I took eBay to court over £1,000+ in shop subscription charges — they finally backed down and paid up

I thought I'd share this because I've seen plenty of posts from sellers who've spent weeks going round in circles with eBay support and eventually just given up.

I accidentally upgraded my eBay seller account to an Anchor subscription, which was around £549 per month.

I realised the mistake almost immediately and contacted eBay support. I was told the account would be downgraded and the issue sorted.

Fair enough. Mistakes happen.

Except it wasn't sorted.

Over the following weeks I contacted eBay repeatedly. I was given numerous assurances that the downgrade/refund was being dealt with and several different timescales for when it would be completed.

Those deadlines came and went.

I contacted them again.

Another promise. Another deadline. Nothing happened.

At various points I also had problems accessing chat/support, and eventually I went through eBay's official complaints process. Rather bizarrely, the complaint was effectively referred back to support because they said it wasn't a financial complaint.

This carried on for nearly eight weeks.

Eventually I received an email saying they wouldn't refund the subscription because I'd used the account during that month.

Technically, there had been activity on the account. I never disputed that.

However, my listings were being uploaded/managed automatically through Shopify Marketplace Connect, and throughout that period I had been relying on eBay's repeated assurances that my subscription was being downgraded.

My position was simple: downgrade the account as promised and charge me whatever legitimate selling/listing fees would have applied outside the subscription allowance.

They still refused.

Fortunately, I'd kept the chat logs, dates, promises and missed deadlines.

Then the following month arrived.

Despite everything that had happened — and despite me also manually downgrading the account — eBay charged me another roughly £548 subscription fee.

That was enough.

I removed every listing from eBay, put everything I'd saved into chronological order and sent them a Letter Before Action.

When that didn't resolve it, I issued a claim against eBay through the court process.

And suddenly the situation that support had been unable to resolve for nearly two months became remarkably solvable.

After acknowledging the court claim, eBay agreed to refund the disputed subscription charges, reimburse my court fee and reverse the roughly £500 negative balance that had been left on my account.

So technically the case was settled rather than decided by a judge, but I got the financial outcome I'd brought the claim for.

The biggest lesson I'd give another seller is:

KEEP EVERYTHING.

Save your support chats. Screenshot promises. Record dates and reference numbers. If somebody tells you something will be fixed within 48 hours, keep evidence of it. If the deadline passes, record that too.

If I'd simply phoned them repeatedly and had no written record, I would have been in a much weaker position.

I spent nearly two months being passed around support and repeatedly being told the problem would be fixed.

Once I'd exhausted their complaints process, documented everything and actually issued proceedings, they settled.

I'm not suggesting everyone should immediately start court proceedings whenever customer service annoys them. But equally, being a huge company doesn't mean a customer or small business has to accept endless broken promises and eventually write off hundreds of pounds because pursuing it becomes exhausting.

Sometimes “I'll take this further” needs to stop being a sentence in a customer-service chat and become an actual court claim.

Turns out the hold music gets considerably shorter after that. 😏