Weekly Chat with the eBay Community Team- 06.08.25 @2pm

[community-team@ebay]

Hi everybody!

The Community Chat will open at 2pm and will remain open until 3pm on Wednesday. After that it will be closed for further questions. Of course, we will continue to take care of answering any questions that may still be unanswered—We’ll get to everything as quickly as possible.

Please ask your questions in the thread below. In order to be able to answer your questions as quickly as possible, we ask you to have one question per post. Of course, you can make as many posts as you like in the Chat- the more the merrier!

Our eBay Community Team is made up of kat@ebay , dave@ebay and marco@ebay . Between us, we have knowledge in Buying, Selling, Fulfilment, Payments, and the Community itself. Anything we aren’t sure on we’ll know the people who will be! Please ask us any questions you may have and we’ll do all we can to support. We understand that certain topics, such as concerns about businesses possibly using private accounts, can be frustrating and important to you. Please refrain from asking the same question repeatedly in our weekly live chats. We assure you that we carefully review all posts in the forum and ensure that your concerns are communicated to the relevant teams for appropriate action.
To maintain a constructive and community environment, posts that repeatedly breach this guideline may be removed. Continued violations could result in further action against your community account. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding in helping us keep our community focused and respectful.

To ask your question, click Reply in the lower-right corner of this post, type your question, and click Reply between 2pm and 3pm. The community team will answer each incoming question in chronological order and will quote the original question in each answer.

Please note that any reply without a question to the community team or discussion replies may be removed from the chat. We want to keep on track to get through as many questions as possible. We welcome all discussion to be moved to the discussion boards.

If you missed the weekly chat time, please ask your question in the community boards and tag us or we will be back next week with another chat!

Many thanks,

Your eBay Community Team

[wellingnorth]

From August 29th the US is ending the previous de minimis exemption for goods under $800. I can imagine that some American buyers may not be aware of this or may assume it does not apply to ebay purchases.

Bearing this in mind I just wanted to check whether ebay.com / ebay.co.uk will be displaying prominent messages regarding this to US buyers buying goods from UK sellers - ideally for example banners across UK listings or messages at the bidding + buying + checkout stages?

I understand that ebay generally covers sellers if buyers refuse to pay duty but it would be better to avoid the hassle of disgruntled buyers and returned parcels if possible.

[fjgjhgjkhkljkl_39]

Does the Online Safety Act apply to eBay UK?

If yes does it prevent eBay UK from displaying images of naked women without age verification?

If yes to that question also, why are there images of naked women on eBay UK please?

[funkybunnie-direct]

These are genuine sales figures taken from an ebay seller (full titles of albums have been removed). This is just a very, very small sample of their listings.

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

8 available 17 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

5 available 11 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

4 available 5 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

3 available 1 sold

CD ALBUM NEW – NOT SEALED

3 available 1 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

3 available 3 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

4 available 5 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

5 available 7 sold

My question is a fairly simple one – is this a ‘Private’ seller or a ‘Business’ seller?

[marco@ebay]

---

@wellingnorth wrote:

From August 29th the US is ending the previous de minimis exemption for goods under $800. I can imagine that some American buyers may not be aware of this or may assume it does not apply to ebay purchases.

Bearing this in mind I just wanted to check whether ebay.com / ebay.co.uk will be displaying prominent messages regarding this to US buyers buying goods from UK sellers - ideally for example banners across UK listings or messages at the bidding + buying + checkout stages?

I understand that ebay generally covers sellers if buyers refuse to pay duty but it would be better to avoid the hassle of disgruntled buyers and returned parcels if possible.

---

Hi wellingnorth, thanks for your question.

I believe this is something that is currently not in place, but might be added eventually. I'll pass this on, so this can be taken into consideration anyway.

Thank you,

Marco

[nutrafituk]

Hello there,

eBay has a Food Policy. One of its points states the following:

When listing food items that are allowed, sellers must: before selling food items, you must register your business with the UK local authority.

That statement makes it clear that a private seller must not offer any food items on your site. Now, each time we report one you refused to take action, including an appeal:

Thanks again for reporting the content you found. 

Your reference ID:

What happened:
We looked into your report and didn’t find the content to be in violation of our policy.  This determination was made by a customer service agent.

If you reported content that isn’t included in the above reference ID, we’ll send a separate email once we’ve made a decision. 

What this means for you:​
If you believe a mistake has been made, we’re here to help. You can appeal this decision through our internal appeals process within the next six months, and we’ll take another look. 

Start appeal

You may also have the right to have this decision reviewed under the applicable laws by a competent court or settlement body.

We reviewed your appeal of a decision we made on one of your content reports, and we didn’t find the content to be in violation of our policy.

Your reference ID: 

If you believe a mistake has been made, you may have the right to have this decision reviewed under the applicable laws by a competent court or settlement body. eBay can retain your content for only six months from the date of the original notice. After this, it may be permanently deleted in its entirety and unrecoverable.

Thank you for being part of the eBay community.

Please do clarify your position and the reason why you fail to act upon UK regulations and your own policy?

[kat@ebay]

---

@funkybunnie-direct wrote:

These are genuine sales figures taken from an ebay seller (full titles of albums have been removed). This is just a very, very small sample of their listings.

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

8 available 17 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

5 available 11 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

4 available 5 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

3 available 1 sold

CD ALBUM NEW – NOT SEALED

3 available 1 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

3 available 3 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

4 available 5 sold

CD ALBUM NEW - STILL SEALED

5 available 7 sold

My question is a fairly simple one – is this a ‘Private’ seller or a ‘Business’ seller?

---

Hi @funkybunnie-direct ,

We are unable to advise on these listings. If you have concerns regarding policy for these please report through the site.

Thank you,

Kat

[wellingnorth]

---

marco@ebay wrote:

---

---

Hi wellingnorth, thanks for your question.

I believe this is something that is currently not in place, but might be added eventually. I'll pass this on, so this can be taken into consideration anyway.

Thank you,

Marco

---

Thank you Marco, that would be great. If there's any chance if it could appear in the next couple of weeks before the change comes into affect that would really be very helpful. I know ebay lobbied against this change so it would be great if you could now help raise awareness among your US users. 

[d-o-y]

Hi

Can you tell me if there is a limit on amount of items that can be sold sold by business sellers like there is with private sellers and also whether the buyer protection fee is added to the selling amout when business selling. Lastly, is there a quick link to changing from private to business or do I have to unregister as private and re-register as business.

[wellingnorth]

Sorry, I also had a couple of questions regarding Simple Delivery please:

#1 - There is a return address printed on Royal Mail Simple Delivery labels, where are you getting this from? I would have thought it should be the ‘Primary returns address’ defined on this page in account settings but it definitely isn’t at the moment

https://settings3.ebay.co.uk/address/display?type=RETURN

#2 - This is the first week I’ve sold multiple Simple Delivery parcels and I had to print each label on a separate sheet. Is there a way of selecting and printing labels for up to 4 parcels on one sheet?

If you haven’t seen it Royal Mail’s Click and Drop also has the functionality shown below for single labels where you can choose where to print it. This is very useful to use up any remaining labels from sheets where you've only printed 1 or 2.

[marco@ebay]

---

@wellingnorth wrote:

---

marco@ebay wrote:

---

---

Hi wellingnorth, thanks for your question.

I believe this is something that is currently not in place, but might be added eventually. I'll pass this on, so this can be taken into consideration anyway.

Thank you,

Marco

---

Thank you Marco, that would be great. If there's any chance if it could appear in the next couple of weeks before the change comes into affect that would really be very helpful. I know ebay lobbied against this change so it would be great if you could now help raise awareness among your US users. 

---

Thanks for your reply, wellingnorth.

That's no problem, I do know that we had a banner saying that we are constantly monitoring those, but it was recently updated. I've just flagged that for you anyway. 👍

Thank you,

Marco

[guymafo]

Dear community team 

I raised this issue way back in November last year, why aren’t you actively doing something about these sellers?

The one pictured below is a ‘private seller’.

[marco@ebay]

---

@nutrafituk wrote:

Hello there,

eBay has a Food Policy. One of its points states the following:

When listing food items that are allowed, sellers must: before selling food items, you must register your business with the UK local authority.

That statement makes it clear that a private seller must not offer any food items on your site. Now, each time we report one you refused to take action, including an appeal:

Thanks again for reporting the content you found. 

Your reference ID:

What happened:
We looked into your report and didn’t find the content to be in violation of our policy.  This determination was made by a customer service agent.

If you reported content that isn’t included in the above reference ID, we’ll send a separate email once we’ve made a decision. 

What this means for you:​
If you believe a mistake has been made, we’re here to help. You can appeal this decision through our internal appeals process within the next six months, and we’ll take another look. 

Start appeal

You may also have the right to have this decision reviewed under the applicable laws by a competent court or settlement body.

We reviewed your appeal of a decision we made on one of your content reports, and we didn’t find the content to be in violation of our policy.

Your reference ID: 

If you believe a mistake has been made, you may have the right to have this decision reviewed under the applicable laws by a competent court or settlement body. eBay can retain your content for only six months from the date of the original notice. After this, it may be permanently deleted in its entirety and unrecoverable.

Thank you for being part of the eBay community.

Please do clarify your position and the reason why you fail to act upon UK regulations and your own policy?

---

Hi nutrafituk, thanks for your question.

Please note that all reports are reviewed and actioned accordingly based on the review. If the final outcome of your report is not what you were expecting, that doesn't mean that the final outcome is wrong. Additionally, we are unable to comment on the reports/actions taken against different listings/accounts for privacy and security reasons.

Thanks,

Marco

[soundsreasonableuk]

Hi 

I have questions regarding international postage.

I set up Postage rate tables for postage outside the UK however when a customer attempts to buy from me they get a completely different price usually the maximum ie so they are in Europe and they get charged for USA.

This has only started happening since Simple Delivery became mandatory. Have looked in the forums and I'm not the only one

Also now if a customer is in Jersey they get charged the same as USA despite it being only liable for UK postage which I don't charge for? Again looked in the forums and I'm not the only one

t

hank you  

[kat@ebay]

---

@d-o-y wrote:

Hi

Can you tell me if there is a limit on amount of items that can be sold sold by business sellers like there is with private sellers and also whether the buyer protection fee is added to the selling amout when business selling. Lastly, is there a quick link to changing from private to business or do I have to unregister as private and re-register as business.

---

Hi @d-o-y ,

No there is no limit for sold items for business sellers. The buyer protection fee does not apply for sales with business sellers, only private sellers. There should be an option to change account type in accounts settings, personal information and account type.

Thank you,

Kat

[d-o-y]

Thanks, I have now found it. I will change in the near future.

[marco@ebay]

---

@guymafo wrote:

Dear community team 

I raised this issue way back in November last year, why aren’t you actively doing something about these sellers?

The one pictured below is a ‘private seller’.

---

Hi guymafo, thanks for your message. 

If you feel they are against policy, please feel free to report them, and they will be reviewed and actioned accordingly.

Thank you,

Marco

[dave@ebay]

---

@fjgjhgjkhkljkl_39 wrote:

Does the Online Safety Act apply to eBay UK?

If yes does it prevent eBay UK from displaying images of naked women without age verification?

If yes to that question also, why are there images of naked women on eBay UK please?

---

Hi @fjgjhgjkhkljkl_39 

I can't comment on the images as I haven't seen them but if you have any concerns with a listing the policy team will be able to review it. 

You can report the listing by clicking the question mark on the bottom right of the listing and select the report content option on the pop up. The policy team will review it and if necessary, remove the listing.

Thanks,

Dave

[kat@ebay]

---

@wellingnorth wrote:

Sorry, I also had a couple of questions regarding Simple Delivery please:

#1 - There is a return address printed on Royal Mail Simple Delivery labels, where are you getting this from? I would have thought it should be the ‘Primary returns address’ defined on this page in account settings but it definitely isn’t at the moment

https://settings3.ebay.co.uk/address/display?type=RETURN

#2 - This is the first week I’ve sold multiple Simple Delivery parcels and I had to print each label on a separate sheet. Is there a way of selecting and printing labels for up to 4 parcels on one sheet?

If you haven’t seen it Royal Mail’s Click and Drop also has the functionality shown below for single labels where you can choose where to print it. This is very useful to use up any remaining labels from sheets where you've only printed 1 or 2.

---

Hi @wellingnorth ,

Thank you for the questions.

1. It should be your returns address. That link you shared, can you update your returns address to it?

2.  It would be very useful to be able to put more labels on one sheet and we will feed that back as an improvement. Its not a feature right now.

Thank you,

Kat

[sml192]

In your recent announcement regarding the changes to Royal Mail 2nd Class deliveries you state that Large Letters are not affected by the changes:

'These upcoming changes will directly impact 2nd Class Letters only. Large letters, parcels and 1st Class services will not be impacted by these changes.'

Is that actually correct though? 

I don't think it is as, although Ofcom and Royal Mail only mention 'Letters' in their official announcements, the Ofcom consultation document states (bottom of page 13) that Letters includes Large Letters:

' 11 'Postal packets' is defined in section 27(2) of the Act as "a letter, parcel, packet or other article transmissible by post."  For clarity, we use the terms letters and parcels in this document.  Letters includes Large Letters, unless stated otherwise.'