Overview
Messages buyers send to your eBay seller account flow into Intercom as conversations, carrying any images or documents the buyer attached and the listing they wrote about. One seller account = one slot. Replies from Intercom go back to the buyer through eBay's messaging, so your team and Fin never need to open eBay.
Authentication
Sign in with the eBay account you sell from using eBay's own OAuth 2.0 flow. We register for eBay's message notifications on your behalf during the connection, so there is nothing to configure in Seller Hub. Access tokens are refreshed automatically ahead of eBay's two-hour expiry, and if eBay ever revokes the connection the channel is flagged in your settings with a one-click route to sign in again.
Inbound events
| Event | Direction |
|---|---|
| New buyer message | Inbound |
| Buyer question about a listing | Inbound |
| Follow-up in an existing thread | Inbound |
Each conversation is tagged eBay Message. eBay sends two notifications for one buyer question, so only one is relayed, unless the second carries attachments the first lacked. Every notification is recorded in a ledger, so redeliveries are ignored and each conversation is processed in order.
Outbound actions
| Action | Trigger | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Reply to buyer | Reply in Intercom on an eBay conversation | Outbound |
Replies reach the buyer exactly as typed. eBay caps a message at 2,000 characters, so a longer reply is split at paragraph, line or word boundaries and sent as consecutive messages. Rate limits and server errors are retried, and a reply that already reached eBay is recognised on retry, so it is neither re-sent nor re-billed. A reply eBay refuses leaves a note on the conversation telling the agent why.
Media handling
Images and documents a buyer attaches are relayed into the Intercom conversation. Outbound, eBay accepts images, PDFs, Word documents and plain text files, up to five attachments per message. Anything eBay cannot carry is named in a note on the conversation so the agent knows what the buyer did not receive.
Account deletion
When a buyer closes their eBay account, eBay notifies us under its marketplace account deletion programme and the buyer's data is removed from the channel, as the programme requires. Removing the channel yourself tears down every subscription eBay holds for it.
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Connect Intercom. Pick your channels. Watch every customer message land in one place. It really is that simple.