Advice for your eBay account in response to the Covid-19 outbreak
Last updated: 2 March 2021
Customer support update
You may experience longer than usual waiting times for Customer service at the moment. Please read the page below for the latest updates on Covid-19 virus before calling the team.
PayPal
We are unable to help with PayPal specific problems. We would advise members to review PayPal’s statement on their services: here.
Seller Help
If you can't find any answers to your queries below, visit Seller Help where you can manage and resolve all of your selling issues in one place: Seller Help.
Seller Protection
We may at times put seller protection measures in place in case of systemic interruptions to postal services that are beyond your control. It's always best practice for sellers to be upfront with their buyers and let them know if delivery delays are expected. It’s also advisable that sellers set their handling times to reflect their current circumstances. You now have the option to manually set your handling / dispatch times for each day of the week: here
As always, we want to assist you in delivering the best possible experience for your buyers. Uploading tracking numbers to your transactions allows your buyers to see where their item is and you’ll be better protected in the event of carrier delays or if a buyer opens an Item not received case.
Please note, even though we may protect individual service metrics from affecting seller standard rating, if a seller’s delivery performance drops below an acceptable level or if we observe unusual activity on accounts, we may have to restrict account privileges while we investigate.
How to sell safely
Whenever you drop-off a parcel or meet with a buyer to complete a transaction, please respect the government's social distancing rules as detailed here. If possible, ask your buyer to agree to the social distancing rules in advance. To minimise contact with other people please consider taking the following steps:
- If you normally visit your Post Office or parcel drop-off point, please make sure that you follow the new in-store processes. Learn more
- Remember: Before you travel to the Post Office or drop-off point, please make sure you check the opening hours. They may have been changed. You can check them here.
- If you normally pay for postage in the Post Office, you can buy and print postage labels yourself via eBay. For non-tracked Royal Mail services, just drop the packaged item into a letterbox or parcel postbox - you don’t need to visit the Post Office.
- Royal Mail launched a Parcel Collect service where you can book a collection of up to 5 items from your door. Available nationwide. Learn more
- Use Click & Drop from Royal Mail to prepay for postage and drop off your items. Learn more
- Use collection services (see below).
- If you are struggling to dispatch your items due to the current situation, you can adjust your dispatch time on each listing.
- If selling locally, please observe the government’s social distancing rules as detailed here.
Where is the nearest Post Office or drop-off point?
You can still drop off parcels at the Post Office and most parcel shops.
Find the nearest Post Office and drop-off point here:
Please note the Government advises that post offices, grocers, newsagents, storage and distribution facilities (including delivery drop off points) are permitted to remain open.
Parcel Collection Services
In the event that you can no longer personally deliver your consignments to a delivery service, consider the parcel collection services listed below. You can book a collection service through eBay delivery powered by Packlink on eBay.co.uk by selecting ‘Print Postage label’ in Sold items.
Hermes
- Parcels up to 15 kg with prices from £2.89
- Collection: Monday to Friday from 8am to 8am
- Delivery time: 3 days
UPS
- Parcels up to 15 kg with prices from £7.19
- Collection: Monday to Friday with 2 available slots - from 9am to 3pm or 12am to 7pm
- Delivery time: 1 day
DHL
- Parcels up to 15 kg with prices from £7.32
- Collection: Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm
- Delivery time: 1 day
Estimated Delivery Day(s)
We're actively working with carriers and International logistics providers to understand and monitor their operational status and performance. We’ll make changes to buyer-facing delivery estimates as we deem necessary.
Domestic delivery
Time may be added to buyer-facing delivery estimates to account for any delays that may be experienced in the delivery network. We are actively monitoring the situation and will make any changes as we deem necessary.
International delivery
We've suspended exports for non-GSP listings to any country based on suspensions as seen on Royal Mail’s International Incident Bulletin which means that buyers in those countries may not be able to view your listings.
Find the latest information on your preferred postage and delivery services
Please inform yourself about the current situation at delivery service providers:
Restrictions on items you sell on eBay
To stamp out unreasonably inflated prices of essential items during the Coronavirus pandemic, we’ve restricted the sale of all Face Masks, Hand Sanitisers, Paracetamol, Cleaning Wipes & Pads, Toilet Roll, Baby Formula & Milk, Nappies, Baby Wipes and Tampons on the platform.
Please note, only a small number of selected business sellers are permitted to sell these products on the UK platform. Private sellers are not permitted to sell these items.
As a private seller, your listings will be blocked or removed and your account may be suspended if you attempt to re-list or create new listings for such items.
The decision to remove listings that go against our policies will be final. Do not contact Customer Support as they will not investigate appeals.
We are monitoring the situation continually across a broader range of categories and additional restrictions may be applied.
Important official websites with the latest Covid-19 information
Previous eBay Covid-19 updates
- You can find a brief summary of details of our anti-price inflation policy by clicking this link: here
Visit our archive to read previous Covid update pages