eBay UK & Germany August 2025 Seller Update: AI Messaging & Seller Protections
eBay has announced their August 2025 Seller Updates for UK and Germany with AI messaging and changes to seller protections to introduce a more flexible approach to risk assessments and minimize business disruptions.
eBay UK
AI Assistant For Messaging
What you need to know
Our AI Assistant is a powerful new feature designed to enhance interactions with buyers. It gives you quick, relevant replies to buyers’ common questions, so you can save time, stay focused on your business and build buyer confidence.You’re always in control
Review and refine each suggested message before sending, or simply write your own. Every response is drawn from your live listings, so buyers get clear, accurate details—with you calling the shots.How to get started
To turn on AI Assistant:
Open “Messages” on mobile or desktop. A pop-up should prompt you to enable “eBay.ai.”
If you don’t see the pop-up:
- On mobile: go to “Settings” in Messages and toggle “eBay.ai” on
- On desktop: use the “eBay.ai” toggle in the bottom left of Messages
To turn it off anytime, toggle “eBay.ai” off on your device
Open a buyer message. A suggested reply will appear.
Choose your next step: “Edit and send” to use the suggestion, or “Dismiss” to write your own.
eBay announced this feature at eBay Open 2025 last week. More details:
Liz Morton
Seller protections
What you need to know
To help keep eBay a trusted marketplace for everyone, we monitor for risk factors that a seller may not be able to fulfil an order as expectedTo help minimise potential disruptions for sellers as we complete these reviews, we’ve improved how we spot and address potential fulfilment issues—helping to keep your business running smoothly and reducing the need for action on your part.
Based on your feedback, we’ve made our review process for potential fulfilment issues more flexible. This way, we can better address your individual situation if any concerns come up.
Before this, if a potential risk was identified, restrictions could be placed on your account or listings while we manually reviewed orders to confirm delivery.
With the revised process, we’ll take a more flexible approach. In most cases, you’ll get the chance to resolve the concern before any action is taken. We’ll also use tracking information to automatically release funds once orders are shown as delivered. This change helps prevent account disruptions while maintaining a trusted marketplace for everyone.
What it means for you
If we contact you about a concern, we’ll provide clear, specific steps to help prevent restrictions—such as resolving unpaid balances, closing open claims or uploading tracking information.With these improvements, any next steps will be easier to handle, so you can keep growing your business. You won’t need to take any action unless we reach out to you directly.
We’re working to cut down on disruptions and keep communication clear, so you can focus on what matters: selling on eBay.
If eBay's goal is to be more clear and specific, this announcement falls short as the vague language makes it not entirely clear what risk assessments eBay is referring to or how this new process will actually protect sellers better.
And the only update for eBay Germany is this same vague new seller protection policy with pretty much the same vague wording (according to Google translate).
If I had to guess, this might be eBay's way of address increasing concerns from business sellers who are having their funds placed on hold until after delivery with no explanation and confusing and contradictory communication from support.
The new policy started rolling out late last year in the US, with sellers having payouts on all orders delayed until after delivery confirmation if their accounts tripped certain risk factors, including but not limited to being a new/infrequent seller, unresolved buyer claims, or unusual selling patterns like a sudden increase in the average order value or types of items being sold.
Liz Morton
Sellers have been frustrated with confusing communication from support indicating this will eventually apply to all sellers when the policy pages makes it clear it is applied on an account by account basis based on certain risk criteria.
And that confusion has recently extended to the UK and Germany as well, where more sellers are having this delayed payout policy applied and support tells them it is a new policy that will apply to all sellers eventually but eBay community staff have told them it is based on account specific details and risk assessments.
Hopefully these new vague seller protections will address those issues and if so, hopefully they extend to the US as well as these payout delays and the abysmal communication from eBay on the topic are still a major concern for many sellers.
Interestingly, from the meta tags in the URLs for both the UK and Germany seller updates, it appears that eBay may have also planned on announcing updates for Feedback and Motors Parts and Accessories Returns as well, but those were not included in the final publish version of the updates.
My guess is that if they had been included, it would have been the announcement about Automatic Feedback that was made at eBay Open last week and possibly expanding forced free returns for new items listed in Motors Parts and Accessories that was launched in the US in June.
Liz Morton
Stay tuned for updates and announcements for the US, Canada, and Australia which will likely be coming soon!
