Is eBay Removing Email Addresses from Buyer Communication?

by: rnrnsons

I have had this happen to me several times before also.

by: anyone out there yet

Fleecebay has been doing that for weeks.

Way to get around it is when you message someone break up your email address with spaces. It has worked for me.

by: Anonymous Annie

If you ever want to get around eBay's childishly paranoid ''feature'', just present your email address in a non-standard format.

For example, when a customer asks a question, you may want to end your reply like this:

''... and that's the answer to your question about my widget. I look forward to doing business with you. If there's anything else you need, you can email: annie [dash] smith [at] gmail [dot] com''

Any variation will do as long as it's not in the standard format: annie-smith@gmail.com

You can reach me by writing to ''annie-smith'' using my gmail address.

To contact me directly, just send a note to my verizon (dot) net account in care of ''annie-smith''

-----
There are dozens of ways to mix it up. Anyone with half a brain (and who wants to contact you directly) will be able to figure it out.

In the old days, I was PERFECTLY CONTENT to let ''eBay sales remain on eBay'' ... but now, not so much. The more eBay places these idiotic rules and restrictions on how I'm able to conduct business and/or communicate with MY customers, the more aggressive I am in circumventing them.

by: Charlie W.

This one BUGS ME!

Nearly all of the items I sell on eBay are personalized. Sometimes a customer wants their stickers to be personalized with their e-mail address.

From time to time, I'll receive a message from a customer that says ''please personalize the bottom of the stickers with [email address removed per policy]''

HUH??

Fortunately, I have my customers' real email address by way of their PayPal payment, and I'll have to contact them separately to confirm exactly what they were trying to say.

by: Philip Cohen

Surely, this has to be a good indication that the waves are lapping at the gunnels of this tired, rusting, old hulk, PS (paddle steamer) “eBay”. What else could this petty, nonsensical policy mean? That all these small seller transactions do now still have some value to eBay? If so, what a strange way of encouraging such activity, to line to the transaction way with such hurdles and booby traps. Of course, such unintelligent design could only have been conceived by the cretinous chief headless turkey who, along with “Megalomaniacal Meg”, is a graduate of the infamous Bain & Co school of economics.

Enron / eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.

by: Elsewhere

Annie,

"In the old days, I was PERFECTLY CONTENT to let ''eBay sales remain on eBay'' ... but now, not so much. The more eBay places these idiotic rules and restrictions on how I'm able to conduct business and/or communicate with MY customers, the more aggressive I am in circumventing them."

Same here.  I spent many years going above and beyond to make eBay my one and only venue.  But no longer.  I actively try to USE eBay for my own purposes now.  Nothing but free listings.  Push my other venues hard in all communications outside of eBay (make sure you keep a file of ALL customer email addresses paid through PayPal).

eBay cares not one bit about my business and so I care nothing about theirs.  I did not start this race to the bottom, eBay did, but I know I will be around far longer than eBay in the end.

As the chaos theory saying goes: "Nature will find a way."

by: woodjungle! on Ebay

The reason why this is a concern is because currently there IS NO POLICY on sending emails in messages.  It's just in listings.  Or am I missing something??

by: Ric

Only eBay's MBA's could create a system where sellers are rated by buyers on communication with ratings could negatively impact the sellers account and then take action to prevent the flow of communication between buyer and seller by deleting email addresses.

Obviously, eBay executives want to see sellers prevented from receiving discounts and have implemented this interference policy in an attempt to guarantee their goal is accomplished.

If eBay is going to prevent communication, then they should treat sellers with more transparency/respect and eliminate communication as a DSR rating.

Hypocrisy such as this is all too common at eBay as a direct result of management that neither buys nor sells under the policies and systems they force upon sellers.

by: spirit-of-shiloh

A couple months ago I was chatting with a eBay seller friend I met on the Antiques board. I gave my Gmail so we could chat more freely. Well eBay cancelled the entire email. So I now do the janedoe at gmail dot com and it works...until the robots figure out how to mess that uo.

by: DonC

Just another attempt by eBay to copy Amazon.

by: cshort0319

My frustration with this kind of policy is due to the fact that some of the items I sell can be packaged in a customized manner as the buyer wishes -- can you make this in green, etc. That takes negotiation on both parts. It is not to circumvent the system, but to clarify the request so it is mutually satisfactory, including pictures. Hard when you can't communicate fully!

by: Yep

Ditto what Phil said...

Starnge mixture of signales from ebay (what's new there).

On the 1 hand they are pulling every lowdaown dirty trick in the book to slam small to medium sellers and get them off ebay - (as Donahoe clearly said: We're ALL just NOISE to ebaay!)

But on the other hand they are doing everything they can to keep sales on ebay only and cut communications lines so buyers and sellers can't arrange deals off ebay thereby keeping the small to medium sized sellers on ebay only...

I mean obviously they want to keep the BUYERS on ebay but want us sellers to disappear - The idiots don't seem to understand the basic concept that a lot of us sellers ARE buyers as well and you sour us one way we'll all leave PERIOD...

Fact is I (and tons of other sellers) been doing that for many months now, been buidling sales sites on other better, fairer and far, FAR CHEAPER sites other than ebay...

Well, they want us all gone, GIVE THEM THEIR WISH FOLKS!
Start selling and even more importantly SHOPPING on other sites... Let's all give ebay a great Christmas present this year - A WAKE UP CALL THEY CAN'T IGNORE AND A MESSAGE:

YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN ANY MORE AND FRANKLY WE LIKE THE OTHER KIDS (sites) TOYS BETTER THAN YOURS!!

by: Jesse

I pretty much never buy anything on E-Bay.  I can buy it on Amazon for the same or less and I don't have to deal with EBay and it's idiotic policies.  If I am lucky I sell on EBay less than 10 times per year.  I got the message from EBay quite a while back.  EBay to Seller:  If you aren't generating a lot of profit for us go away. You are more trouble than you are worth. If you become more trouble than you are worth to us we will make you go away.

by: debdod

Always include a thank you note when you ship the item to YOUR customer. Add your email and let them know they can contact you directly. Thats what I do.

by: comet

This has been going on for MONTHS but in a "scattershot" sort of way.  And yes the "fractured" email addys work.  I don't sell the sort of things that generate a lot of "return buyers" unless I list vintage jewelry so making sure I keep a "sales list" is not that much of an issue for me.

BUT!!!!!   This is getting to the point of Money Python absurdity.  We are as others have pointed out SLAMMED if we fail to "communicate"---and I really have NEVER understood that in the context of MOST ebay sales---I bid on item.  I pay for item.  Item arrives---or doesn't---and I deal with that accordingly.  I don't really EXPECT to hear much from my seller unless there is a problem or  have contacted THEM for some reason.

As a SELLER however I feel that by checking the SHIPPED box and adding the TRACKING number if appropriate I have done my part UNLESS there is some reason I need to communicate with the buyer.  My items are sent out a lot of times same day or within a day or so on a weekend or if I really cannot make it to the PO---I live in a rural location and don't really want to leave this stuff sitting outside waiting for the carrier to arrive.  Unless there is a GOOD reason I don't ness contact a buyer.  Surely they get ENOUGH email already!And the absurd DSR for "communication" for me is just fine n dandy,  so I just don't "Get" why they even NEED a DSR for this.  Well I don't "Get" why we "need" DSR's for ANYTHING but ya know what I MEAN.  

That said!!!!!    ELIMINATING the option of a buyer to communicate AT ALL with a seller and vice versa is asking for the HOST COMPANY to be the BAd Guy NOT the individual seller OR buyer.  Do we really think that your random buyer is going to think the SELLER he tried to contact somehow REMOVED his email from an internal ebay email?  

I have taken to putting my email addy in the fractured form on my listings with a small para about how this is NOT my decision BUT that ebay has decided that we are no longer ALLOWED to communicate with the buyer AND that we can not send PICS using the regular ebay email but instead we MUST have an email addy---and to please either use MY email OR to fracture their own within an ebay email.  SO FAR this seems to be working.  

I do find it "funny" that on a few of my listings I am STILL---months after I changed this---getting a message that ebay has DETECTED an email address in my listing--where NONE EXISTS.  While the SAME email addy is on ALL of my listings.

I also find it kinda creepy that I keep getting SPOOFS telling me that I have an ILLEGAL EMAIL ADDRESS on my listings and if I would just go to the link on the email---that does NOT look like a regulation ebay email in any case!--that I will find out how to magically make it OK to add some sort of tiny url or other email addy that ebay APPROVES of. Fortunately I realized that this WAS a spoof.

And the other day I got a spoof message that I had "selling restrictions" on my account because of either:  A problem of number of sales (I have more than one account) OR that one account had a problem---neither one does!---and that meant that ebay was going to shut off my listings UNLESS I clicked on the Magic Fixer Link handily provided on this amazing ebay email!!!!!

Another phishing expedition

by: Patricia

LOL is their desperation showing again?  Seems they'll do anything to hang onto those buyers fearing a seller is so beaten up he will make deals off site?

by: Truk

The issue we have with removed email's is we sold an item on Ebay the other day we were able to sell it because the buyer wanted more photos than we had or wanted in the listing we sent them to his email from ours
If Ebay messages worked like a real email system removal of email addresses would not be an issue right now Ebay messages is not much of a tool

by: ralph bowman

E-bay is like an abuser, they try and seperate you from freinds and family,by chipping away the means to be around and comunicate with them. ... if E-bay was not afraid of losing your business these issuses would not exsist.

by: Judy

This thread explains the phone call I got from eBay (I've just come back into eBay) saying that I couldn't use a URL for selling products. Trouble is, my eBay business is all directed to my business URL and that's my contact address. I explained and the girl just said, ''Oh'' and ended the conversation.