Negative Changes Crush eBay Bucks

eBay Bucks have been an incredible way to earn bonus bucks (to be redeemed on eBay purchases later) for quite a while. But, a couple of months ago, they made changes that would no longer allow the use of Bucks for gift cards, which is what many of us had used the program for. Now, eBay has brought more negative changes that really crush the eBay Bucks program – and not just for gift card buyers.

Negative Changes for eBay Bucks

These changes will be live January 1, 2017

The current eBay Bucks program

You know changes are bad when the one changing talks about “flexibility” and refers to the changes as “better” yet this is just what eBay did. Here is what their title of the e-mail said: “Announcing a Better, More Flexible eBay Bucks“. Let’s see what these negative changes (sorry, eBay, let’s call them what they are) are:

• Base earnings are changing from 2% to 1%, now with more ways than ever to earn eBay Bucks (bad change – cuts the regular earning, even the bonus earning, in half)
• From car parts to copiers you can now earn rewards for shopping in the Parts & Accessories and Business & Industrial Categories (good change – if you shop a lot for these things)
• Earn Bucks when you sell. We’ll be adding occasional promotions so you can also get rewarded when your items sell on eBay (not as good as it sounds – see the notes below)
• No more $5 minimum earn restrictions for redeeming – now you’ll receive your rewards, no matter the amount
• Sign up for promotional emails and get invites for special bonus offers.

Now, let’s see what they really meant to say with these changes:

• We are taking away 50% of the earnings you love to earn and that helped to encourage you to spend more on eBay
• We will let you earn now on categories that most of you never even cared about anyway
• We will let you earn points when selling too – but only when we send you promotional offers which will show up right after you sold $5,000 in stuff on eBay
• Since you will be earning so little now, we won’t hold your $5 and under hostage to get you to spend more. We won’t be giving you much anyway
• Give us your e-mail address for more e-mails so that you can be told when the bonus earning reaches the previous normal rates

eBay ran a pilot promo on selling to earn Bonus Bucks and I loved it. I earned almost $300 in bucks that way. And that is actually what they will be doing going forward. You will not earn on all selling but only when they run promos. So, that will make things inconvenient when you want to sell but also want to earn eBay Bucks.

It has been fun, eBay, but you have finally crushed it with these latest negative changes for eBay Bucks.

Read the full terms and details here.