How to Block a Buyer on Ebay.co.uk? [2022]

eBay merchants have the option to block buyers because of several reasons, such as fraud or non-payment. Our guide will share how to block a buyer on eBay and prevent unwanted transactions.

Why Should Sellers Block an eBay Buyer?

eBay is a great place for both buyers and sellers around the world. Sellers can list a wide variety of items, whether they’re brand new or used. There’s a huge opportunity to tap into customers because there are 187 million eBay users worldwide. The United Kingdom has 87% of consumers doing their shopping online.

This eCommerce platform can provide sellers access to a lot of customers locally and internationally. However, running a store doesn’t always promise smooth sailing day-to-day operations. There could be some instances when handling customers could be somehow tricky, and blocking buyers on eBay may seem necessary.

• Non-payment of a purchase – despite several reminders sent to a customer, where no response or no payment still hasn’t been made yet, it would be a smart decision to block a buyer to prevent future dealings.
• Backing out of bids – buyers who constantly bid but always end up backing out can be a waste of opportunity and time.
• Abusive messages – angry customers can be dealt with accordingly, but verbally abusive ones should not be tolerated.
• Competition – there could be instances that your products are at a trial or patent stage, or you simply want to keep your product from competitors.
• Fraudulent – users who have been flagged for fraud or show signs of fraudulent activity such as paying outside of eBay, paying more than the price, or sounds too good to be true- should, by all means, be blocked.

How To Block Someone On eBay.co.uk?

Once a seller blocks a buyer, they can still see the listing, but they won’t be able to participate by making an offer or buying an item. However, they will still be able to send a message to the seller.  

Help & Contact

It’s a fairly simple process and would only take just a few steps. After logging in to your account and getting to the homepage, click on “Help & Contact”, which will bring you to a search box.

Open Block Buyers from your Listings page

Search blocking a buyer, and open up the link, which would bring you to the page on “Blocking a buyer on eBay”

Whether a buyer had an occurrence of non-payment, not proceeding with bids, abusive messages, potential competitor, or fraud, a seller can ban an eBay buyer with just their user ID. 

Put in the Buyer’s User ID inside the text box

Type in the user ID that needs to be blocked, and put in commas in between user IDs for multiple accounts. Click on Submit and once confirmed, a green notification panel will show on the top portion to indicate that you were able to block an eBay buyer.

Good to know: The block list can accommodate up to 5,000 usernames.

How to Restore a Blocked List

In case you’ve previously blocked some buyers and wish to restore them on your block list, simply click on Restore List on the right part of the box for blocked buyers.

Then click on Restore, which will put back the user IDs you’ve previously blocked on the buyer block list.

Blocking Messages from Buyers

So how can a seller block eBay buyers from messaging them too? This can be done by accessing the Buyer Management page. Simply tick the buttons/boxes that would be relevant. 

Setting Buyer Requirements

On the same Buyer Management page, any seller can block a buyer on eBay UK based on certain parameters:

• Buyers who had a number of cancellations within a 1, 6 or 12 months
• Buyers from a different location or where a seller doesn’t cover shipping
• Buyers who have successfully won a bid or purchased an item to prevent a single buyer from getting multiple items

Sellers can also set up on the buyer preferences that they select or arrange a payment method before making any offers to prevent any delays or issues after winning a bid.

How to Unblock a Buyer

After a few months of blocking a certain buyer, a seller may opt to review their buyer list and see if they would now be comfortable removing them from the block list. It’s just as easy to block as it is to unblock.

From the same page where a buyer is blocked, simply delete the user ID that you wish to unblock, and click on submit.

Good to Know eBay Seller Protection Policies

eBay has policies in place to help sellers address different issues when dealing with transactions which can be easily seen through their help search bar. 

Report a Buyer

Before deciding to block a buyer, you may opt to review the Abusive Buyer Policy first so as to get eBay’s customer service to look into the case and assist you. A buyer retracting their bid or making false claims can be reported to eBay as these are buyer behaviours they don’t allow.

Automatic Defect Removal

When a buyer violates a buyer policy, this is automatically considered a defect and will be removed from the seller’s performance and feedback profile. An example is when a buyer doesn’t pay for their item. eBay makes sure that this is not taken against the seller.

Bottom line

Maintaining an eBay block buyer list is possible to keep unwanted buyers at bay. However, be keen and careful on which ones to block off so as not to miss out on tapping preferred clients.