Urban Art Association

Damn
Bought some coffee machine descaler before I saw this

thanks OP. you just saved me £40

I wonder how these sorts of things work.
E-bay fees are 10% so if they offer buyers a 10% discount they are breaking even. But if they are giving a 15% discount then surely they are losing money on each and every sale that they make. Presumably the sellers still get all their money so I don't see why e-bay would do this.

The 15% offer may be minuscule regarding their profit margin but it is still eating in to their profits.  According to my understanding, e-bay are making zero money out of any sales they made yesterday.  Not only are they not making money they are actually losing money on each transaction.  Sellers fees are 10% so e-bay is losing 5% on each and every transaction.

They won’t have lost money yesterday. First of all not everyone will have used the code. Secondly they only lose money on lower item value sales. The maximum discount was (I believe) £100? Therefore anything over approx £660 would be making them money again.

It attracts people to the platform. If loads of people suddenly crop up to buy their high end goods on that one day then it might even offset all the lower value purchases who used the code and make them more profit than normal. Whatever the outcome they clearly have data to show it works as they run them a couple of times a year. And I’m glad they do as I picked up a sonos beam for £280