To report a scammer on eBay, open a case through the Money Back Guarantee in your purchase history, give the seller a chance to respond, and ask eBay to step in if the problem isn’t resolved. If that doesn’t get your money back, dispute the charge with your credit card issuer or PayPal, and file reports with the FTC and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. Act fast: the tightest deadline in the process can be as short as 30 days from delivery.
Gather Your Evidence First
Before you file anything, pull together every piece of documentation you can find. The strength of your case depends almost entirely on what you can show, not what you can describe from memory. Start with the eBay item number, the seller’s username, and the exact dates and amounts of the transaction.
Screenshot all communications with the seller, including eBay messages and any emails sent outside the platform. If the seller made specific promises about the item’s condition, authenticity, or shipping timeline, those screenshots become your strongest evidence. For physical items, photograph what you received alongside the original listing description so the difference is obvious. Keep tracking numbers, shipping labels, and packaging materials if they reveal something useful, like a return address that doesn’t match the seller’s stated location.
Check Whether Your Purchase Is Covered
eBay’s Money Back Guarantee covers most purchases, but not all of them. Before spending time on a case, confirm your transaction isn’t in one of the excluded categories:
- Vehicles, real estate, and businesses for sale (these fall under separate programs).
- Digital content and intangible goods, including NFTs, even when bundled with physical items.
- Services, classified ads, and travel tickets.
- Payments made outside eBay, including bank transfers, cash, money orders, or escrow.
- Shipments you arranged yourself, used your own courier or freight forwarder for, or where you gave an incorrect address at checkout.
That last group is where many scam victims accidentally disqualify themselves. If a seller asked you to pay outside eBay’s checkout or to arrange your own shipping, that’s both a fraud red flag and a way to void your protection. In that situation, skip ahead to the payment-provider and federal-agency sections below.
Open a Money Back Guarantee Case
The Money Back Guarantee applies in two main situations: the item never arrived, or what showed up doesn’t match the listing description. If eBay sides with you, you get a full refund including the original shipping cost, returned to your original payment method.
You have up to 30 calendar days after the estimated or actual delivery date to report that an item hasn’t arrived, or to request a return because the item doesn’t match the listing. Don’t spend that window trying to negotiate. File first, negotiate second.
To start, go to your purchase history and find the transaction. Select the option to report that the item hasn’t arrived or that it doesn’t match the description. eBay will prompt you for details and let you upload the evidence you gathered.
Once the case is open, the seller gets a chance to resolve it directly. If the seller doesn’t respond or won’t agree to a fix, you can ask eBay to step in after 3 business days have passed since you opened the request.
When eBay intervenes, it reviews both sides. For items that never arrived, eBay checks whether valid tracking shows successful delivery. For items that don’t match the description, you may need to return the item before getting your refund, though eBay sometimes waives that requirement. If eBay rules in your favor, the seller must reimburse eBay for the refund.
Report the Seller for Policy Violations
Getting your money back and reporting the seller for breaking eBay’s rules are two separate actions, and you should do both. The refund process protects your wallet. Reporting protects the next buyer.
To report a suspicious listing, open the listing page and select the question mark icon. On mobile, tap the three dots. Under “Report content,” select “Submit report.” You’ll choose the type of violation and provide details, including freeform text and any documents you want to upload.
This is the right path for counterfeit goods, misleading descriptions, shill bidding, and sellers who pressure buyers to complete transactions off-platform. You can report a listing even if you didn’t buy from it yourself. eBay uses these reports to take action against sellers, from removing individual listings to permanently suspending accounts.
Dispute the Charge With Your Payment Provider
If eBay’s process doesn’t resolve things, or if you want a second layer of protection running at the same time, file a dispute with whatever payment method you used. This is also your main option when the purchase falls outside the Money Back Guarantee.
Credit Card Chargebacks
Federal law gives you the right to dispute billing errors on credit card statements, including charges for goods you never received or that were misrepresented. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, you must send written notice of the billing error to your card issuer within 60 days after the statement containing the charge was sent to you. That clock starts from the statement date, not the purchase date, so check your statements regularly.
Some card networks offer longer windows under their own policies. Visa, for example, allows chargeback claims up to 120 days from the purchase date. Your issuer’s specific rules may vary, so contact them early rather than assume you have more time.
Once you file, the card issuer must acknowledge your dispute within 30 days and resolve it within two billing cycles, no more than 90 days total. During the investigation, the issuer cannot try to collect the disputed amount or report it as delinquent.
PayPal Disputes
If you paid through PayPal, the dispute timeline depends on the type of claim. For items that never arrived, you have 180 days from the date you sent the payment to open a dispute. For items significantly different from what was described, you must file within 30 days of delivery or 180 days from payment, whichever comes first.
That 30-day window for “not as described” claims is easy to miss if you spend weeks trying to work things out with the seller before escalating. File the dispute first and continue negotiating after. You can always close it if the seller makes things right.
Report the Scam to Federal Agencies
eBay and your payment provider handle your individual refund. Federal agencies handle the bigger picture: identifying patterns, building cases against organized fraud rings, and shutting down repeat offenders. Filing with these agencies won’t get your money back directly, but the data matters.
Federal Trade Commission
The FTC collects fraud reports at reportfraud.ftc.gov. Describe what happened, and the FTC generates next steps for protecting yourself. Your report enters the Consumer Sentinel database, which is used by over 2,000 law enforcement agencies worldwide to detect patterns and build investigations. The FTC won’t resolve your individual complaint, but aggregate reports are what trigger enforcement actions against companies and scam operations.
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center
The IC3 at ic3.gov is the FBI’s main intake point for cybercrime complaints, covering everything from online auction fraud to identity theft. Describe the incident and provide whatever transaction details and evidence you have. The IC3 analyzes complaints to identify trends and packages them for the appropriate law enforcement agencies. Combined with other reports, your complaint can help the FBI track criminal networks and, in some cases, freeze stolen funds.
Local Police
For significant losses, file a report with your local police department. Officers may not actively investigate a single online fraud case, but the report itself serves a purpose. Some insurance policies require a police report number before processing a claim, and it creates an official record if the case later becomes part of a larger investigation.