Another promotion has emerged from the SE Asian team at eBay Singapore.  This offer runs until the end of March and yields up to 60% off FVFs in return for designating shipping (P&P) as free.

Simply offer free postage on at least 10 items listed on eBay.com and eBay.co.uk and enjoy 60% (1) and 30% (2) FVF rebate for each of the free-postage completed listing successfully sold. See numbered notes below.

The rebate is redeemed as International Shipping Discount Vouchers with DHL Express.  (Ed – this explains part of the emphasis on DHL at the recent Top Seller Summit in Chiang Mai, Thailand that Gaz blogged for BuildaSkill a few weeks back).

Items with free postage listed during the offer period must sell successfully by April 15, 2009.

To qualify for this promotion (note that Indonesian and Vietnamese residents are not mentioned in this one – compare with yesterday’s promotion news) you only need to:

• Be a registered Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines or Thailand seller (address is in those countries).
• Have at least 4.1 Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) across all 4 areas (Item as Described, Communication, Postage Tim, Postage & Handling)
• Offer free postage for your listings on eBay.com & eBay.co.uk and get your items successfully sold!

1. For items with starting price of $5.00 U.S. Dollars (USD) or below.
2. For items with starting price of $5.01 U.S. Dollars (USD) or above.

However, it’s not as easy as it sounds.  The FAQ page explains that the offer is only for sellers invited by email – eBay seem to be getting good at these selective and hidden promotions.  Several blogs have kicked up with news of these in various countries, including Ina at AuctionBytes.

Currently I’m undecided whether I prefer to older style open-to-all, publicly announced offers, or this newer trend to secret discounts for selected users.  I do know that personally I would prefer eBay to stop faffing and just ditch all the promotions and preferential/punishment pricing in favour of good old-fashioned universal rates and price stability.

In fairness to the SE Asia eBay team, this promotion announcement did arrive a couple of weeks back, and I’ve sat on it.  With some of the news out of the eBay Analyst Day, yesterday, I thought I’d best release the news of this as others may need visibility of it to see where eBay is heading.

The FAQs (terms and conditions by any other name) are long, complex, and an amazingly good sedative – I fell asleep on the keyboard, twice, trying to read through them.  Think I’ll give this one a miss – too many i’s to dot, and t’s to cross.

Ed