How do I report someone that is sending threatening messages to me

[retromodeller-1]

I have someone who I have never dealt with sending me threatening messages on my message page, how do I report this to Ebay ?

[red_magpie]

It would help if you explain what you mean by "threatening messages". This could mean anything.

In the past, we've had people advised to go to the police when it turned out they were just being threatened with bad feedback!

[m25jet]

Unfortunately eBay probably won't do much about the matter as they're not really that good at clamping down on threatening messages.  There used to be a feature to report abusive messages but eBay did away with this feature, with doesn't really cast eBay in a very good light with regards to the matter of preventing other site users from sending threatening messages.

Although eBay will probably do nothing whatsoever about the problem, there are ways to get around the problem.  You say that you have never dealt with this person before, so given that you also sell on the site add this person's User ID to your Blocked Bidders List.  In order to access your Blocked Bidders List click on this link https://offer.ebay/co.uk/ws/ebayISAPI.dll?bidderblocklogin and a big white box will appear on the screen.  Add the buyer's User ID to that white box, click on the Submit button beneath it and that way this person will be unable to contact you via the Ask Seller A Question link on any of your listings.  However, in order to prevent this idiot's messages from continuing to get through you will need to set your Selling Preferences up so that messages from anybody on your Blocked Bidders List cannot get through to you.  In order to do so follow the instructions outlined below after you have added this person's User ID to your Blocked Bidders List.

Go back to your My eBay page and click on the Account tab.  When the page loads up look for the section entitled "Account Preferences" and click on the second line from the top under that heading, which is the one which says "Site Preferences."  A new page of the same name will appear on the screen.

When the Site Preferences page appears on the screen scroll down the page until you get to the Buyer Requirements section.  Click on the Edit link to the right of the Buyer Requirements line and another page will load up.

When the next page loads up once you've clicked on the Edit link scroll right down to the bottom of the page and click on the box next to the option that says "Don't Allow Blocked Buyers To Contact Me."  Once you've done that click on the Submit button at the bottom of the page to save the updates.  Given that you have not been involved in a recent transaction with this idiot the blocks ought to kick in straightaway and prevent any further messages from him/her from getting through to you.

In the event that this idiot tries to contact you by sending you a PM via the eBay Community forums click on his/her User ID and look for the two buttons where you can choose to add the user to friends or block the user.  Click on the option to block the user and once you have done that he/she will not be able to harass you with messages sent via the eBay Community either.  Once this idiot keeps on seeing error messages informing him/her that the messages he/she is trying to send are not going through then he/she ought to get fed up of it, in which case he/she probably won't bother with any further attempts to send you unwanted messages given that any further attempts to contact you are successfully being thwarted by the blocks that you've put in place with the specific purpose of preventing his/her messages from getting through to you.