New eBay Terms of Service from 15 September 2026: What Sellers Should Check Now

The new eBay terms of service (in German: eBay-AGB) apply from 15 September 2026. They apply to you automatically unless you object within four weeks of receiving the notification email. Four things are newly regulated: shipping requirements, live selling via eBay Live, an additional ground for termination by eBay, and a more direct route to dispute resolution for commercial sellers.

_Last updated: 5 September 2026_

This article covers eBay.de, the German eBay marketplace. If you sell into Germany from abroad through a German eBay account, these terms apply to you as well.

Contents

1. When do the new eBay terms apply?
2. Can I object to the new terms?
3. What changes? The four points at a glance
4. Can eBay dictate how I ship?
5. What now applies to eBay Live?
6. Can eBay close my account because I generate many enquiries?
7. How do I complain about an action taken by eBay?
8. What to check before 15 September
9. Frequently asked questions

When do the new eBay terms apply?

On its page about the change to the terms, eBay states verbatim: "Diese eBay-AGB treten für alle über die deutschen eBay-Dienste angemeldeten Nutzer ab dem 15. September 2026 in Kraft, sofern der Nutzer der Geltung der neuen eBay-AGB nicht innerhalb von vier Wochen nach Empfang der E-Mail, in der sie ihm mitgeteilt werden, widerspricht." In English: the terms take effect on 15 September 2026 for everyone registered with the German eBay services, unless the user objects within four weeks of receiving the email announcing them.

Two things follow. First, there is no single deadline for everyone. The four-week period starts on the day your notification arrived, so check the email from eBay rather than a date quoted in a forum. Second, doing nothing counts as acceptance. That is standard for this kind of contract change and is set out in the terms themselves.

New accounts follow a separate rule. eBay writes: "Für alle Nutzer, die sich ab dem 6. August 2026 angemeldet haben, gelten ab dem Zeitpunkt der Anmeldung die eBay-AGB in der Fassung, der sie bei der Anmeldung zugestimmt haben." In other words, anyone who registered on or after 6 August 2026 agreed to the new version when signing up and does not need to act at all.

If your eBay orders need invoicing anyway: with the invoicing software from Easy Invoice, eBay orders arrive automatically and become finished invoices, whichever version of the terms happens to apply.

Can I object to the new terms?

Yes. The right to object is written into the terms, and it is time-limited: four weeks from receipt of the notification. In practice, though, objecting does not mean you carry on selling on eBay under the old terms. In cases like this the contractual relationship usually ends, because eBay offers the service under one version only. What exactly eBay offers you is stated in your notification email.

For most commercial sellers the real question is therefore a different one: not whether to object, but what to adjust in your own settings before 15 September. That is what the next sections are about.

This article provides general information and does not replace legal advice. Whether an objection makes sense in your case depends on your business.

What changes? The four points at a glance

Can eBay dictate how I ship?

In certain cases, yes. Under § 1 (16) eBay may prescribe shipping options and require its own shipping service for selected listings. This does not apply to every listing, only to the cases eBay designates.

International shipping with customs handling is also expressly regulated. You hand the parcel over domestically and the service handles the border formalities. Your ability to exclude individual destination countries remains. So if you only ship within Germany, nothing changes, but it is worth opening the setting once instead of relying on a configuration from three years ago.

How shipping costs affect your margin also depends on the final value fee, which eBay restructured on 1 July 2026. The new rates are in eBay fees from 1 July 2026.

What now applies to eBay Live?

eBay Live is selling by video stream: you show goods, viewers buy while watching. Until now the terms said nothing specific about it. Now they do, on two fronts.

Purchases made during a stream are paid automatically through payment processing, either after the winning bid or on Buy It Now. For the stream itself, eBay reserves the right to moderate: participants can be removed and streams ended.

If you do not stream, nothing changes for you. Whether it is worth starting is covered separately in Live shopping 2026 for small sellers.

Can eBay close my account because I generate many enquiries?

This is the point most summaries leave out. § 10 (2) covers ordinary termination by eBay with 30 days' notice to the end of the month. Alongside the familiar grounds such as rule breaches, eBay expressly names the case where the effort of handling enquiries is disproportionately high over a longer period, measured against the business running through the account.

This is not about a single difficult case. It is about a lasting imbalance: many enquiries, cases and complaints on one side, little turnover on the other. Someone selling ten items a month while regularly occupying customer service falls into this category sooner than a seller with four-figure order numbers and few cases.

In practice this means the number of cases is no longer only a service metric; it can touch the existence of the account. What helps is unspectacular and works anyway:

• Item descriptions precise enough that questions do not arise. Dimensions, condition, what is included, compatibility. Every missing detail comes back as a message.
• Photos of the actual item, not just manufacturer images, especially for used goods.
• Realistic dispatch times rather than the shortest possible. Late shipments generate two messages and a case.
• Answer enquiries quickly and conclusively, so a message does not turn into a case.
• Process returns promptly. For vehicle parts, free returns become mandatory shortly anyway, see eBay vehicle parts: free returns.

eBay does not name a threshold at which it becomes critical. If your account runs cleanly, there is no reason to be nervous. If you know your account produces a lot of cases, you now have one more reason to change that.

How do I complain about an action taken by eBay?

If eBay removes a listing, restricts your account or takes another action, commercial sellers have explicit routes against it under § 7 and § 8. The basis is the European P2B Regulation, which obliges platforms to run internal complaint handling and to offer out-of-court dispute resolution.

Two points matter in practice. First, a complaint against an action must be raised within six months of the notification. If you only notice a year later that a restriction bothers you, you are too late. Second, the internal procedure is no longer a precondition for starting mediation. You can take the external route even while the internal review is still running.

For everyday work this mainly means: keep eBay's notifications, with their dates. Without the notification you cannot tell when the six months started.

What to check before 15 September

1. Find the notification email from eBay. It tells you when your period started, and therefore until when an objection would be possible.
2. Review your shipping settings. Which shipping options are stored, what delivery times do you promise, is the information still accurate?
3. Check your international destination countries. Do you want to sell abroad, and if so where? Exclusions remain possible.
4. Look at your cases and enquiries. How many messages and cases per order? If the ratio stands out, start with the item descriptions.
5. Decide whether eBay Live is relevant for you. If not, you can skip those two sections.
6. Archive eBay's notifications, because of the six-month complaint window.

For an overview of the other eBay changes this year, from fees to payment terms, see eBay selling 2026: the key changes.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to actively agree? No. The new terms apply automatically from 15 September 2026 unless you object within four weeks of receiving the notification.

Exactly when does my objection period end? Four weeks from receipt of your notification email. There is no single calendar date for everyone, because the notifications were not all delivered on the same day.

I only opened my account in August. Does this affect me? Anyone who registered on or after 6 August 2026 already agreed to the new version at sign-up. Nothing changes for you on 15 September.

Can eBay now require a specific shipping provider? For certain listings eBay can require its own shipping service. This does not apply across the board, and you can still restrict your destination countries.

Can my account be terminated because I have too many buyer enquiries? The terms name a lasting imbalance between handling effort and business volume as a ground for termination, with 30 days' notice to the end of the month. eBay does not state a threshold.

And after that?

The change to the terms is one part. The other is invoicing: every eBay order needs an invoice with the mandatory details, and that is not created on the platform. How this works without retyping is described in Creating eBay invoices automatically. If you would like to try it, you can test Easy Invoice free for 10 days; the trial ends automatically.

Sources

• eBay: change to the eBay terms — effective date, objection period, rule for registrations from 6 August 2026
• eBay terms of service (AGB) — § 1 (16) shipping, § 3 (3) and § 12 (9) eBay Live, § 10 (2) termination, § 7 and § 8 complaints An invoicing software writes invoices with every mandatory detail in minutes.

_Note: this article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice in an individual case. What counts is the wording of the eBay terms in the version in force at the time._