No, not ridiculous at all - assume that they forced you to sign an NDA as part of the settlement agreement! I would love to hear from you, but I need to have posted 30 times before I send you a PM. Any chance you could PM me please? Many thanks

Yes, you have full recourse in UK courts for items that are listed (from a seller's perspective) or purchased (from a buyer's perspective) on the website ebay (dot) co (dot) uk - this includes items that are actually sourced from abroad, but have been listed for international sale and physically appear on the ebay.co.uk website. You will have a much tougher job to issue proceedings if you were involved in a transaction that was listed only on eBay.com, or eBay.de for example as these are foreign websites with foreign defendants, and the only recourse you may have is from the protection offered by PayPal if used as the payment medium. If you need to file a county court summons against eBay (UK) Ltd - their current registered details are: EBAY (UK) LIMITED 5 NEW STREET SQUARE LONDON UNITED KINGDOM EC4A 3TW Company No. 03726028 Tel: 0208 605 3000 You can check that these details are still uptodate on the Companies House website. If you issue court proceedings against a UK company, it MUST be served upon their UK registered address, therefore, do not serve them at eBay's Richmond address which is merely an office and place of trading. The current MD of eBay UK is Tanya Lawler: tanya (dot) lawler (at) ebay (dot) com - you might wish to serve any documents upon her electronically also for added belt and braces protection and evidence of service. This information is also correct as at the time of posting and will no doubt be subject to change over time! For my money, I can see that the OP appears to have reached a settlement with eBay (UK) Ltd based on one of his later posts and it seems like he's been required to sign a non-disclosure agreement document as part of the settlement process. This is a very common way of larger companies trying to go through their own damage limitation process from a brand perspective. I expect I will need to serve a summons on eBay (UK) Ltd in respect of a fraudulent "item not as described" case that was filed by a fraudulent buyer who abused the eBay buyer protection programme. Sadly, despite eBay not even following their own published ebay protection policy, they refuse to reverse their own error, which has made them party to an abuse of their own procedure and meant that they have subsequently stolen money from our PayPal account as a result. A 14 day LBA (Letter Before Action) has just been served upon the MD electronically, hoping that this will prompt a reaction, but I suspect that their default legal position is to ignore all inbound comms and force people to actually issue against them and then negotiate later (if they feel there is a case) as they know that whilst most people will say "see you in court" in the heat of the moment, very few actually have the gumption and confidence to actually see it through and issue court proceedings. If more of us who actually have a case against them issued against them, they might end up pulling their finger out and providing the sort of resolution service that eBay users across the globe deserve. Unless I'm forced into signing an NDA, I will update with news/updates over the coming weeks - my ideal outcome is to prepare and distribute a "how to sue eBay" document that will assist many others to take action and not continue to be bullied by this appallingly obtuse organisation.

I have had a similar experience of incompetence from Parcelforce. I sent a Limited Edition BlackBerry via their top Global Express service at a cost of £54 to Russia, with a guaranteed 2-3 day delivery target. It was eventually delivered some 17 days later, and I discovered that they breached their contractual terms to "downgrade" the service used from Global Express to Global Priority. I filed a compensation claim for the delay immediately after delivery, and they rejected the claim on the basis that "any claim needs to be filed within 15 days of posting the consignment"!! A letter before action email sent directly to the Director of Parcelforce and Cc'ing in the CEO of Royal Mail highlighting the clear and unlawful breach of contract, quickly got this overturned an apparently a full refund of the original cost is on its way back to me now. The email format for all key staff at RM is firstname (.) surname (@) royalmail (.) com - this includes Parcelforce key staff as they owned by RM. It simply shouldn't have to be this way though should it!