The free Adcommerce that wasn't
8/04/2009 at 09:45
“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” I say this a lot about things connected with eBay, but it’s about time I learned to take my own advice.
Last month, like many sellers on eBay UK, I received a voucher for £50 of free play on eBay’s Adcommerce, the new in-search advertising program. Not to rehash all the discussion we had at that time, my thought on Adcommerce was that I had £50 of free advertising; even if they weren’t providing me with any conversion data, I would at least have a play with it, because at current click-through rates, my £50 would last me until somewhere around Christmas.
Dear Reader, how wrong I was. This morning, I received an invoice from eBay Adcommerce for €10.42. I mentioned this to Chris: don’t you have a credit as well? he asked. No, I don’t. We compared invoices: his has the total due balanced by an equal credit. Nothing to pay. Mine has no credit.
I wish I could act surprised by this, but eBay and I have a long, long history of their promotions just not working (long-time readers of the PowerSeller board might remember the “free anchor shop” they charged me £450 to have). There’s probably some glitch associated with me being in France and eBay being all over the shop, so I just mention it, in case anyone else is in the same position and gets charged for something they’d been told was free.
whirly says
10:21 am on 08/04/2009
Sorry but…..
Currently lying on a sun lounger overlooking the Med.
Lisa says
11:22 am on 08/04/2009
That’s terrible, Sue. Ebay doesn’t play fair. In the short term, they win. Long term: good sellers will keep leaving as new opportunities come along and Ebay will fail. Sorry that happened to you.
John says
11:57 am on 08/04/2009
Ouch!
€10.42 seems a huge bill anyway, my ‘free’ clicks came to less than 50p.
My Ad on the German site still takes a half day off every so often.
The ‘personal’ reply promised by AdC Support has still not been received.
BTW when I tried an Ad with my username as a keyword as advocated by Chris it went into ‘pending’ mode. So I deleted it. I already have it in a dozen or so listing titles so I guess I am already covered.
Sue Bailey says
12:11 pm on April 8th, 2009
@John: and it’s only up to 31st March!
Total 42806 impressions ~ 81 clicks ~ avg CPC 11c + tax
The stupid thing is, if there were ANY sort of conversion data, I could probably justify that to myself. As there isn’t *and* they’ve now annoyed me, I’ve suspended my ads and I doubt I’d bother going back.
John says
12:30 pm on 08/04/2009
Sue – I am envious of your CTR!
101,650 imps, 30 clicks, avg CPC 1.37p + tax.
The important thing here is that you must have a memorable logo. Where else can I buy 101,650 chances for less than 50p?
John Pemberton says
1:19 pm on 08/04/2009
I never got a voucher
ebuyerfb says
1:59 pm on 08/04/2009
Reminds me of the time I tried out Seller Assistant Pro free for one month. I cancelled about a day after my trial started but got stuck with paying for 2 months of it. Every time I tried to dispute the charge I just got an email telling me how to cancel it even though I’d already canceled.
whirly says
10:00 am on 09/04/2009
You can have mine for 10p.