eBay Ends SHOPANDSAVE Discount Early, Leaving Buyers Looking To Sellers To Make It Right
Buyers have been left in the lurch as an eBay-funded discount offer has apparently ended early and some sellers say they are being pressured to make up the difference.
eBay has been advertising a SHOPANDSAVE coupon code, offering a tiered discount based on total spend that was supposed to run through March 31st on many sellers' listings without any direct opt in or permission from the seller.
Sellers usually don't mind being included in eBay-funded coupons like this, as it can help to spur sales at no additional cost to them, but what happens if eBay doesn't hold up their end of the deal?
While the offer was supposed to be good through midnight on March 31, buyers in the eBay community forum report the SHOPANDSAVE code stopped working days before the deadline, leaving questions about whether eBay intentionally ended the offer early or if there is a technical issue preventing use of the coupon.
Coupon gone days earlier than advertised
The coupon code (shopandsave) which was advertised to end on April 1st is all of sudden gone and not available on any of the sellers items that it was previously, reached out to a seller asking if he ended it for his store and he said no, anyone have any idea why that happened?
Was going to purchase two pretty expensive items and $45 off each was just a bonus that is now no longer there for no reason.
Some sellers say confused buyers who didn't realize this was an eBay-funded coupon are asking them to make it right and honor the discount any way, or simply canceling orders once they realize the discount was not applied.
coupons
Sold an item this am and buyer said she could not redeem her coupon so would I please refund the $5 for the coupon. I do not use coupons, I did not offer a coupon, I know nothing about coupons.
This is the second time this has happened. The first time was a very expensive antique basket, I lost the sale.
The basket buyer was very frustrated that she could not redeem her coupon. In the case of the basket I offered to send her a refund equal to the coupon but she was so angry and frustrated she canceled the sale.
So would someone tell me what is going on with the coupons. I have not authorized ebay to offer any coupons on my behalf, I do not offer coupons. So what is up with the coupons.
I've seen coupons applying to our listings recently, generated by eBay not us, and if a customer asked about it, I'd refer them to eBay as it has nothing to do with us.
It does put you in a tricky spot when they make the purchase and then complain, but I'd be tempted to cancel and block, not because of the $5, but because they're likely to just be problem customers anyways.
Not everyone can afford the cancellation (or if you cancel due to a reason that wouldn't give you a defect, it could be more trouble if that buyer decides to make it trouble), so I understand if you'd prefer to just give them the partial refund or try to placate them instead, though.
In another forum thread on this issue, users say they've received confusing information from support - some were told eBay ended the discount early on purpose but eBay community staff also posted to the thread saying ticket had been created for the issue, indicating it was being treated as a technical problem.
Did ebay end the SHOPANDSAVE coupon early? it was supposed to be valid until April 1st
I was building my cart last night since a lot of the items I was interested in had the SHOPANDSAVE coupon displayed next to the buy it now option. It says the coupon would be applied during checkout.
Now none of the items have the coupon and when I manually write it during checkout, a message appears: "Unfortunately, this code no longer works. Please continue with your order." I guess I'm not buying anything now. It'll stay in my cart until another promotion in the future.
Same here it was there the night before and then gone it was two expensive items would of saved $70, reached out the seller and he said he had no idea it was just gone, what happened?
Kyle@eBay responded:
thanks for checking in. It looks like we just barely got a ticket opened for this earlier today! ALERT15850
I'll get this added to the tech issue board momentarily.
And he did in fact add it to the ongoing technical issues post in the community, which again would indicate eBay is treating this as a technical issue rather than an intentional change.
However, eBay-funded coupon offers often include language stating the end date or "while supplies last" to provide cover if they should choose to end the discount early.
Unfortunately, it appears that eBay has deleted the page which hosted the terms and conditions of the SHOPANDSAVE offer (the URL now just redirects to the eBay home page), so it's impossible to see if the fine print for this specific discount also included the "while supplies last" verbiage.
Either way, eBay has bought buyers and sellers in a tough spot by not honoring the coupon through the full date advertised.
That kind of negative user experience is just one of many reasons previous eBay CEO Devin Wenig was heavily criticized for running frequent eBay-funded sitewide discounts in 2018 - 2019.
Those 15-20% off flash sales proved to be a double edged sword - once buyers get used to receiving discounts, they'll often wait for a sale before making a purchase, creating "one and done" or only occasional buying patterns.
Wenig's strategy was considered such a failure that current CEO Jamie Iannone explicitly distanced himself from it when he took the helm, telling investors in 2021:
We've discontinued legacy tactics that led to low value, infrequent or one and done buyers. Our buyer base is starting to evolve based on this strategy. These high-volume buyers are growing compared to a year-ago and their spend on eBay is growing even faster. This higher-quality mix of buyers increases value for sellers and will lead to improved health of our ecosystem over the long-term...
..This is something that I laid out last July when we talked about the tech-led reimagination as being focused on turning buyers into lifelong enthusiasts on the platform and moving away from the tactics that we had in 2019 what was really just about the number of active buyers even low value buyers or one and done buyers.
However, despite those early assurance of having abandoned the practice, Iannone has increasingly turned back to these kinds of legacy discounting tactics to try to goose GMV and active buyer stats in recent quarters - with similar negative results.
Liz Morton
If this wasn't eBay intentionally baking in wiggle room to end the discount early and is instead actually a technical issue as community staff have indicated, that doesn't reflect very positively on eBay either.
Back in 2019, eBay faced activist investor pressure from Elliott Management calling for changes at the company, with constant site glitche and technical misexecution called out explicitly as one of the major problems plaguing the platform.
Six years later, it's shocking just how much of Elliott's "Enhancing eBay" plan still rings true today.
Wenig infamously said at eBay Open 2018 that technical glitches are unacceptable and really pissed him off. Interestingly, eBay has since blocked that YouTube video from being embedded or shared on other sites, but you can still watch it here.
There've been a lot of site glitches recently on eBay. What are you guys doing to get rid of them?
Here's the simple answer - unacceptable, unacceptable. And we're making a lot of changes. When you make changes there are times that things happen but that's not an excuse and it's not ok with me and this summer in particular there have been a number of issues that directly impacted sellers like people not being able to see their view counts and a few other things and it's just not ok.
I'm extremely proud of a lot of things we've done, I'm not proud of that and in fact I hold my team accountable and it's not important, it's an internal matter but, we made changes to people and teams because shipping product that isn't ready is not ok. It's not ok with me and it's not ok with my team.
So the short answer is it's not like we don't get it. We are making a lot of changes and I want to make those changes, we need to make those changes, but making changes and then having to back up and fix things is not cool and I totally get it. Most of the issues from this summer have now been remedied but I was pissed off.
Mazen Rawashdeh was Chief Infrastructure and Architecture Officer at the time, but somehow managed to escape the wrath of a "pissed off" Wenig.
He was then promoted to Chief Technology Officer in 2019, after a brief period where he co-led Core Product & Tech along with Mohan Patt when Steve Fisher was being shuffled from CTO to SVP Payments "in order to focus on a personal matter."
Patt and Fisher both left the company, but Rawashdeh remains as CTO while the site continues to experience by near daily technical problems and operational challenges.
If investors are not concerned about the return to legacy discounting tactics driving one and done or low value buyers, they should at least be concerned with the fact that eBay does not appear to be able to fulfill advertised discount promises either due to technical misexecution or unethical "rug pulling" ending the offer early and leaving sellers to deal with the fallout of the negative buying experience eBay has created.
Did you miss out on the eBay SHOPANDSAVE coupon or have buyers asking you to make up the difference from eBay's unfulfilled discount promise? Let us know in the comments below!
