See how fast you reply to buyers

This article explains the four reply speed tiles that sit above your thread list on the Messages page: what each number means, how it is coloured, and exactly what it is (and is not) measuring.

The four tiles at a glance

The strip runs across the top of Messages, above the search box and thread list, and shows four figures side by side.

• Median reply: the typical time between a buyer’s question arriving and your first reply, shown as minutes, hours, or days depending on how long it took. It shows no figure until you have replied to at least one question. It turns green once your median is at or under 24 hours, and amber once it runs slower than that.
• Within 24h: the percentage of buyer questions that got a first reply inside that 24 hour window. It reads green at 90% or higher, amber from 70% to 89%, and red below 70%.
• Answered: the percentage of buyer questions that have been answered at all, regardless of how long it took to get there. It reads green at 90% or higher and amber below that.
• Awaiting reply: a live count of buyer questions that currently have no reply from you. If some of those have gone past the target window, the tile adds a small “overdue” note underneath the count. It reads red when at least one thread is overdue, amber when threads are waiting but none are overdue yet, and green when the queue is empty.

What counts towards these numbers

All four tiles are calculated only from buyer questions, the threads labelled Question in your inbox. Messages about your own purchases from other sellers (labelled Buying) and automatic notices from eBay itself (labelled eBay) are left out of the maths entirely, even though they appear in the same inbox and thread list.

The strip also does not move when you filter or search the thread list below it. It always reports on the full set of buyer questions, not just whichever ones are currently showing on screen.

Working the awaiting reply count down

Your thread list groups buyer questions that still need a reply into a Needs a reply section at the top, ahead of everything else. Working through that section first is the quickest way to bring the Awaiting reply tile down and protect your Within 24h percentage, since every hour a question sits unanswered pushes both numbers the wrong way.