eBay Seller Concerned About Post-Purchase Messaging

Liz Morton
Liz Morton


Comments

An eBay community member is very concerned about the messages eBay may send to buyers post-purchase.

eBay is begging buyers to have complaints
I’m just a small seller on eBay, and an occasional buyer. I received a message from eBay about a recent purchase that has me alarmed. The subject line was “Need a hand with [my item]?” The first line in the body of the message was “We’re sorry that things may not have gone as planned and recognize…

I'm just a small seller on eBay, and an occasional buyer. I received a message from eBay about a recent purchase that has me alarmed. The subject line was "Need a hand with [my item]?"

The first line in the body of the message was "We’re sorry that things may not have gone as planned and recognize how frustrating this can be." The message ended with two big colored boxes of text — one telling me about eBay's money back guarantee ("Get your item or your money back"), and the other asking me to start a return ("not happy with your purchase? Send it back. Start a return.") See the screenshot below, with my personal info blacked out.

The seller shipped my item promptly, via FedEx with tracking. I received my item in perfect condition, and I had already left positive feedback shortly after receiving it. I've done nothing to give eBay or the seller any reason to think I wasn't happy with my purchase.

Why on earth would eBay assume I had a problem with my purchase and practically beg me to return it? I hope my own customers aren't receiving messages like this.


postpurchase

"We're sorry that things may not have gone as planned and recognize how frustrating this can be..." - why in the world is eBay sending an email like this to a buyer who by all indications is ecstatic with their shopping experience?!

If this is CEO Jamie Iannone's idea of how to bolster confidence in the platform to retain "high value buyers", he needs to get his head checked. Obviously buyers need to know that they can trust the marketplace to "make things right" if a problem occurs, but this type of messaging goes overboard and almost seems to be setting the transaction up for failure from the beginning.


Other sellers echoed the concerns about the effect this messaging may have on the buyer experience and if it may give buyers a negative impression of both the seller and the eBay platform.

Whoa.....

I hope this is an isolated case. But, I've seen quite a few messages on these boards of sellers complaining about an uptick in returns being requested.

I hope this is not the reason.

You may want to go over to the "eBay technical issues" forum and ask about this.

I get a message very similar to this when I buy an item, and as a seller it does concern me.

For sure, have that info available for buyers who are looking for resolution, but to smash it in our faces not only causes seller issues, but makes eBay as a platform look unprofessional and suggests they think sellers are hawking rubbish.

It's one thing to send a post-sale message asking if I'm happy with the item, and even noting that there are paths to resolution if I have a problem. But this message assumed that I'm unhappy, and apologized that "things may not have gone as planned," and empathized with my frustration.

My only frustration is with eBay itself for attempting to plant the idea in buyers' minds that they have a problem and should return the item they purchased.

I did have a chat with first-line support, who agreed with me that the message was inappropriate and promised to send along my feedback. Yeah, and if you believe that I've got a bridge to sell you.

If the goal is to encourage more buying this is NOT the way to do it. How about an email that went that said we see you had great experience on eBay lately (the OP says they had already left positive FB). That's great 99.9% of transactions on eBay lead to high satisfaction like yours.

We hope you will come back to eBay time and time again to find bargains and treasures and remember we have you covered with our MBG just in case something goes wrong

That's really a disturbing email to send out to our buyers.

Wow, this is truly unethical at the best.

I do remember when eBay made the "Return this Item" giant font as the first item in the list placed above "leave feedback". That was really nasty, but if this is the new normal, then I would look for the monetary benefits for eBay.Simply crazy!

I wonder where the blue button "Talk to an Expert" leads?

One commenter suggested maybe it's a glitch and this email is only meant to be sent to buyers who leave negative or neutral feedback.

The wording of that message does sound very much like some kind of glitch, intended to be sent only to someone who left Neutral or Negative feedback. Maybe it's triggered by some choice of words in the feedback comment... although the OP says that the feedback had been left two weeks earlier.

I can say that in my case, I'm buying things all the time in my buying account and I have never received a message like that.


Have you seen similar post purchase emails when shopping on eBay? Let us know in the comments below!

eBayAds

Liz Morton Twitter Facebook
LinkedIn

Liz Morton is a 17 year ecommerce pro turned indie investigative journalist providing ad-free deep dives on eBay, Amazon, Etsy & more, championing sellers & advocating for corporate accountability.

5 comments
Avatar Placeholder
Jackie M.
I'm so angry to see this is still happening more than a month after the eBay Community Team acknowledged the issue. Another report was posted to Twitter today.

https://twitter.com/LesTwigg/status/1496778158267412482
Avatar Placeholder
68goodyear
Yes, I just received this message, and there was no negative feedback, not were any messages that indicated that the buyer was unhappy with the product. There were no return requests. I'm the Ebay seller. This message just appeared out of the blue. I did leave feedback to ebay, a couple of weeks ago. I told them that I didn't think it was a good idea to remove all of the "size filter boxes" in the search criterion, for the DOLLS category. It was a friendly message; I don't know if this could have triggered the "We're sorry" message.
1
Avatar Placeholder
Arguendo
Once again, eBay has entered the cash cow management death spiral.
1
Avatar Placeholder
BRFU
This is awful! Why would ebay ever do this??
2
Hide Replies 1
Avatar Placeholder
Jackie M.
Inquiring minds want to know! Unfortunately the eBay rep tagged in that discussion didn't reply before the weekend. Hopefully we'll get some info on Monday letting us know what this is all about.

Recent Comments
Avatar Placeholderblazeaglory5 hours ago
I've been selling on ebay since 2003 but i had to get a new account because after having a perfect feedback with ZERO negative feedback, i had one sale go south where the item i had i simply couldn't find in my inventory! So i ended up Ebay roughly 250$. You'd think they'd call me or message me and work out a plan but no, immediately PAY NOW PAY NOW OR YOUR ACCOUNT GETS CLOSED! I sell hand to mouth and usually each sale gets spent on bills QUICK, so i told Ebay i could pay monthly or weekly and pay the balance off in a month or sooner. Anyways, they closed my perfect TRS account. I mean no sympathy or anything after roughly 20 something odd years...SO now my new account after not selling for several months has only a couple sales. I dunno if things have changed but traffic seems waaaaay down but with this last sale, a nice vintage DAVID YURMAN silver bracelet, i had to ship to an authenticator, which I've never had to do. Hey I'm all for it because on ebay the last 20 years, the silver jewelery market has been HIGH RISK fakes labeled .925 yet NOT! LOL So I'm ok with an authenticator program that actually WORKS! So now the bracelet has been in Carlsbad since Monday May 19th 2025. I'm hoping it gets verified by tomorrow. I'll keep you all posted
Avatar Placeholderfoxxresell12 hours ago
An update to this situation - Today I will return to Above Average but this last month cost me a 91.8% reduction in impressions, 53.8% drop in listing page views, and 78% drop in revenue as well as paying an additional 6% final value fee on the sales I made. I was fortunate I had some higher value items sell this last week or my revenue numbers would have been well into the 80%.

eBay has responded to my BBB complaint twice. The first time they told me that I deserved below standard because my shipping scans were below the threshold. However, I had to quote their own website to them saying that shipping numbers cannot lead to downgrade to Below Standard.

The second response they just said I would be restored on May 20th completely ignoring the issue at hand, admitting an issue existed, or offering any type of solution.

If this concerns you, this happened to you, or worried it may happen, please take action. In fact, take action anytime eBay is doing somethning wrong. They will change nothing if you don't say anything. If enough people speak up, they do make changes.
Avatar Placeholderfoxxresell12 hours ago
The entire process needs to be overhauled. The numbers that make up their threshold seem to be arbitrary and it does not take a lot to get downgraded. I sell hundreds of items a month but only 3 defects will cause a downgrade. Then, it takes up to a week to get a defect removed from the time you submit an appeal, sometimes have to argue your case, them granting it, and then another two days for the system to catch up. It is beyond ridiculous.

Promoted Listings has changed the game and removing the ability for someone to promote not only cost eBay the revenue, it makes a persons listings invisible. Today is my last day Below Standard and I will finish with 91.8% reduction in impressions, 53.8% drop in listing page views, and 78% drop in revenue.

Your fortunate to get the negative feedback removed. I just had to escalate to the customer service team getting a couple removed where the customer did not read the listing and one complained a part was not included that wasn't being sold and the other didn't read that the vacuum had an issue requiring repair. My appeals were denied without explanation. I have not had them remove feedback since they changed the process over a year ago. I have to escalate to social media and they fight me on it every time.

Most importantly - please take action. Submit feedback on their website, contact the social media team on Facebook, or however you prefer. These issues will remain if we just stay quiet. I let this go before, not this time. Today I will return to Above Average but I am fighting this until something changes.