration listings like us, while favoring sellers with the 30-day or 'Good Til Canceled' listings.
Sure, the 14-day rule might work out perfectly FINE, for those sellers whose listings have a longer, 30-day duration, OR those sellers whose listings don't seem to have ANY end-date, but, what about the other sellers like us (of which, I'd bet that most sellers are like us), who choose to relist every 3, 5, or even 10 days, to keep their listings as current as possible? Will we NEVER be able to run promotional sales, ever again?!
Of course, she then suggested that we could simply lower all of our prices, to "more-or-less" equal the %-off special we were going to run, but, I see a HUGE problem, with that...I just don't think a potential buyer, when they view your latest listing for an item, and the newly-lowered price that you're now asking for the item, THEY'RE not going to know that you did, INDEED, lower the price...no, they'll just assume that it was ALWAYS that price!
HOWEVER, if they happen to view your item, and see that the original price has been marked-through, reflecting a new, lowered price, AND that there is the notation, "10% off!" (or, whatever your discounted, %-off special pricing happens to be), then I think that buyers would be MUCH more likely to buy the item, then, when they see that the item is currently at a newly-discounted price, and for a short time only....don't you guys agree?
Anyway, eBay;...please, PLEASE change the Markdown Manager back to the way it was;...if we can never use it again for promotuional sales, because we can never meet the 14-day requirement, then that's just yet ANOTHER reason to finally get out of the eBay-bizz, after doing this stuff for over 18 years, as we have...
...Not to mention, the issue of eBay's penchant for taking not ONLY 10% of an item's sale price in a Final Value fee, but, ALSO keeping 10% of the shipping collected, too...WHY do they do that? Exactly WHO benefits from that, except eBay, trying to make themselves richer, at our expense? The BUYER certainly doesn't know that we always lose money, every single time we ship a package, because of the ridiculous 10% surcharge on the shipping!
Thanks,
earthangel57
