Frequently Asked Questions about the User Agreement:
Q. Why is there a User Agreement?
A. The User Agreement is a legal document that spells out the relationship between you and eBay. It outlines the services, fees, Privacy Policy, and the buyer and seller relationship for listing and bidding on items in eBay's fixed price and auction formats.
Q. Will the User Agreement change again?
A. It may change periodically. When revisions are needed, changes will be posted on the site 30 days before taking effect. You also have the option to receive email notices of any revisions as they occur. To select this option go to the preferences page from my eBay and then review your notification preferences. No revisions will occur without notice to the Announcement Board and/or email to those who requested such notice as necessary.
Q. What does "eBay is only a venue" mean?
A. eBay is an exciting electronic marketplace where you can buy and sell to your heart's content. However, eBay does not ultimately participate in the transaction between buyer and seller, verify that items are genuine, or guarantee that you will receive payment or items. eBay encourages safe trading and offers the services of third parties that can provide authentication and escrow services for your transactions. To read more about how you can trade safely, click here.
Q. Why can't I bid on my own item?
A. Bidding on your own item is called a shill bid. It is an artificial and unfair method for raising the price. Shill Bidding is prohibited on eBay.
Q. If I place a bid, how exactly am I obligated to the seller?
A. If you place a bid at or above the minimum bid amount (or in a reserve auction, at or above the reserve amount), and your bid is the high bid at the end of the auction, you are obligated to complete the transaction with the seller, unless you bid on an item covered by our Non-Binding Bid Policy, such as real estate.
Q. Why was one listing removed, while other similar items remain on the site?
A. If a listing is ended or removed, it's probably because the item was prohibited, questionable, infringing or potentially illegal as stated in the User Agreement and a specific complaint was reported. Listed items similar to the ones removed will remain on the site unless eBay is notified about them.
Q. How do I know if an item is potentially illegal or not?
A. eBay provides a list of prohibited, questionable, infringing and potentially illegal items that may not be listed on eBay, on the Prohibited, Questionable & Infringing Items page. This is not a complete list and is only intended to provide representative examples. If you have consulted the list and are not sure if an item you would like to sell is legal or not, do not sell that item without checking with a lawyer or local agencies that may know the specific laws regarding your item.
Q. What happens if someone violates the User Agreement?
A. The eBay trading community is full of wonderful members. However, as in any community, there are always a few bad apples. The User Agreement, in Section 9, allows eBay to warn or suspend a user if they breach any part of the User Agreement. Fraudulent and illegal items are strictly prohibited on eBay. Any seller who attempts to sell prohibited items or commit fraud will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. For an overview of some typical User Agreement violations and eBay's standard enforcement policies for them, click here.
Q. How do I report a potentially illegal, infringing or fraudulent item?
A. If you feel that an item is listed in the wrong category, or that an item is potentially prohibited, questionable, infringing, or fraudulent, the best thing to do is report the item number to eBay. To report such an item, use this form.
Q. What does Section 6.3 of the User Agreement regarding Your Information mean?
A. Section 6.3. License.
Solely to enable eBay to use the information you supply us with, so that we are not violating any rights you might have in that information, you agree to grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise the copyright, publicity, and database rights (but no other rights) you have in Your Information, in any media now known or not currently known, with respect to Your Information. eBay will only use Your Information in accordance with our Privacy Policy (at http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/community/png-priv.html).
This clause allows eBay to host Your Information (as defined in the User Agreement) on our web site. Because hosting material on a web site involves copying, eBay needs your permission to store such material on our servers in order to comply with copyright law.
As stated in the privacy policy, eBay does not sell or rent any personally identifiable information about you to any third party. This section of the User Agreement is absolutely necessary in order for eBay to accept, store, and use Your Information on our servers.
Q. Does Section 7 prohibit me from using auction management software to track my personal transactions on eBay?
A. eBay must have the ability to disallow certain types of monitoring and copying of our site in the interest of protecting the integrity of the eBay system and Your Information. Section 7 is written in somewhat general terms because we cannot anticipate every type of device or process that might use Your (and our) Information in an unauthorised way. Generally, we consider use of the following types of software to be permissible: bulk upload/listing software (e.g, "Mister Lister"), automatic bidding software, and auction management software, which enable users to keep track of their own personal bidding and selling information at eBay.
Q. Does Section 7 prohibit me from discussing or linking to eBay on other websites?
A. The revised Section 7 of the User Agreement does not prevent you from linking to or discussing eBay from your home page or other web sites. We are in no way preventing you from discussing eBay on other web sites or chat boards. It is designed to prohibit users who copy listing descriptions and images without the appropriate permission from the eBay user who owns that description or image.
Q. What does Section 17 of the User Agreement regarding arbitration mean?
A. Section 17. Arbitration.
Any controversy or claim arising out of or in connection with this Agreement may at our discretion be settled by binding arbitration by reference to a commercial disputes centre. You agree to be bound by the ruling arbitrator. The costs of the dispute are borne by the originator.
This clause allows any user that has a dispute with eBay to have that dispute arbitrated by a neutral third party. Consistent with eBay's community values, we feel that it is always better to resolve disputes amicably and quickly if possible, and to this end, arbitration is consistent with this philosophy.
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