Our account deletion series has provided detailed tutorials about deleting various service accounts with major companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo, PayPal, Netflix, Twitter and many more. In today’s step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to close your account with eBay, remove your payment information and ensure that your private data stored on eBay’s servers is permanently and safely deleted.
Things to know before closing your eBay account
If your account is no longer meeting minimum standards, you won’t be able to close it until it is no longer below standard. If the account has not been fully paid, eBay may continue to contact you to collect outstanding fees.
To ensure there’s no outstanding balance remaining in your account, simply make a one-time payment. When you issue an account deletion request, the account balance must be zero. If money is owed to you, request a refund before closing your account.
Keep in mind that eBay doesn’t delete your account immediately.
That’s because there’s a waiting period of approximately seven days to ensure that any transactions you made are complete. After the cut-off period, you’ll receive an email confirming that your account is closed. You may continue to receive emails from eBay for up to two weeks after your account is closed.
Once your account get gets permanently deleted, it cannot be reopened under the same user name and email address. This is by design, to prevent users from circumventing poor feedback by closing and re-opening an account. Moreover, your Feedback profile will no longer be available to other eBay members even though feedback you’ve left for other users won’t get deleted.
Should you change your mind about closing your account during the waiting period, be sure to contact eBay promptly and ask them to cancel your account closure.
eBay’s data retention policy
After your account closes, eBay may keep your data and personal information stored on its servers for a short period of time to help improve and personalize the service. The company does not disclose your personal information to third parties for their marketing and advertising purposes without your explicit consent.
eBay keeps your personal information in accordance with its User Privacy Notice.
“This is necessary to comply with laws, prevent fraud, collect any fees owed, resolve problems, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our User Agreement, and take other actions permitted by law,” states the company.
Be sure to read eBay’s Privacy Policy and User Agreement for more information.
For further details, don’t hesitate to reach out to eBay via their Privacy Center.
How to close your eBay account
1) First, you need to make sure that all your fees are paid and your account balance is zero. You can check your account balance any time if you sign in to the My eBay webpage, then click the Account tab.
Tip: If your eBay account has been suspended or restricted for violating terms of service or some other reason, you won’t be able to close it until all disputes have been resolved.
2) Once you’re ready to submit a request to close your eBay account, sign in with your eBay user name and password at the dedicated Close my eBay Account webpage. Non-U.S. eBay users can find an appropriate eBay account deletion webpage for their country by signing in to eBay, then click the Help Topics menu in the right hand corner and type “close account” in the search field.
Tip: If your eBay ID is your email address, change it before requesting deletion.
3) To close the account, you must first tell eBay why you are leaving.
To narrow down your choices, select the category that best matches the reason you want to leave, select the reason, then Click Continue. In an example screenshotted below, I clicked the “Frustration using the website” category and selected “I don’t like eBay’s rules” as my reason for leaving eBay.
Based on the selected category and reason, eBay will provide you with information about how you may be able to solve the problem you’re experiencing in an effort to dissuade you from leaving eBay.
4) Click the popup menu underneath the “Did this solve your problem?”, select “No. Please close my account.” from the menu, then click Continue.
5) On the Confirm Closure screen, read the notice about closing your account.
To tell eBay that you’ve read and understood it, tick the box next to “I read and understand the above information,” then click the Close My Account button.
Congratulations, you’ve just flagged your account for deletion and you can now remove eBay apps from your devices. After the company closes your account, you won’t be able to create a new one under the same ID or email address ever again.
Great, what happens next?
After the waiting period of approximately seven days has expired, eBay will message you on your email address on file to confirm account closure. You cannot bid, make purchases, list items or change your contact information during the waiting period, but you’ll still be able to access your account details on the web.
After the waiting period has expired, you’ll no longer be able to access any part of eBay that requires an account, your feedback profile will no longer be available to other members and you won’t be able to access your selling history.
You will only receive the confirmation message to the email address associated with the account you are closing. To receive messages on another address, you must change your email address on file in your account settings before closing your account.
A closed eBay account cannot be reopened using the same email address or ID. To use eBay services in the future, you need to sing up for a brand new account using a different user name or email address than your old one.
Do I need to close my PayPal account as well?
eBay spun off PayPal into its own company so your PayPal account won’t be automatically flagged for deletion as a result of closing your eBay account.
But if you’d like to close your PayPal account anyway, be sure to consult our step-by-step tutorial. After your PayPal account is closed, you will no longer be able to make any purchases using the PayPal service or view your PayPal account history.
How to deactivate your eBay seller account
Folks who no longer sell items on eBay can choose to keep their eBay account intact and deactivate their seller account instead. Doing so will still let you bid and make purchases, but you’ll have some restrictions if you later want to sell items on eBay.
To deactivate your eBay seller account, do the following:
1) Be sure to make a onetime payment if you have any outstanding balances and request a refund if you still have a credit in your account. You will also need to cancel any active subscriptions, as described in the section further below titled “How to close your eBay Store”.
2) Log in to eBay’s Manage Your Payment Information webpage with your account credentials to remove your payment information for your credit or debit card or bank account. To remove all your payment methods, select the All Payment Methods option on your seller account page, then click the Remove button.
And that’s it, your eBay seller account is no longer active and you can still use the service to bid and make purchases. Even after your eBay seller account is deactivated, you may continue to accrue fees for any listings you have on the site.
How to close your eBay Store
If you run your own eBay Store, you can choose to close it instead of permanently deleting your eBay account. To close your eBay Store, do the following:
1) Sign in to the My eBay webpage with your credentials.
2) In the Account tab, click the Subscriptions link.
3) Find the eBay Stores subscription under the list of your active subscriptions, then click either Change Level or Cancel Subscription.
4) If you have Selling Manager or another selling tool or bundled subscriptions with your eBay Store, select the appropriate option to specify whether you want to keep the subscriptions at the new monthly fee or unsubscribe.
5) Confirm canceling your eBay Stores subscription by clicking the Close Store button.
Tip: Canceling your eBay Store may affect your subscription fees to other products like Selling Manager and the rate you pay for your fixed price listings.
Upon closing your store, you can choose to end or keep all your fixed price listings.
Wrapping up
Please share this tutorial on social media and pass it along to your support folks. Do you use eBay and are you planning on closing your account anytime soon?
If so, why?
Be sure to browse our how-tos on deleting popular online accounts. As always, keep those ideas and suggestions for future coverage coming via tips@iDownloadBlog.com.