Seller protection

We’ll protect you from abusive buyer behavior and from events outside your control.

We know that protection  is important to you when selling online and when you deliver on your service promises. We’ll protect you from abusive buyer behavior and from events outside your control. Every month, we take action to protect all sellers against abusive buyers in the UK.

To help us provide comprehensive seller protections, we ask that sellers:

  • Honour all of their service promises

  • Report abusive activity so we can take action to protect you and other sellers

  • Remain courteous and professional when dealing with buyers

Abusive buyer detection, enforcement and protection

  • eBay has a robust abusive buyer policy that allows us to take action on abusive buyers. Read it here
  • You’ll find the Report a Buyer function in both the returns flow and the Resolutions centre
  • When we find that a buyer is abusive we'll warn them, we won’t facilitate them sending returns, or we can suspend their account
  • We’ll automatically remove feedback and defects when we find a buyer has violated our policy
  • Feedback and defects are removed when you cancel a transaction because a buyer demands something not offered in the original listing
  • We’ll also remove feedback and defects when a buyer retracts their bid or doesn’t pay


Postage and delivery protections

  • Quicker automatic feedback and defect removal when an item arrives late but tracking shows you shipped on time
  • Feedback and defects are also removed when severe weather or carrier disruptions causes the item to arrive late  

What do you need to do to get this protection?

  • Use trackable and valid shipping methods. Find full details here

Seller Protection for returns (used items or damaged by the buyer)

  • Give refunds based on the condition of the returned item — you can deduct up to 50% from the refund for lost value. Learn more here
  • We’ll remove feedback, defects, open cases in our service metrics and we’ll take care of any remaining issues with the buyer
  • For more details, visit our dedicated help page

Protection if a buyer doesn’t pay

If buyers don’t pay straight away, it could just be that they are inexperienced or are having problems with their payment system. Our detection methods help us identify high-risk buyers who might be bidding on, or purchasing several similar items at once. If this happens, we’ll take action before the transaction takes place.

  • We identify buyers that haven’t paid so we can automatically remove any negative or neutral feedback
  • When an unpaid item case is closed without payment, we’ll block the buyer from leaving feedback and take action on their account
  • You can use our Unpaid item assistant to automate the opening and closing unpaid item cases in our Resolution Centre

Read our guide to Avoiding buyer issues for more guidance on what to do if a buyer doesn’t pay

Automatic protection against high-risk buyers

We take your safety as a seller seriously and work to protect you from high-risk buyers. We can automatically remove negative or neutral feedback when the buyer is in violation of the Abusive Buyer policy.

How the eBay Money Back Guarantee protects sellers

We know that trust is important to sellers and buyers, and the eBay Money Back Guarantee means you won’t lose a potential buyer because someone else let them down in the past.

The eBay Money Back Guarantee also protects sellers:

  • If you refund a buyer or resolve an issue within 3 business days of the buyer opening a request, we’ll refund your final value fee. Find more information here.
  • Buyers must contact the seller and give them 3 business days to provide a solution before they can escalate their case to eBay. Sellers also have the option to ask us to step in and make a decision.
  • A full refund or an accepted partial refund will close the request immediately. The buyer can also close their request at any point.
  • In addition, we automatically remove defects, adjust the seller's Late delivery rate and remove feedback when we close an eBay Money Back Guarantee case or appeal request in their favour.

FAQ

Examples of abusive buyer behaviour include:

  • A buyer who falsely claims an item was not as described or wasn’t received
  • A buyer who returns an item after it was used, damaged or missing parts
  • A buyer who retracts their bid or doesn’t pay
  • A buyer who changes their order, requests a discount or something extra
  • A buyer who asks the seller to take the sale off eBay
  • A buyer who sends the seller threatening or abusive messaging

Read our full policy details here

Examples of events outside your control include:

  • You receive a late shipment defect for an item that arrived late, but tracking shows that you shipped it on time
  • You receive a late shipment due to severe weather or a carrier disruption
  • The buyer files an Item Not Received claim but tracking shows the delivery was made on time

Find more information here