Too high fees in campaign auctions, return 0.05% €600 costs, €8.95 revenue, pure rip-off? | Members help members

metzpower · 2026-06-30T13:19:38.658695Z

I complained to eBay about the following situation. It was preceded by an eBay-advertised campaign auction with €200 off for 4 weeks, with the prospect of up to 45% more revenue. It ended up costing me over €600 in fees after the auction, and as a result I had revenue of just +8.95. For me, that is a rip-off and, in my opinion, the fees were far too high and unfairly calculated. I sent the case to eBay with the following description and got the reply that, sorry, that's just how clicks are calculated. Here is the description of my case again so you can understand why I am now very disappointed and cannot understand why eBay gave me such a simplistic answer: You replied: The cost-per-click method ensures that your products appear more prominently in search results and potential buyers are addressed directly. Since this benefit has already been granted, a refund of the fees is not possible. Back then, since I had never tried using a campaign before, I activated a special offer from you: Shop Ads: €200 off (excl. VAT)* It gave the impression that it cost the user little or nothing and, above all, had an effect on revenue (up to 45%?) That is also why eBay offers such promotions, so that the seller – in this case me, metzpower (according to your designation one of the best eBay sellers, above average with 99.9% positive ratings, who has been around for a long time and has already shipped 270 packages this year alone) – benefits. What I did not know, however, was that the promotion was based on pure clicks with extremely high click fees, which in retrospect turns out to be completely unsuitable for a seller like me. I mainly sell low-priced items up to €10, which means a lot of work for little return, because fees for low selling prices are generally quite high. Often, after deducting all costs, I am left with only a profit of €2–3 or less, depending on what I paid for the item. Now came the eBay click promotion, which brings me no benefit at all, because my items would be clicked on automatically anyway by people searching thanks to the heading or the exact description. So the click rate is very high even without a campaign. Now I am being charged fees for every supposedly additional click (although I do not know how you document this or whether this is actually the case for the buyer). The worst thing about it is – and now I ask eBay to pay close attention to the result of the evaluation and explain to me how eBay can justify this: Under this promotion I was charged about €617 net (probably more), with actual revenue of only €8.95. That corresponds to a return of just 0.02%. When you look at that, you feel taken for a ride. What is fair about that? Of course eBay can claim that this is just how these campaigns work and that it may work for buyers of expensive cars or other high-value items. But for me, with up to 80 cents per click and this result, it is simply not fair and unjustified, because I would have received the clicks anyway. That is why I asked eBay to submit this to one of the managers again. In connection with showing that with an eBay seller with my profile – who generally saves eBay a lot of work and gladly pays the regular fees – they lured me into a trap here through promising advertising that only creates costs and no benefit at all (with revenue of €8.95 compared with €600 in fees, that can probably be said). I had hoped that eBay would at least refund part of the fees or issue a voucher. Unfortunately, that did not happen, as written above, tough luck. I am sure it is not in eBay's interest either to treat an eBay seller like me so badly and simply say: "You should have read the fine print better." I depend on every cent and put in a lot of effort to act in eBay's interests too, because eBay needs sellers like me. But I ask eBay not to treat me so badly and not to reduce success to clicks alone; also consider what the seller gets out of it. The clicks are a business for you, but for me they mean €600 in costs for zero benefit. I simply cannot understand why eBay continues to advertise such promotions with such a promise and has not met me halfway in any way. All customer service employees understood and said this is not okay, but their hands are tied, and unfortunately in my opinion it was not forwarded to the bosses and I was not helped even remotely in any way. Too bad — what does the community think, have you had similar experiences?

Discussions