Enhanced Listing Category Fees - When are they Charged?????

[Allstar 33]

Hi Everyone

 

Still rather confused about this!

When are Enhanced Listing Category Fees charged to my account?

 

Say I list an item with "Category Page Featured Listing" or "Priority " ticked .

I list it to open in 2 weeks , then a day before the item opens I decide I want to change the start time or modify the content or cancel the listing all together.

 

My question - Am I charged for the Enhanced Listing Category Fees when I make the listing and confirm it or only when the listing opens and is now live and open for bidding/Buy Now .

I want to know if I cancel/Delete a listing with Enhanced Listing before its opened do I still get charged the fees ?

 

Please I need absolute clarity on this one!!

 

.... I often chop and change my listings that have Enhanced Premuim listings

I would not like to be paying everytime I make a date change or modification!

 

 

Regards

[admin 6]

 

My question - Am I charged for the Enhanced Listing Category Fees when I make the listing and confirm it

 

Hi Allstar,

 

It would be that one

[qball 12]

Hi

 

The enhanced listing fees are only charged when the listing opens. You can edit and change options before the listing goes live, however, should it go live, the system will stop you from making any changes to the enhanced listing options, and if there are bids on the item you won't be able to edit or change anything.

 

Hope this answers your question.

 

Kind regards

Cuan

[admin 6]

Hi Allstar,

 

Apologies for the wrong information, I got a bit confused with something else that was changed with using the enhanced listings.

 

Hope it did not inconvenience you in any way.

 

Regards

 

Andries

[Allstar 33]

Ok awesome - Thanks Guys!

[Allstar 33]

Can you guys please update the help file on Bob to reflect this (Help - Selling - Fee Rate Card) . Its not clear and many Bob employees are still not sure themselves as the opposing reply's you guys posted above show and also when I phoned the call center the guy there gave me the same answer as Andries and had to ask someone else when I told him otherwise after reading Cuans Post! Regards Ali

[qball 12]

Hi

 

The staff member you spoke to is still relatively new to our company. Andries is not employed by bidorbuy and is not always privy to what happens behind the scenes here from a technical point of view.

 

Please note we are busy re-doing our help pages to be more informative and to have the latest updates.

 

We apologise if this created any confusion.

 

Kind regards

Cuan

[Allstar 33]

Hi Cuan

 

Just spoke to the callcenter again , a guy named Sichaba , he was very adamant that enhanced listings are charged once the listing is confirmed and not once they go live.

This is not acceptable. How can I get contradicting info from 4 different Bidorbuy employees?

 

Could you please investigate the amount of almost R950 that I got for enhanced listing fees last month , it did seem unrealistically high considering my comm amount was only R698.

I did do a lot of chopping and changing on enhanced listings before they went live.

 

When I try to remove an enhanced listing from a listing that has not gone live yet I get the following message :

"The Priority Listing option can't be disabled now, since there was some exposure"

 

If I am not charged till the listing goes live why would I be getting that message?

[qball 12]

Listing fees are only charged when the item opens, not when you create and confirm it. There are instances where paid promotion fees are still charged for listings even though they did not open (this would include any other enhancements selected), as they would have had exposure on the site before opening, that is why you cannot edit the enhanced listing fees on certain listings, like paid promotions. The reason we do this is because some sellers used to select all the enhancement options and just before the item opened, unselected these options, but enjoyed the exposure without being charged for it. So we made changes to the system so that sellers could not manipulate the system. So even if you delete the listing you might still be charged a fee on paid promotion items as the listing would have had exposure on the site.

 

Your fees are a combmination of home page listing fees at R50 per listing, Category Featured at R10 each and priority at R5 each. For the month of April you were billed for the following enhancements:

 

Promotional Category Listing Fee Total x 17

Category Page Featured Listing Fee Total x 26

Home Page Listing Fee Total x 9

Priority Listing Fee Total x 28

 

You probably would have received that message if you were trying to edit the enhancements on a listing that had already had exposure on the site, for e.g. a weekend promotion, even before it opened/went live. If you tell me which item this happened on I will be able to confirm this for you.

 

I do apologise for the information you have been given. I have addressed this with the staff concerned.

 

Kind egards

Cuan

[Allstar 33]

Thanks for the speedy response

 

Heres a listing that exhibts these enhanced listings complications perfectly

Yet to open : Men's Watches - Rip Curl Oceansearch ATS Tide/Moon Phase/200M Solid Stainless Pinless Casing!! Surf/Fishing/Dive for sale in Durban

 

If I try to edit and and remove the Category Page Featured Listing I get this error :

 

• The Category Page Featured Listing option can't be disabled now, since there was some exposure.

If I try to edit and and remove the Priority Listing Listing I get this error :

 

• The Priority Listing option can't be disabled now, since there was some exposure.

 

If I try to edit and and remove the Promotional Category Listing Listing I get this error :

 

• The Promotional Category can't be changed now, since there was some exposure.

 

 

I 100% understand the need to pay for exposure if its some kind of enhanced listing that gives the listing live market exposure prior to opening.

 

But on a normal enhanced listing to the best of my knowledge no one gets to see them before they open?

Its not yet open for public viewing and market exposure till its open and live!?

Thats logical - No exposure!?

 

So whats the problem!!!!

Is it something I'm not getting?

[qball 12]

Ok, I think I understand the issue here...

 

The error message you get may not be 100% correct (I do apologise for this) as you have not had any exposure on the item used as an example. Basically due to sellers trying to manipulate the system, we do not allow enhanced listing options to be edited, changed or removed.

 

However, the answer regarding what you have been charged for still stands, you are only charged when the item opens. The error message you get, is in most cases applicable to users trying to edit or remove their enhanced listing options before their items go live, trying to get exposure without having to pay for it (in the case of paid promo's). If you had deleted a listing with enhanced options selected before it opened you would not be charged the fees.

 

You won't be able to edit these options, you would need to delete the listing and recreate it with the options you want. It would only be on the paid promotions that we would charge you for enhanced listings even if the item was deleted before it opened, as these items get exposure before the promotion starts.

 

Please also bear in mind, if you select auto relisting options, any enhancements selected for the relisted item will be charged again.

 

I hope this clarifies the issue for you.

 

Kind regards

Cuan

[Allstar 33]

Whoever does the copyright for Bob should go back to copyright school!!!!!!

 

Please explain the new enhanced listing warning please :

 

The two words Started & Opened are used - What is the difference?

 

Is there any quality control in place to prevent this kind of thing happening?

I really dont have time to be asking for an explanation for what should be a clear and common sense warning.

 

 

Listing and Optional Fees will be charged as follows:

• When your item opens.
  
• If your item is deleted after it has started (or edited removing the optional fees) you will still be charged.
  
• For each occurrence that the start time of your item is adjusted a day or more after your items starts.

[qball 12]

I do apologise for any inconvenience caused. We are a small team here and checking everything coming out of the production environment is not always possible. Will ask the team to look at it.

[qball 12]

Reply from MacMuffin:

 

In my mind there are 3 distinct problems and we will deal with those:

 

 

 

- There is certainly a training issue in our call-centre as we have taken on new staff to improve our customer services and extend customer care to 7 days. Unfortunately in your interactions with customer care today, you got through to the junior staff who did not properly know the answers to your questions and had to refer to senior consultant. This certainly left a bad impression, but this is something we will fix over time, but it is important to us that you highlighted the issue and we will deal with it. For us "open/started" is interchangeable. Internally we refer to an item/listing as being open, but customers tend to call it "started". I just quickly browsed through the help-pages and can not see something obvious wrong (i.e. Help - Selling - Fee Rate Card / Help - Selling - Enhanced Listings)

 

- With regards to the fees accumulated for enhancements on your listing - if you don't agree with the charges, please let us know and Cuan / our finance team will investigate. If you list something on BoB with enhancements, those enhancement fees will be charged to your fee-account within 24 hours of your item being open. This also means, that once your item is open, you will not be able to modify/remove enhancements.

 

- You will only be able to turn enhancements off the same day you created the listing, providing the listing has not yet opened - this was a business rule to prevent fraud where sellers listed and opened an item for a day with enhancements and before the end of the day turned it off to circumvent the billing of enhancement fees.

I am quite surprised that you find the error message displayed not very explanatory. As far as I can recall we have not received any complaints regarding this, but will certainly look into it to make it more transparent for the user.

 

 

To summarize - from the above reported issues, I trust that only 2. requires further assistance (through Cuan) - please confirm and Cuan will be able to assist if there are further queries.