eBay free postage CLD runs amok

If you've ever made a mistake and had a customer giving you grief, spare a thought for eBay 'Pinks' today who have had to face sellers on the community boards. Almost halfway through a two day cheap listing period, and sellers are still being charged full listing fees instead of the 5p listing fee including a gallery picture. "Free postage" will be the message to buyers this Christmas, but sellers who have opted to offer it have found their eBay invoice hasn't got the promised savings.

The new version of the Sell Your Item form has allowed some sellers to list automatically receiving the promotion pricing, but for those using the old version or listing tools such as TurboLister have been charged the normal price. Whilst eBay have been working hard all day to produce a fix they announced at lunch time that all affected sellers would be issued refunds.

The refund process will begin once the promotion period is over but could take up to two weeks to process. This could roll past the billing date for those who aren't billed on the 15th, which is bound to cause a little unrest with sellers overpaying in the run up to Christmas, but there might be a silver lining - those overpaying could land a windfall from the Seller Rewards program with their artificially inflated invoices.

This promotion is so key to eBay that they have even mooted the possibility of extending the promotion a day to allow listing for 5p on Wednesday of this week as well. An indication that eBay really are committed to making Christmas on eBay a good one!