How to Change, Remove or Revise eBay Feedback: UK Buyer & Seller Guide (2026)

Every eBay seller eventually stares at a negative comment thinking “that’s not fair”, and every buyer has at some point left feedback in a hurry and regretted it. The good news: eBay has a proper machinery for changing, revising and removing feedback. The bad news: it is spread across four different help pages, the time limits are easy to miss, and most of the advice repeated in seller forums is out of date. This guide covers all of it for eBay UK in 2026: the buyer-side revision flow, the seller-side feedback revision request, every situation where eBay will remove feedback for you, feedback extortion, and the public reply, with the rules taken from eBay’s feedback policy and its official seller help pages.

• Nobody edits feedback directly. Not buyers, not sellers, not even for a typo. Everything goes through one of the routes below.
• Buyers: to change negative or neutral feedback you left, the seller must send you a feedback revision request. You then have 10 days to revise it. If they can’t send one, your only option is a follow-up comment.
• Sellers, route 1: fix the buyer’s problem, then send a revision request while the feedback is under 30 days old. You get 5 requests per calendar year, plus 5 more for every 1,000 feedback ratings you receive during the year.
• Sellers, route 2: if the feedback breaks eBay’s feedback policy, report it through Seller Help within 90 days of the transaction. Qualifying feedback is removed within 24 hours.
• Sellers, route 3: reply publicly. One reply per comment, and you can’t edit or retract it, so draft it carefully.
• Perspective: eBay’s own policy states that receiving negative or neutral feedback does not impact your seller performance level. It does lower the positive percentage buyers see, which is why it is still worth acting on.

A piece of eBay feedback has up to three parts: a rating (positive, neutral or negative), a comment, and optionally up to 5 images. Feedback left after a purchase carries a “verified purchase” label, and it all rolls up into the feedback score and positive percentage shown on your profile. Who can touch it after posting breaks down like this:

• The buyer can revise negative or neutral feedback they left, but only in response to a seller’s revision request. Otherwise they can add a follow-up comment under the original.
• The seller can reply publicly (once), send a revision request (limited allowance), report the feedback to eBay for removal, and add a follow-up to feedback they left for buyers. Sellers can only ever leave positive ratings for buyers, so there is no “retaliation” route, and a positive rating paired with a negative comment gets removed by eBay because it confuses other members.
• eBay can remove the whole thing or just the offending part: the comment, the rating, or the images. It does this proactively with automation, and on request via Seller Help.

Everything below walks through each of those levers in the order you should actually use them.

This is the single most-asked question in this topic, so here it is straight: in most cases you can’t change feedback once you’ve submitted it. eBay’s help pages are explicit about that. The exception is negative or neutral feedback you want to improve: the seller can send you a feedback revision request, and that request is the only door into editing what you wrote.

The working sequence, if you’re the buyer:

1. Message the seller from your purchase history. Explain what changed: the parcel turned up, they refunded you, the fault turned out to be your own charger. Sellers cannot revise anything themselves, so this step is how you trigger the process.
2. Ask them to send a feedback revision request. Most sellers know the feature; if they don’t, point them to eBay’s “Viewing and responding to feedback from buyers” help page.
3. Watch for eBay’s email. When the request is sent, eBay emails you the details with a link into the revision flow.
4. Revise within 10 days. You choose a new rating and comment, and once revised, the original comment is no longer visible on eBay. You can also decline the request (with an optional reason), and if you do nothing for 10 days it simply expires.

When revision isn’t available, eBay’s fallback is the follow-up comment: a clarifying note that appears directly beneath your original feedback. The original rating and comment stay visible, so it doesn’t repair a seller’s percentage, but it does set the record straight for anyone reading. A follow-up like “Update: seller refunded me in full the same day, great service” changes how the negative above it reads.

Sellers get the same mechanism for feedback they left for buyers: find the feedback you left, select Follow up on the right side of the page, and add your note. Two constraints on follow-ups, whichever side you’re on: you get one follow-up per comment, and you can’t edit or retract it once posted. Treat it with the same care as the original.

The revision request is the most powerful tool you have, because it is the only route that ends with the negative genuinely replaced rather than just answered. It is also rationed, so the order of operations matters.

1. Fix the actual problem first. eBay’s guidance is to contact the buyer, resolve the issue, and then ask whether they’d revise. A revision request landing before you’ve done anything reads as “please delete your honest opinion” and gets declined.
2. Check the age. The feedback must be less than 30 days old when you send the request. Diarise it: if you’re mid-negotiation with a slow-replying buyer on day 26, send the request anyway.
3. Send the request from the feedback item in your Seller Hub feedback view. eBay emails the buyer with all the details.
4. Wait out the 10 days. The buyer can revise (original disappears from eBay), decline (optionally telling you why), or ignore it, in which case the request expires and is spent.

You can make 5 feedback revision requests per calendar year. For every 1,000 feedback ratings you receive during the year, you get 5 additional requests.

Worked example: say you run a Growth-sized store shifting around 250 orders a month at a £18 average, roughly £54,000 a year through eBay, and about 2,100 of those buyers leave feedback during the calendar year. Your allowance is 5 base + 10 extra (two full thousands) = 15 revision requests for the year. A small seller with 300 feedback ratings a year has just the base 5. Either way the maths says the same thing: a revision request costs you a scarce token whether or not the buyer responds, so spend them on negatives where you’ve genuinely resolved the issue and the buyer is talking to you, not on buyers who have gone silent.

The second route doesn’t need the buyer’s cooperation at all. eBay’s feedback policy commits to removing feedback in a specific set of situations, and it enforces this both proactively with automation and manually when you request a review through Seller Help. If your case qualifies, eBay emails you and the feedback is removed from your account within 24 hours; if it doesn’t, they explain why it stays. Depending on the situation eBay may remove the comment, the rating, the images, or all of them, and where only part of a comment breaks policy, eBay may invite the buyer to revise it instead.

The removable categories, with UK-flavoured examples:

eBay removes all feedback containing any of the following:

• Hate, violence, discrimination, threats or intimidation
• Profane, obscene, adult or illegal content
• Opinions on political, religious or social issues
• Personally identifiable information (your home address, phone number, real name)
• Links, URLs or anything encouraging sales off eBay
• Meaningless content, or images that aren’t of the item purchased
• Comments clearly intended for a different item or seller (the classic: “shirt was very poor quality” left on your photo frame listing)
• Negative comments paired with positive ratings, or the reverse
• Personal attacks that could harm your business and can’t reasonably be read as constructive criticism

eBay removes neutral or negative feedback where its own records show the buyer was the source of the problem:

• The buyer asked to cancel after committing to buy or winning an auction
• The order was cancelled because the buyer didn’t pay, or over an address issue
• The complaint is about something correctly disclosed in the listing. eBay’s own example: a pre-loved dress described as having a stain inside, negged for having a stain inside. Removable. If you hadn’t disclosed the stain, it stays.
• The buyer demanded a change to the order after paying, and the feedback is about that
• The buyer has been actioned under eBay’s abusive buyer policy

This is the category UK sellers under-use most. eBay removes neutral or negative feedback about:

• A delivery issue where tracking shows you met your handling and delivery expectations. Example: you sold a £24.99 hoodie on Tuesday with 1-day handling, your Royal Mail Tracked 48 scan shows acceptance Wednesday morning, and Royal Mail then took six days. A neg saying “slow delivery” is removable, because the tracking proves the delay wasn’t yours. This only works if the tracking is uploaded to the order, which is one more reason to buy labels through eBay or upload numbers religiously.
• A carrier delay caused by a natural disaster or unexpected event
• A customs or import-charge issue outside your control. eBay’s example is a buyer negging over import duties on an international order. Not your fees, not your feedback.

• You declined a change-of-mind return on a listing that didn’t offer returns. eBay’s policy is explicit that “wouldn’t take it back after I changed my mind” feedback is removable when your listing said no returns.
• The buyer changed their mind and was liable for the return label cost, and the feedback is a complaint about paying it.

Feedback gets removed when the problem sits with eBay’s own machinery rather than with you:

• Complaints about not being able to retract a bid
• A technical issue on the eBay site that eBay can identify
• An eBay Money Back Guarantee case or payment dispute that closed with you having met your obligations
• Items posted on time with eBay International Shipping or the Global Shipping Programme where the problem was delivery-related
• Items sent with Simple Delivery where the issue was caused by the eBay-provided label, or the item arrived damaged (see our Simple Delivery guide for how that protection works in practice)
• eBay Fulfilment shipping issues outside your control
• Authenticity Guarantee items that shipped on time and passed authentication, and Assured Fit returns where you met your obligations

Beyond the feedback policy itself, eBay’s seller protections page adds automatic removal in adjacent cases: abusive buyers (feedback, defects and open service-metric cases all removed), buyers who retracted a bid or never paid before you cancelled, buyers whose in-message demands for extras you can evidence, and weather or carrier disruptions listed on eBay’s announcement board.

Feedback extortion is the clearest-cut removal of all: eBay removes all feedback used as a means to extort another member. Extortion is any variation on “do X or I leave a negative” where X is something you never offered. eBay’s own example is a camera buyer demanding a free upgraded memory card and case under threat of negative feedback.

A realistic UK version: you sell a jacket for £34.99 with free Evri delivery. After paying, the buyer messages: “I’ve seen this cheaper elsewhere, refund me £10 or I’ll be leaving you negative feedback.” That message is the evidence. What to do:

1. Don’t pay. Caving teaches the buyer the tactic works, and eBay’s seller protections mean you never have to agree to changes to your listing’s terms.
2. Keep everything in eBay messages. eBay removes related feedback “when we can see the buyer’s demands in eBay messages”. A WhatsApp threat is invisible to them; an eBay message is evidence.
3. Report the buyer and, if feedback lands, request removal through Seller Help. Extortion-based feedback is removable whether or not the buyer follows through politely.

The same policy section bans feedback manipulation: creating, soliciting or using fake, misleading or manipulated feedback. That includes the tempting-but-toxic stuff on the seller side, like offering a partial refund in exchange for a positive, or buying feedback. Feedback must reflect the actual experience, in both directions, and manipulation risks action against your account, up to suspension.

1. Check the deadline. You can request removal through Seller Help within 90 days of the transaction. Note that’s measured from the transaction, not from when the feedback appeared.
2. Match your case to a policy category from the sections above before you open the request. “It feels unfair” is not a category; “tracking shows I dispatched within my handling time” is.
3. Open Seller Help (signed in as your selling account), find the feedback item, and submit the removal request with the reason that matches your category.
4. Make sure the evidence is on eBay. eBay says it makes sure it has “factual evidence to support removal” in every case: uploaded tracking for delivery claims, the listing text for disclosed-condition claims, eBay messages for extortion and demands.
5. Watch your email. If the feedback qualifies, eBay emails you and removes it within 24 hours. If it doesn’t, they explain why it is allowed to stay, which at least tells you whether a revision request or a public reply is your next move.

When feedback can’t be revised or removed, the public reply is what’s left, and it is more valuable than most sellers give it credit for. The reply isn’t really for the buyer who negged you. It is for the hundred future buyers who will read that negative while deciding whether to trust you.

1. Go to your feedback profile, find the comment (the search bar under the All received feedback tab covers the last 12 months by buyer username, item number or title), and select Reply on the right side of the page.
2. Write your reply. It appears directly below the buyer’s comment. Keep it short and factual; the reply field is tight (around 80 characters), so every word has to earn its place.
3. Check it twice before submitting: you get one reply per comment, and it cannot be edited or retracted.

Tone decides everything here. eBay’s own model reply, from its feedback policy page, is worth copying wholesale: “I’m sorry to hear you weren’t happy with the dress, I love making my customers happy. Please open a return on eBay and we can arrange for a refund.” Calm, warm, solution-shaped. Compare that to the defensive replies you see in the wild (“buyer never even messaged me!!”), which read worse than the negative they sit under. If you want a library of ready-made replies for common situations, our eBay feedback examples post has a full set you can copy and adapt.

The four levers side by side. In practice you work top to bottom: revision first where the buyer is reachable and the problem is fixed, removal where policy is on your side, reply when neither applies.

One more distinction worth internalising: the revision request needs the buyer to say yes, removal needs eBay to say yes, and the reply needs nobody’s permission at all. That is why the reply is the floor you always have, and the other two are the routes you escalate through when the facts support it.

Everything above is reactive: one comment, one fix. The bigger win is noticing patterns, because three negatives spread across 400 orders is noise, but three negatives on the same SKU is a listing problem: a misleading photo, an optimistic condition description, packaging that doesn’t survive the courier. eBay shows you feedback one comment at a time, which makes those patterns easy to miss.

This is the part DashVue was built for. The Feedback tab pulls your eBay feedback into one view: your net score, positive percentage, and negative and neutral counts on the Overview, and a distribution over the last 30, 90 and 365 days on the Analysis tab, with a ranked list of the items attracting the most negative feedback. When a reply is needed, the reply drawer lets you draft and trim it to eBay’s limit, copy it across, and mark the comment handled so nothing slips. To be clear about the boundaries: DashVue can’t remove feedback or post replies to eBay for you; nothing can, except the routes on this page. What it does is make sure you spot the negative inside the 30-day revision window rather than after it, and see which listing keeps generating them. Plans start from £8.99/month with a 7-day free trial, no card required.

Not directly. If you left negative or neutral feedback for a seller, the seller can send you a feedback revision request and you can change it that way, with 10 days to act on the request. Otherwise, your option is a follow-up comment under the original.

The feedback must be less than 30 days old when the request is sent. After that, the revision route is closed for that comment, though the 90-day Seller Help removal window may still be open if the feedback breaks policy.

No. Sellers can’t delete feedback. They can ask the buyer to revise it (via a revision request), ask eBay to remove it (via Seller Help, if it breaks the feedback policy), or reply to it publicly. Anyone selling a “guaranteed feedback removal” service is selling something eBay doesn’t offer.

eBay’s feedback policy states that receiving negative or neutral feedback doesn’t impact seller performance, which is measured on defects, late dispatch and cases. It does reduce the positive percentage displayed on your profile, which buyers see and weigh, so it still has a real commercial cost.

Refunding a buyer to fix a genuine problem, then asking whether they’d revise, is exactly how eBay intends the system to work. Making the refund conditional on positive or revised feedback crosses into feedback manipulation, which eBay prohibits and can action your account for. Fix first, ask second, never bargain feedback for money.

If your request qualifies, eBay emails you and removes the feedback from your account within 24 hours. Clear-cut policy breaches are often removed proactively by eBay’s automation before you even report them.

No. Sellers can only leave positive feedback for buyers, and they have up to 90 days from the transaction to leave it. A positive rating with a negative comment hidden inside it gets removed because it confuses other members.

The window is limited: currently around 60 days from the transaction for buyers, and 90 days for sellers leaving feedback for buyers. eBay adjusts mechanics like this from time to time, so check eBay’s feedback pages for the current figure before relying on it.

Buyers can make their feedback profile private, but sellers can’t: to sell on eBay, your feedback must be visible to everyone. Making feedback private as a workaround would end your selling, not your negatives.

• eBay UK: Feedback policy covers every removal category, the 90-day Seller Help window, the 24-hour removal commitment, and extortion/manipulation rules.
• eBay UK: Viewing and responding to feedback from buyers covers the reply mechanics, the 30-day revision request rule, the allowance, and the buyer’s 10-day response window.
• eBay UK: Feedback profiles covers what feedback contains, follow-up comments, and public/private profile rules.
• eBay UK: Seller protections covers automatic feedback removal for abusive buyers, non-payers, in-message demands, and carrier or programme issues.
• eBay UK: Leaving feedback for buyers covers the positive-only rule, the 90-day seller window, and follow-up comments.

eBay revises its feedback mechanics periodically. The rules above reflect eBay UK help pages as captured in mid-2026; always confirm against the live pages before acting on a specific deadline.