eBay Fails to Honor Coupons It Gave Buyers

[westernstargifts]

From EcommerceBytes Blog

eBay sent $10 coupons to shoppers over the past few days, but buyers say eBay is not honoring the coupons. (And no, it's not April Fool's Day just yet.) Buyers trying to redeem the coupons are frustrated that they are unable to redeem the coupons for their purchases. EcommerceBytes readers described the problem on the Ecommerce EKG board.

Some coupon holders discussing the problem on the eBay boards said they were deferring purchases until the coupon would work but, as one buyer said, were afraid someone else would purchase the item before they had a chance to: "I just got transferred to 3 different people in India, they are aware of the problem, but they are not guaranteeing it will be fixed in the next few hours. This stinks because I was purchasing a BIN with the coupon, but it wasn't working. Someone may end up getting the item, and I'll be out of luck."

In that case, the eBay customer service rep told her to contact the seller - despite the fact it would appear sellers would have no way to fix eBay's glitch. (This is a case of eBay CSR compounding problems for sellers - what are sellers supposed to tell these unhappy buyers?)

Other buyers were upset because they had purchased an item and were unable to redeem the coupon to help pay for the purchase: "Yes, I am having the same problem and a little peeved right now...considering I counted on it for the purchase I just made."

Another buyer said customer service told him "this may or may not get fixed.... waste more time by contacting your seller and ask them if you can have more time to pay and then keep trying every day to see if it will work, they are sorry but they can not give me another coupon code because..... GET THIS.... they are running out of funds to give out discounts!!!! Oh my God if I treated my customers like this...."

An EcommerceBytes reader described the problem in a letter to the editor, also reporting that an eBay customer service rep said eBay had run out of money to fund the coupon campaign:

Dear Ina,
Thought you would like this one. On 3/28, eBay sent me an email stating that I have a $10 coupon. Apparently I sold an item during a promo period and won the coupon. Great!!  

Well, today, 3/31, I attempted to use the coupon on an eBay purchase and received an error message stating that the coupon was invalid. I then contacted an eBay Customer Service representative and told her about the issue. The answer I received was very interesting, to say the least.

Apparently Customer Service was made aware of the issue concerning these coupons on 3/29. The problem is that more people were opted into this promo than was originally thought, and the budget for these coupons has already been depleted.  

Therefore the coupons will no longer work until the budget team can get more money into the coupon account. They are currently working on this, but don't know when the coupons will be reactivated. Meanwhile, my coupon expires on 04/06.  I was told to keep trying from time to time to see if it goes through.
Gotta love eBay and their 5-Star Service!!!
Bob

On Monday morning, an eBay moderator went into the discussion board and asked, "Can someone please send me an example of the coupon so I can help troubleshoot this?"

We've got a question in to eBay to find out the cause of the problem and whether eBay has plans to help pacify shoppers who had a bad buying experience as a result of its coupon redemption problem.

[sissiver]

There's this one, too:

http://consumerist.com/2014/04/01/ebay-issues-10-non-coupon-not-an-april-fools-day-joke/

[33nhl]

Hello

Every one

I recently received an email from ebay.ca with a coupon of some $90 plus to use to buy anything on ebay

I spent 20 munities today on hold to speak to customer service agent  and was told the email was fake and I should only be receiving emails from ebay.com

and I should forward the email to soopf ebay to further look at it.

Then was placed on hold for 5 minutes and was given the round around that it maybe the coupon is not activated and they don't know why I received it in the first place. and they will further look into it and they will call back.

This is a bunch of **bleep** in my opion coming from Ebay that is suppose to be so organized registered company.

I hope some one from ebay reads this and gets ther system in order

I recently been listing on ebay.ca and all emails I get come from ebay.ca  mean while the customer agent says I should be recieving them from ebay.com  and all the emails are fake.

EBAY get some people that know what they are doing, and forget always thinking of profits for the stock share holders.