Consumer rights
Buying from a seller on eBay or Facebook Marketplace — do you have any rights at all?
You bought something online; it arrived broken, or it never arrived at all. You message the seller and hear nothing back. So what can you actually do? For England and Wales, the answer depends almost entirely on one thing: who you bought from. Platform rules and how you paid matter too — always read the seller’s terms and the platform’s current buyer policies before you rely on them.
The difference that changes everything
Consumer rights law draws a sharp line between buying from a business and buying from a private individual. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 only applies when you buy goods from a trader — someone selling in the course of a business. Overview: Consumer Rights Act 2015 (GOV.UK).
If you buy from a private seller, you are not covered by those statutory consumer protections in the same way. The main protection you typically have is that the seller cannot actively mislead you about what they are selling. That is it. This is not a technicality. It is the central question in almost every online marketplace dispute.
So how do you know if a seller is a trader?
It is not always obvious. Someone selling hundreds of listings a month from a business-style account is clearly a trader. Someone clearing out their garage is clearly not. There is plenty of grey in between. HMRC guidance and wider consumer-law discussion both treat regularity and volume as indicators. If someone is buying things specifically to resell them, or running what is effectively a shop through their personal profile, they may be treated as a trader regardless of what the bio says.
eBay in particular expects business sellers to identify themselves correctly. If someone is posing as private when they are actually trading, that raises serious issues — for them and for what remedies you might argue you had in practice. If in doubt, check the listing, feedback pattern and invoicing detail, and keep screenshots.
What the platforms themselves offer
eBay runs its own Money Back Guarantee: if an item does not arrive or is significantly not as described, eBay may step in through its disputes process (subject to its conditions and exclusions — check the official help centre for wording that applies now). That layer can apply whether the seller is a business or a private individual, which is why many buyers never need to unpick the legal position at all.
Facebook Marketplace is different. For many deals there is little or no contractual buyer protection. If you pay by bank transfer or hand over cash in person, you are largely on your own. Meta advertises purchase protection only for certain flows (for example where checkout is processed through Meta) — it is narrow, it does not cover everything, and the written conditions decide what counts. Read them before you pay.
The practical lesson is that how you pay matters enormously. Paying through a platform protection route or by credit card (where eligible) creates options that a bare bank transfer often does not. Our guide card, PayPal and chargebacks goes deeper on timelines and escalation.
Credit cards and chargebacks
If you paid by credit card and goods did not arrive or were materially not as described, you may have a claim against your card provider under section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 — typically for qualifying purchases broadly between £100 and £30,000, with detailed rules about the debtor-creditor-supplier chain that must be satisfied. The card issuer can be jointly liable with the supplier in qualifying cases (statutory wording: Consumer Credit Act 1974, section 75; practical steps vary by lender).
Debit cards do not attract the same statutory section 75 remedy, though many banks operate a chargeback scheme with card networks as policy. It is worth asking, though success is never guaranteed and time limits bite quickly.
Private sales: what you can still do
If you bought privately and things have gone wrong, your routes are narrower but not always zero.
If the seller made a false statement that induced you to buy — they said an item worked when they knew it did not, for example — you may conceivably argue misrepresentation. That is harder to prove than a straight consumer-law claim against a trader, and it commonly means court or formal correspondence rather than leaning on “return to seller” tooling.
If the seller will not engage and you have documentary proof of what was agreed, small claims can still be considered. As always the question is whether the amount justifies your time and whether the defendant could actually pay — see our overview small claims in England and Wales.
The practical version
Before you buy anything material through an online marketplace, three questions repay a minute’s thought. Is this seller a business or a private individual? How am I paying, and does that method give workable protection if something goes wrong? If it falls apart, is there a realistic path to getting money back?
Clear answers do not always put you off the deal — they show you how much risk you are really accepting.
Nothing in this article is legal advice for your specific situation.