eBay Glitch Costs UK Seller £15,000 In Month Long Insertion Fee Debacle

A UK seller took to the eBay community forums seeking help after a glitch caused them to be charged £15,000 of insertion fees in error - almost 30 days later, they're still out the money with nothing but unfulfilled promises from support and a looming large debit to their bank account.

The seller pays for an Anchor Store subscription at a cost of £437 per month, which is supposed to entitle them to unlimited fixed price listings with no insertions fees.

But starting March 13, the seller says they were erroneously charged insertion fees for 42,000 listings, which has set their account balance to a negative state, and they've been unable to get the issue resolved for almost a month.

Anchor Store Software Defect on 13th March charged £15,000 of insertion fees on 42000 relisted items

My Anchor Store (with unlimited fixed price listings) was affected by a Software Defect (the ebay technical support ticket for the problem which affects multiple sellers is classfied as an ALERT is EWATCHOP-364474

Basically on 13th March we were incorrectly charged £15,000 of insertion fees on 42000 relisted items... numerous emails and calls to eBay and 3 weeks later we have not been credited these fees..

whats worse is this leaves our account in a negative position currently around £14000 but going down slowly as we sell because eBay take every penny from the proceeds of our sales against a debt not of our making.

Then to add insult to injury despite eBay knowing the fees were incorrect they have still attempted to take the fees from our bank account 3 times now!!!

They will not provide a date for when this will be fixed... just bland robotic emails thanking us for our patience and then telling us to have a wonderful day at the end of the message!!!

The seller went on to provide more details about the efforts to get assistance from eBay supporting, saying they were given a ticket number and told the underlaying issue that caused the glitch had been resolved and the fees would be credited.

But that credit has not happened and worse yet, eBay is applying the proceeds of subsequent sales to the negative balancing, putting the seller in a massive crunch crunch with no incoming funds to pay other business expenses including staff wages.

eBay has also made repeated attempts to charge the outstanding fees to the seller's credit card on file which have been unsuccessful, leaving the seller worried that their eBay account may be sanctioned or permanently suspended due to the unpaid fees that shouldn't be being charged in the first place.

And since listings renew on a monthly basis, if the underlying issue has not actually been resolved, the seller may face additional charges when those same listings rollover again on April 13th.

I am starting to wonder if they are waiting to see if the problem repeats itself on the 13th April and we get the same bunch of listings add another £15000 of erroneous chagres to our account! Nothing would surprise me in relation to this problem now given how long it's been going on for.

I had been told they have resolved the underlying root cause of the problem that generated these charges but I am not convinced because that was 10 days ago and still no credits have been applied. I find it extremely difficult to under why a company the size of eBay with its technical resources is taking so long to apply credits to the affected accounts.

So checking our account this morning we now only owe £13670 due to all proceeds from sales overnight having of course been deducted from the false debt eBay created....

Literally we are working for nothing at present, having to pay suppliers and staff wages with no income from our eBay sales being passed to us until eBay get around to fixing their mistake. Question is will it be this week, this month, next month, this side of Christmas, next year or maybe never???

eBay UK community staff were tagged in the discussion and responded to confirm that the issue has been deemed to be a technical glitch on eBay's part and that the seller's account is on the list to have credits issued for the incorrectly charged fees.

Kat@eBay said:

We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused. What I can advise here is that what caused the issue for being charged these insertions fees has been fixed.

I have also confirmed your account is on the list of impacted accounts. While I don't have a specific date please be assured they are currently working through the process of crediting the fees.

The seller says they also received an email from eBay on April 9th advising the fees would be credited within 24-48 hours - and it appears eBay is looking to run the clock out to the last second since as of earlier this morning, the seller says the credit has yet to appear.

DAY 29 - Checked my count this morning and it hasn't been fixed overnight and it's coming up to the end of this 30 day Protection from a negative balance that eBay advised me of. They have said they will credit these incorrect charges by before that 30 day period ends. Hopefully they'll fix it at some point today.

Has your account been affected by this same eBay glitch and if so, have you received credit yet? Let us know in the comments below!