PowerSeller FVF discounts : a tale of woe

16/04/2008 at 16:59


Creative Commons License photo credit: Elaine with Grey Cats

You’d think that offering discounts to your biggest and most loyal customers would be a good thing, wouldn’t you? A thing that would make them want to spend more money with you, maybe even like you. But eBay have managed to turn their PowerSeller FVF discount scheme into one of the biggest fiascos I have seen in my eight years’ trading on the site.

First there was the Seller Dashboard, which didn’t roll out until more than a month after the new pricing scheme. Imagine if you asked *your* customers to guess the price they’d have to pay you. This should have been implemented at exactly the same time as the new pricing, even if that meant delaying the fee changes.

However, it gets worse. Imagine if you promised your customers a discount, and then charged them the full whack. That’s exactly what happened to me.

When the FVF discount scheme was announced, one of the first questions asked was how it would affect those of us who don’t trade on our national site: French residents who list on .co.uk, UK residents who list on .com, and so on. For a company that promotes international trade, it seemed a little bizarre that eBay didn’t think of this one for themselves. For a few days, Pinks made different statements. Some said that sellers would only be entitled to discounts on their national site, so if they sold elsewhere, they’d have to pay full price. Others said you’d get a discount based on your local site, but it would apply on sales from other sites too.

Then came the good news: an eBay employee, asked specifically about my account, said I would get the discount because it was based on your main trading area, in my case, eBay UK.

Have I got a discount? Dear reader, I have not. Nor have I got access to the seller dashboard. It seems French sellers stay French, even if they’re selling on eBay UK.

Now I know a lot of people are tempted to get protectionistic about this, but lets be logical: if I only get the discount by being UK-registered, that’s a pretty huge incentive to start lying about my location, put something in my listings about “your item may ship from my holiday home in France”, and get 35% off my fees. I won’t. But I would bet money that thousands of sellers from across the world who make their living on eBay UK are thinking of doing exactly that right now. I thought we’d largely cured the location misrepresentation problem, but this discount scheme might bring it all back again.

We asked eBay to comment on this more than a week ago, but they’ve been either unable or unwilling to clarify the position. I still don’t know whether I’m not entitled to the discount I was promised, or whether someone’s forgotten to push a button somewhere.

And it seems I’m not the only one with a problem. PowerSeller Lynne from Josordoni Collectables told me earlier today “I keep on checking and as of now the dashboard is still showing ‘not calculated’. My April invoice should have been available from yesterday, and that isn’t up yet either.”

A thread on the PowerSeller Board [PS login required] suggests that Lynne’s problem is far from unique. Some sellers are having the dashboard waver between ‘not calculated’ and ‘no discount’; some are told ‘no discount’ when they have four green ticks indicating they’re entitled to the discount; others are seeing their figures drop at the last minute, and inevitably this raises questions about their accuracy.

I loved the idea of this scheme when it was announced; rewarding good sellers seemed exactly what eBay needs. But in reality, the whole thing has become a farce that even eBay staff don’t seem to understand. It’s causing good sellers an immense amount of frustration and worry. It’s going to encourage location misrepresentation. This half-ready scheme should never have been launched until it was properly ready: sometimes, it feels like policy is being made up as we go along.