tl;dr = eBay can consider a fixed value (certain $ off an item) as allowing a "free" product and give a policy violation for that.
eBay has told me they won't talk to me about this anymore, so this post is NOT meant to get a staff member response. I just want to share my experience with other sellers.
I received a bunch of JIF coupons for $11.50 off any single item. I wasn't interested in using them, so I decided to sell them. Coupons are not at all a focus of my business.
The eBay Coupons Policy includes:
• Sellers can list up to 25 coupons worth $100 in total per 30-day period, though certain restrictions apply.
• The following types of coupons aren't allowed: Coupons for "free" products.
On 1/3, I received the following email titled "Your listing was removed: Coupons policy". It said because I might not have been aware of it, just to follow the policy in the future.
Whoops - my mistake. I didn't know about this policy, and I listed all of them (about $130) in 2 lots at the same time. I think the policy can be interpreted different ways, but this isn't really the issue of my post. I just decided to interpret it the most limiting way that I could. (Is the 30 day period from the date of the listing? Does it follow from the date of a sale? Is the $100 value the face value of the coupons? Is it the sales price of my listing?)
To avoid another policy violation regardless of an eBay employee's interpretation, I planned on the most restrictive interpretation of this policy. On 1/3, I made sure no coupons were for sale. I'd wait 31 days, then list less than $100 in face value of coupons, with a sales price below that and free shipping. When some sold, I'd want 31 days after the sale before listing the remaining small number of them.
31 days later, on Feb 3, I listed $34.50 in face value of coupons in one listing and $57.50 in another. Total face value was $92. Free shipping. On Feb 16, I received an identical email to the one above that I got on Jan 3. It said since I'd gotten a notice before, this was my "final warning" and that if I violated the policy again I'd get a 3-day restriction. (Based on reading other sellers' posts about surprise violations, I think there's also some risk of being banned for life from eBay, but maybe that's only after a few more violations.) Seemed to me like an eBay employee thought $34.50 + $57.50 was more than $100. 🤦 Maybe they weren't good at math or were tired and did something like think it's close to $40 + $60 but then the $4.50 and $7.50 go over, or maybe they used a calculator and hit the wrong buttons.
I chatted with Ask eBay on Twitter to explain that I purposely made sure to only list $92.00 of face value for a total selling price of $61.48. No matter how you added it up, it was less than $100. The representative told me the reason I had at least gotten the most recent violation was because my coupons allowed "free" products. I explained these coupons do NOT give a free item. They do not say that you can redeem it for a free jar of peanut butter. They allow $11.50 off a single product. I explained that even in my listing, I mentioned that all the stores around me sell the twin packs of 80 oz containers for $11.98, so this would reduce the price to $0.48. The representative said that would be fine, but that there are JIF products available that cost less than $11.50, and the customer "could" use the coupon on those to get a free item. 😲
Sure, they could, but the policy to me seems to say the coupon can't say "get a free X", which mine doesn't say. I asked if that meant that practically all fixed value coupons were a violation of policy. I asked about a $2 McDonald's coupon, because at least near me you "can" order a small french fry or a drink and it's less than that, so it would be free. The representative said that would be OK, because that was different, and it wasn't for a free item. 🤦 I again told him my coupon wasn't for a free item, and that it clearly said it was a fixed value off of a single item. I went around in circles, and gave up.
My gut reaction was still that a representative miscalculated. Surely it couldn't be that it "could" be used to get a free item. So, I decided to talk with eBay for Business on Facebook. They said the coupon was for a free item, and that them and eBay wouldn't respond anymore to my questions about this.
🤷♂️ Fine. Again, coupons aren't really part of my business. I just had these and wanted to sell them. I just won't sell any coupons anymore, because I don't want to risk another bogus violation causing a restriction. No big loss. It's just so frustrating. I still don't know if I was given the actual reason for why the second violation was given, or if the representatives didn't want to admit the coupons were less than $100 and grasped onto something else.
Your mileage may vary.
I also get that bringing $11.98 down to $0.48 is a 96% discount. But, it's not "free" and they shouldn't be using that terminology if they care about that. But, again, what they told me is the discount to $0.48 isn't the issue, but that there's JIF products priced below $11.50.
