eBay have changed their policy on voucher / coupon sales. Key points are:
- coupons now have to be physically delivered buy the buyer to the seller – so no more scanning and selling the same voucher more than once
- Bulk coupon sales of individual vouchers are limited to 20 per listing
- Bulk coupon sales of voucher books are limited to 5 per listing
- Free product coupons – where no other purchase needs to be made – are limited to 2 per listing
This is an important development to stop the use of offers by non-targeted consumers. Many retailers are finding that the offers they set up to attract a certain customer segment are being distributed around the internet (either sold as on eBay or advertised on Voucher Code websites).
Last year Littlewoods attracted negative publicity when it upheld the terms and conditions of certain vouchers reversing the discount that had been given to customers who didn’t fit the terms and conditions. The adverse publicity led to them reversing the decision.
So it’s difficult for a business to enforce the Ts and Cs even if legally entitled to do so. The move by eBay to tighten up the policy will help control the distribution of the codes in the first instance which is key to solving the problem.
It will be interesting to see if anyone else offering voucher codes online follows suit…
