Where you REALLY stand on shipping using Simple Delivery including links to sources......

[j.p.greenwood]

So, there is still a huge amount of uncertainty about whether under Simple Delivery you're buying the service directly from E-Bay or whether E-Bay is acting as an agent, this is a critically important fact to have absolute certainty about as it would directly affect who you might end up suing if you cannot get satisfaction from a dispute, while I appreciate that assorted members have their own views and have worded them here, it needs a clear, definitive statement that can only come from E-Bay directly.

Of course it might be seen as churlish for E-Bay to want to keep this matter unclear as that might serve their ends.

That aside, both EVRI and Royal Mail have restrictions on what can and can't be accepted into their networks, they also separately have exceptions on what they're willing to pay out on for certain specific items, the way the Simple Delivery terms read is that you MUST comply with the carriers terms as well to be eligible for compensation.

So, for EVRI the link on their website 

https://www.evri.com/terms-and-conditions#:~:text=Goods%20that%20if%20I%20send%2C%20I%20won%E2%80%99...

I would draw people's attention to clause 8(iii) as who decides what is a 'safe space', if it's the courier leaving a parcel where they consider safe gives them a get out if it's subsequently stolen by a porch pirate.  Also, according to EVRI ALL electrical items are excluded from compensation, so all phones, tablets, hair dryers, even a lot of toys.

On the RM website it's a bit more long winded as the info isn't in one place...

RM Has a category called called 'Restricted Materials' which it allows under certain criteria, however 'Prohibited Materials' are never allowed.

'Restricted Materials' can ONLY be carried by specific RM services and ONLY if they're declared at time of posting.  Clause 1.21 of the following link lays it out.

https://www.royalmail.com/sites/royalmail.com/files/2025-04/specific-terms-for-parcels-version-11.pd...

Now, the list of 'Restricted Material' only seems to be here

https://www.royalmail.com/sites/royalmail.com/files/2025-05/prohibited-and-restricted-items-english....

So, unless E-Bay specifically state that Simple Delivery does come under the criteria as defined in clause 1.21 above, then in reality Royal Mail can say that the required compensation rules were no met and thereby deny compensation.

I realise a lot of members here are trying to be helpful by putting what they believe to be the case forward, but sorry, if I'm shipping items that I'm being told 'are covered up to £750', without telling me who is the liable party if it's lost or damaged, what if any exclusions apply, what do I need to declare at time of shipping, then that 'compensation' promise is frankly worthless and a lot of members are going to end up getting badly badly burnt.

@E-Bay, what Members need is a clear statement, all in one place, not requiring a paper chase to try to understand all the hidden small print get outs, that says, who is liable, what the exclusions are and what information needs to be provided to ensure compensation cover is in place, anything less than this is just short changing your very long standing members and I'm sure that's not your intent is it?

[j.p.greenwood]

@marco

Would be useful for your input on this

[j.p.greenwood]

Hey marco@ebay any chance of some input?

[j.p.greenwood]

Also, here's the link for the E-Bay exclusions, over and above the courier exclusions and the E-Bay packaging guidelines

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/posting-items/setting-postage-options/simple-delivery?id=5575#se...

[jonatjonatjonat]

marco@ebay I think they are trying to tag you into this.

[marco@ebay]

Hi j.p.greenwood, thanks for your post.

Please note that this is all in our Simple Delivery help pages, if you wish to see our entire policy, terms & conditions, it can be found here and here. I understand that you would like my personal answer on this, but this is all covered on the links shared in this reply. In terms of the legal side of things, please note that we are not legal experts, so we wouldn't comment any further information on it.

Thanks for the tag, @jonatjonatjonat 

Marco.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

I think the reply to this means that you have no chance of e bay ever showing any clarity on the issue!   Probably just better to do what so many are and bail out of the site until they either fail completely or have to reverse their policy - yes i know that it will not happen in a hurry if at all because of the contracts they will have with EVRI and RM.

[dls-online]

Marco's reply has made it quite clear that eBay can choose not to compensate for any lost items if they meet any of the "Restricted or prohibited items" which means a huge amount of items sold on eBay are affected without sellers being aware. Yikes! Talk about eBay sinking deeper and deeper into the depths of being one of the least trusted platforms for buying & selling these days. They make bold claims, then hide away within the T&Cs contradictory "get out" clauses. And by the tone of Marco's response, it sounds like they don't give two hoots about the situation too! Crazy!!!!

[j.p.greenwood]

Hi

Thanks, that's helpful, although it doesn't answer all the questions.

Specifically, is the refund/recompense for lost or damaged parcels being provided by E-Bay themselves or is it being provided by the Couriers (currently Evri or RM) with E-Bay just acting as a 'clearing house' (my phrase) for the claims that are actually forwarded to the couriers?  This is a subtle but really important distinction and someone from E-Bay needs to give a definitive answer so members understand what to expect, you may wonder why?  because if there's a disagreement with a claim a member needs to know are they in dispute with E-Bay directly, or in dispute with the courier, thus allowing E-Bay to 'wash their hands' of the dispute at some point.

Based on your previous reply, I would draw your attention to....

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/selling/posting-items/setting-postage-options/simple-delivery?id=5575&st...

Which SPECIFICALLY excludes valuable, speaking personally I couldn't care about jewellery, precious metals etc.....what I do care about though is watches.  Watches will include a huge number of Garmin, Apple, Samsung and other manufacturers of 'health monitoring' devices that are often valued in the hundreds of pounds.  There are other exclusions on the list, but the watches is the easiest to choose for my example.

The current E-Bay policy in effect says......

You MUST use Simple Delivery if you're a private seller and devices worth hundreds of pounds are excluded from recompense/refund in the case of loss or damage in transit. 

This means E-Bay are deliberating forcing members to use a service that will never provide coverage under any circumstances, yet are forcing members to pay for said coverage with no alternative being offered and members being told they must bear the risk of carrier issues and pay for the privilege of doing so. 

By forcing members to pay for the Simple Delivery service, while knowingly excluding them from either directly provided protection or an alternate carriage method that will provide protection and NOT advising them at the time they place their listing that the item is NOT covered in the event of loss or damage in transit, is inevitably going to open E-Bay to substantial liability issues going forward.

The above is but a single example, here are some others that need to be much more clearly identified to members at the time they are making a new listing....

The following are all excluded by Evri as being eligible for any compensation under any circumstances.

Items that contain Glass Parts, so ALL phones, tablets, laptops, TV screens, Monitors etc.....

https://www.evri.com/send/what-i-can-and-cannot-send#:~:text=Glass%20items%20or%20fragile%20items%20...

ALL Games consoles

https://www.evri.com/send/what-i-can-and-cannot-send#:~:text=Laptops%2C%20computers%20and%20game%20c...

ALL Musical Instruments

https://www.evri.com/send/what-i-can-and-cannot-send#:~:text=prints%20or%20canvases-,Musical%20instr...

ALL Ceramics or items that have any ceramic element, so pottery etc...

https://www.evri.com/send/what-i-can-and-cannot-send#:~:text=Ceramic%20or%20composite%20items

Stamps

https://www.evri.com/send/what-i-can-and-cannot-send#:~:text=and%20cards%2C%20tokens%2C-,stamps,-%2C...

Memorabilia, signed items and Vinyl Records

https://www.evri.com/send/what-i-can-and-cannot-send#:~:text=Memorabilia%2C%20photographs%2C%20signe...

Cameras and any optical devices

https://www.evri.com/send/what-i-can-and-cannot-send#:~:text=Cameras%2C%20lenses%2C%20spectacles

On the Royal Mail side it's even less clear as it would appear that NOTHING is going to be covered unless it is sent via specific mail services as detailed in Clause 1.21

https://www.royalmail.com/sites/royalmail.com/files/2025-04/specific-terms-for-parcels-version-11.pd...

As NOWHERE that I've seen documentation that states that 'Simple Delivery' is using one of these Royal Mail

services, thus, simplistically it gives E-Bay and Royal Mail the legal ability to decline ALL claims for loss or damage in transit.

So, you can see, the 'E-Bay promoted' phraseology that 'All Items up to £750' are fully covered would seem NOT to mach the legal realities of the 'get out' clauses for both couriers, however, E-Bay continue to 'force' sellers to buy a service that provides no coverage, while NOT ALLOWING THEM TO CHOOSE ANY ALTERNATIVE THAT WOULD PROVIDE COVERAGE.

You may not agree with what I've detailed here, in which case I'd welcome clarification where I may have misinterpreted something, however, I'm relying on the detail that E-Bay refers to in its own documentation and have provided the direct links so others can see the basis of what I've written and  come to their own, INFORMED opinions.

The first point about whether it's E-Bay providing the refunds or acting as a 'clearing house' for claims though is critical, as it's not addressed either way in any of the documentation.

Thank you for your time.

[j.p.greenwood]

You may also like to read this.

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Seller-Central/Entering-your-own-tracking-number-for-non-Simple-Deli...

[j.p.greenwood]

marco@ebay 

Any further update on the outstanding questions of whether it's E-Bay themselves selling the 'Simple Delivery' service, or E-Bay acting as an agent for the couriers? and who is paying the compensation E-Bay themselves or the couriers?

These questions are not addressed anywhere in the current T's & C's and they're critically important for members to understand.

[j.p.greenwood]

marco@ebay 

Morning Marco

Any update on the outstanding unresolved questions possibly?

[j.p.greenwood]

marco@ebay 

Morning Marco

Any update on the outstanding questions?

I see you've been posting elsewhere since I originally asked on Monday so thought perhaps you'd missed the tag, if you're waiting for someone up your management tree to clarify just let me know and I'll wait for a few more days.

[j.p.greenwood]

marco@ebay 

Hi Marco

Noticed you're online now and have answered other questions in the last hour.

Are you just ignoring this or are you waiting for further information?

[j.p.greenwood]

marco@ebay 

Marco

Still waiting for a reply to these outstanding questions.

[j.p.greenwood]

marco@ebay 

Morning Marco

Hope you had a good weekend as I see you're online.

Can I expect any answers to my outstanding questions today even if it's just to advise me and the others waiting that you're waiting for a reply from your management team?

It's now been 7 days so I think it reasonable that a member of over 20 years standing would get the courtesy of a reply to these fundamentally important questions, don't you?

[studiomaster_uk]

Re: Your post 06-06-2025 5:18 PM

Good information!

But there are a few points (which require testing) here. 1) The carriage terms relate to the contract formed between the carrier and the buyer of the service. Using SD, if the buyer chooses the carrier and service and pays for the service it seems that they are the party contracted with the carrier, not the ebay seller. 2) If the buyer makes the same choice but the seller pays, then one might think that the seller is the party contracted. 3) However, in both cases neither seller or buyer actually make payment to the carrier, ebay does (or their paying agent on their behalf does). In which case the contract would seem to be between ebay and the carrier. This lines up with the functions of SD where ebay are taking control of the shipping function and any claims (e.g. non-delivery or damage), because neither seller of buyer could make a claim upon the carrier as there is no contract in place. It would thereby follow that ebay are the party responsible for meeting the carrier's T&Cs, including those relating to prohibited and restricted items, and packaging, and not the buyer or seller.

Moreover, whilst ebay previously claimed to be acting purely as a facilitator of the transaction between buyer and seller on their platform, as far as private sellers and SD are concerned, it would now seem that they are now joining the transaction.

I've not read user reports of how they are handling 'not as described' claims in practice under SD, but it seems they may be 'keen' on passing these back the sellers via the usual dispute process. The question is, what might be the position then...  Perhaps there is info. on these boards but unfortunately I've not time to read every post!

[foresterdon]

Marco. You can change terms and conditions for new listings. You cannot unilaterally change terms and conditions on current listings! You have to end the listings first.

If you are not "legal experts" you need to find some soon.

[j.p.greenwood]

I agree that there are a number of areas of 'ambiguity', that's why I've been asking marco@ebay  to give clear answers for the outstanding issues, yet he continues to ignore the requests.  I'll be escalating it to Eve Williams if there's still no answers by Monday with the full history of both threads and the number of times my requests have just been ignored.

Using your examples above, there's a number of areas of uncertainty, not least of which is who the parties to 'legal' contracts are actually between.  I've read through the assorted Ts&Cs and nowhere does it clearly state whether E-Bay are acting as the principal (i.e. the payments are being made directly to them and they're paying the couriers) or as an agent (they're collecting the monies on behalf of the couriers with perhaps taking a commission).   

This is an important distinction as lets say a courier leaves a valuable item on a doorstep, yet the recipient has not nominated a 'safe space', buyer claims item not received as it gets taken by a 'porch pirate'. Who now is legally liable for the loss as neither the buyer nor the seller should eat a potential loss of up to £750, yet the courier claims they left in in a 'safe space', however, legally no 'safe space' was designated and thus either the buyer or seller may want to pursue legal action if neither E-Bay nor the courier are willing to pay for the item, yet who do you initiate proceedings against?

Also, the fact that E-Bay are forcing members to buy a service, that according to their own Ts&Cs provide no compensation coverage, while (marketingly) claiming that 'all items up to £750 are fully covered' is inevitably going to end up as a huge compensation claim down the line, there's no getting away from that and I suspect that E-Bays shareholders have no idea the future liability issues that E-Bay are piling up here.