The Corner Penthouse

This is another in a series of articles about eBay, who covers up the deceitful business practices of its sellers, while turning its feedback system into an utter joke. I will do my best to inform the public about eBay's scummy practices and the bad sellers that operate on the platform, so other buyers can avoid them. What I will be writing about today is how to contact eBay's executive customer service, though I will touch upon some reoccurring eBay BS regarding a seller who you should avoid.

Like most giant American companies/corporations, eBay doesn't provide good customer service options. They'd prefer that you read their usually useless support articles, engage with a chatbot, or call and speak to their outsourced customer service at a call center in India. What if you want to send an e-mail to customer service, because e-mail would be the best way to convey the matter and provide supportive documentation? Well, at face value from looking at the company's website, you'd be out of luck. Thankfully, if you know where to look, you might have a good hidden option.

I have found that when I need to get in touch with a real person, based in America for an American company, the best course of action is to see who the top executives are, and find or figure out what their e-mail address is. This has worked for me for most American companies, such as Amazon, Walmart, FedEx, Burger King, and more. It has worked for eBay, too.

For eBay, I found three executive contacts:
• Cornelius Boone (Senior VP Chief People Officer) - coboone@ebay.com
• Stefanie Jay( Chief Business Strategy Officer Senior VP) - stefanie.jay@ebay.com (untested phone: 650-822-4130)
• Jamie Iannone (Chief Executive) - jiannone@ebay.com (untested phone: 408-376-7400)

I have sent e-mails to all three, and never have my messages bounced back. That tells me that all three e-mail addresses are valid. That said, never once have I heard back from Cornelius, Stefanie, or Jamie. Instead, my messages have been forwarded to ootp@ebay.com (ootp = Office of the President). That is one of two higher-level customer service e-mail addresses that eBay has, or had. They used to also have concierge@ebay.com as a contact, but they killed that address years ago.

If you send an e-mail to ootp@ebay.com with a "normal" subject line, the message is returned with an message "Subject: Auto Reply" with a body stating "This is an invalid eBay email address."


If you want to successfully send ootp@ebay.com an e-mail directly, without having to go through the execs and have the message forwarded to OOTP, you need to include some extra text at the end of your subject line: "SR# 1-123456789123" (that example is a made-up number). So, your subject should look something like this:

Subject: Seller Never Shipped Out Order SR# 1-123456789123

I'm not going to give out the real case numbers that I've been assigned from my e-mails to eBay, but based on my tests, no messages I've sent with a case number at the end, even a made-up case number like the 12-digit consecutive-numbered example above, have ever gotten the "invalid eBay email address" auto reply.

It should be noted that you may not get a reply from OOTP within 24 hours. When I sent an e-mail to the three execs on 9/16/2026, I didn't get a reply from Brock at the OOTP address until 9/25 - over a week later! By that point, the seller had finally given me a refund for an unshipped item I bought from him two and a half weeks earlier.


If making customers know secret codes in order to contact the "good" customer support isn't bad enough, eBay continues to circle the toilet bowl by not fixing problems that I've addressed before. Thanks to a recent purchase from seller "ayepea_1", I have had to deal with three bits of reoccurring eBay bullshit.

1. Useless Cancellation Request

I've written so many articles that prove eBay's system is an utter joke, and how there are so many aspects of it that need to be fixed. Yet, eBay still hasn't done a damn thing about it. I ordered a Blu-ray from "ayepea_1" on September 2, 2026. After it being unshipped for several business days, a week later, on Tue Sept. 8th, the seller finally told me that, "I'll ship it in the morning". A few more days pass and the item isn't marked as "shipped" and no tracking information is added to eBay's system.

By Sept. 12th, my patience ran out and I opted to file a "Cancellation Request"; completing forgetting that from past experience, that is a waste of time. Everything with eBay is a "request", leaving buyers to have to wait while the seller drags his/her feet, even though eBay's system should allow an immediate cancellation and refund if, after a week, an item is still not marked as "shipped" and no tracking number is provided. That's another thing eBay still hasn't fixed.

Several more days pass, the item still isn't shipped out, it's not marked as "shipped" and there's no tracking information in eBay's system, the seller never responded to the cancellation request, and yet eBay's system automatically DECLINES the cancellation request! On Sept. 16th, eBay sent me this joke of an e-mail claiming that "We couldn't cancel your order because it's too late to cancel. You should receive your order by Sep 14, 2026." To reiterate, on Sept. 16th they sent an e-mail saying that I should receive an unshipped item by Sept. 14th!!! How fucking stupid is eBay's system?!?!


2. Seller Easily Gets Negative Feedback Removed

I've written so many articles - Dec. 2018, Feb. 2024, Jan. 2, 2025, and Jan. 30, 2025 - that prove eBay's feedback system is an utter joke, and how there is a better way to show how good or bad a seller is at fulfilling orders, yet eBay still lets this joke continue. Instead, they make it worse by continuing to let sellers remove feedback that they don't like. After filing the useless "Cancellation Request", I also left negative feedback for "ayepea_1", letting people know that he doesn't ship out items he sells, and gives false promises. Here's a screenshot of his feedback page from Sept. 12th showing the negative feedback I left.


Now here's a screenshot of his feedback page from Sept. 16th (four days later) showing that my negative feedback has been deleted. No negatives appear in the infobox, and his rating went from 96% to 100%.


Now future buyers are no longer warned that buying from "ayepea_1" is a waste of time.

3. eBay Makes Buyer Wait (Nearly) Three Weeks For Refund on Unshipped Item

By Sept. 16th, two weeks after placing the order with "ayepea_1", I'm finally allowed by eBay to send an "Item Not Received Request". Again, another fucking "request", when I should be allowed to get an immediate refund since eBay's system can see that the item still hasn't been shipped out. Of course, eBay gives the seller several more days to do something (or nothing), as eBay will not get involved until Sept. 22nd.


I fully expected to wait until Sept. 22nd - THREE WEEKS AFTER I ORDERED THE ITEM - in order to get my money back, and re-order the item elsewhere. That's what happened the last time, in January 2025. Surprisingly, on Sept. 19th, the seller responded to this "request" and gave me my money back. Still, that is WAY too long to have to wait for a refund on an unshipped item. This is yet another thing that eBay needs to fix, but it won't.

I really wish that there were another online flea market that could replace eBay. Sure, there are others out there, but none of them have the wide variety of items found on eBay. It's because eBay doesn't have any real competition that it is allowed to get away with all of the bullshit I noted and not do anything to fix the problems.