Is it safe to buy a phone or console on eBay? How OwlyFinds picks the listings it shows

eBay is often the cheapest place on our pages to buy a phone or a console, and it is the one shop where the seller can be anyone: a big retailer's own eBay shop, a refurbishing business, or a private person clearing a drawer. So before you click an eBay price on OwlyFinds, it is fair to ask what we checked and what we did not. This guide sets out the rules our checks apply to eBay, as the code ran them on 02/10/2026, and what eBay itself promises you.

Is it safe to buy an iPhone on eBay?

It can be, when three things hold: the seller has a long and good record, you pay through eBay's own checkout, and the listing says plainly what you are getting. Most of what goes wrong on eBay goes wrong on one of those three.

Here is what one phone looked like on 02/10/2026, and why each eBay row needs a moment of your time.

On that day our iPhone 16e page held three eBay rows for the 128 GB model: the new and refurbished ones in the box above, and an opened, never used one in its own section on the page. The refurbished one, at £401.99 and graded Very Good, came from the Argos shop on eBay, with free next-day delivery and 60 days' returns. The new one, at £469.99, came from a business seller with 30 days' returns. The opened, never used one, at £363.99, came from a business seller located in Shenzhen, China, sent on a delivery service with duty unpaid, so import charges can fall on you when it arrives. All three passed our rules. Only reading the listing tells you which of them suits you.

Which eBay listings does OwlyFinds refuse?

For each product page, our checks ask eBay for listings in each condition we show, then leave out any listing that breaks one of these rules:

1. Auctions. Only Buy It Now listings, at a fixed price, are shown, never a bid.
2. Sellers with a short or patchy record. The seller needs at least 50 ratings and at least 98% positive feedback.
3. Listings that will not deliver to the UK. A listing can still be sent from abroad, as the iPhone 16e above shows, so check where it is located.
4. Damage, faults and locks in the title. Words such as cracked, smashed, broken, faulty, damaged, bent, water damage, screen damage, not working, no Face ID, spares or for parts rule a listing out, and so does an iCloud or activation lock unless the title says there is none.
5. Titles that send you to the description. "Read description" or "see description" in a title usually hides a caveat, so we leave the listing out.
6. Parts and repairs. Replacement screens, batteries, cameras, motherboards and repair kits are not the product.
7. Several models or capacities in one title. A title that lists models or capacities split by a slash, such as "128GB / 256GB", is not one product we can price.
8. The wrong model or capacity. The title has to match the page's model and storage. For the cheapest candidates we also read eBay's item details, and on a listing with several options we take the price of the option in the page's capacity.
9. Too cheap to be the product. A new listing under 55% of the cheapest price at Amazon, AO, Argos, Currys or John Lewis is refused, and an opened or refurbished one under 30%.
10. Too dear to be worth showing. A new listing more than 1.3 times the dearest of those shops' new prices is refused. Where no shop sells the product new, the line is 1.6 times the middle refurbished price from those shops, Back Market and musicMagpie.
11. Out of line with the rest. A price far from three or more others in the same condition is set aside, and every kind of product has a floor below which a price is taken for a case or an accessory.

Of the listings that pass, we show the cheapest one in each condition. That is all the rules do. We do not read the description, the photos or the returns policy, we do not check where the item is sent from, and we do not vouch for any seller. The rules take out the listings most likely to be the wrong thing; whether the listing that is left is right for you is still yours to read.

eBay links on OwlyFinds may earn us a commission. That never changes which listing we show or the order the prices appear in.

What does eBay's Money Back Guarantee cover?

eBay's own protection sits on top of whatever the seller offers. Its help pages put it like this:

eBay UK's help pages on the Money Back Guarantee, feedback profiles and seller ratings, checked on 02/10/2026.

Pay outside eBay's checkout, for example by bank transfer to a seller who asks for it, and none of this applies.

How to read a seller's feedback

The number in brackets next to a seller's name is their feedback score: how many buyers have rated them. The percentage is the share of those ratings that were positive, so 99.5% means 99.5% of the buyers who left feedback had a good experience. Select the number to open the seller's feedback profile, which adds their recent comments, their detailed ratings for item description, communication, postage time and postage charges, and the date they joined eBay.

Look for one more word on the listing itself: Business or Private. A private seller is not a trader, so the consumer law you rely on with a shop does not apply in the same way, and many private sellers take no returns. On 02/10/2026 the cheapest new iPhone 15 on our page came from a private seller taking no returns. Here is what changes when you buy second hand.

New, refurbished or opened, never used: what the labels mean on eBay

Every eBay listing carries a condition chosen by the seller from eBay's list, and we show the condition the listing states.

• New is new. A listing marked New counts as new on our pages, whoever sells it.
• Opened, never used (eBay's label is "Opened – never used") has its own section on a product page, after refurbished. It stays out of the page's lowest price, out of price alerts and out of the price boxes in our guides, because the box has been opened and you cannot tell why from the price.
• Refurbished comes in five grades, from Seller refurbished at the bottom to Certified Refurbished at the top.
• Used, and New with defects, are not shown at all.

Certified Refurbished means the brand or a refurbisher it approves did the work; Seller refurbished means the seller did. What each grade promises about the battery and the warranty varies by seller, so read the listing. If you are choosing between eBay and the refurbishing specialists, Back Market vs Amazon Renewed shows how their prices compared.

Here is a second phone, where the same labels gave three different prices on 02/10/2026:

That day the refurbished iPhone 15 with 128 GB, graded Good, was £344.99 from a business seller in Plymouth with 30 days' returns. The opened, never used one, in its own section on our iPhone 15 page, was £363.65 from a business seller in Manchester, also with 30 days' returns. The new one was £501.40 from a private seller taking no returns. The cheapest label was not the newest phone, and the newest phone came with the fewest rights.

What to do

1. Open the listing before you pay, and read the condition, the description and the returns policy, not just the price.
2. Check the seller: the number in brackets, the percentage, and whether they are a business or a private seller.
3. Check where the item is located. A phone sent from abroad can bring import charges and a longer wait.
4. Pay through eBay's checkout, never by bank transfer outside it, so the Money Back Guarantee covers you.
5. If an eBay price on our pages looks wrong, use the "Wrong price?" link under the price box and we will look at it.