eBay Retreats Further From Sellers as Weekly Community Chats End in UK & Germany
eBay has killed off weekly community forum chat sessions with staff in the UK and Germany, finally bringing an end to once-crucial seller engagement avenue amid broader customer service pullback.
The chat discontinuation was announced in Germany on May 1 and the UK today, with a notice saying:
Based on the feedback we received from the community this will be the last weekly chat in this format for some time. We are working on something a little different and hopefully more in line with the suggestions we have received from you all.
It will take some time to work out but we will be back later in the year.
The move follows similar changes that left the eBay Canada community forum in the lurch in 2025 after the community chat for the US was slowly phased out and ended in 2024.
eBay says the change is being made based on user feedback.
What they don't say is the usefulness of the chat sessions has been significantly and intentionally hamstrung in recent years with staff reduced to little more than notetakers who promise to "pass this on to the appropriate team" rather than provide real answers to seller questions.
In that light, negative user feedback eBay has received about the current chat sessions is much more likely to be related to the quality (or lack thereof) of the engagement with staff, rather than complaints about the format or scheduling.
While the community forums are managed and moderated by a third-party partner (Khoros) and are not considered an "official support channel", they are hosted on an official eBay sub-domain with 2-3 dedicated eBay employees generally tasked with answering questions in chat sessions, escalating technical issue reports, and keeping tabs on the "voice of the customer" across multiple markets.
Some may find forums like this a throwback to the early internet age, but the eBay community has endured even in the social media era and is still a goldmine of information from some of eBay's most dedicated and longtime users - making the company's decision to pullback from community engagement in recent years even more perplexing.
Instead of using the community forums as a valuable resource for seller engagement, eBay seems content to leave it as a place for users to vent frustrations with the platform while being left to seek help from their fellow sellers.
As official participation has waned, eBay has become increasingly dependent on unofficial, unpaid help from "mentors" - a select group of users who gain access to exclusive advance information about updates and policy changes so they can answer community questions, at the cost of having to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Liz Morton
eBay has also begun to lean heavily on their seller network to host educational webinars and other events, with official "check-ins" being phased from monthly to quarterly to now only twice a year.
Liz Morton
And after last year's big 30th anniversary event in Las Vegas, sellers have been disappointed to learn that eBay Open is downsizing significantly this year with only a few limited in-person "roadshows" and no live virtual access, only a recorded replay at a later date.
Liz Morton
While eBay is intentionally withdrawing from opportunities to engage with users, GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen is filling the gap, taking his eBay takeover pitch direct to sellers in a recent interview with seller, YouTuber, and Flipwise co-founder Justin Glow.
Liz Morton
That interview has now received over 90,000 view with over 2,000 comments overwhelmingly expressing positive reactions to Cohen's passion and vision for the platform.
In a follow up video, Glow said he reached out to eBay to provide current CEO Jamie Iannone the same opportunity, but unsurprisingly, he had not gotten a response.
Cohen has also taken to social media to make his case for why he believes eBay would be a better-run, more profitable company under his leadership, taking aim at eBay's lack of customer service by highlighting shut down of social support on Facebook and X earlier this year.
you’d think with 2.4 billion in marketing spend, they could login to X pic.twitter.com/oWfScXPIW6
— Ryan Cohen (@ryancohen) May 7, 2026
Whatever the end result of the GameStop takeover bid ends up being, the reaction from sellers cannot and should not be ignored - and if current eBay management has any questions why, they should watch this video and take Justin up on the interview offer ASAP.
