Frequent eBay discussion-board poster wastingtime101 continued their campaign to bring back an option eBay had taken away from sellers in 2023: the ability for sellers to communicate with users they’ve added to their blocked bidders/buyers lists (BBLs).
eBay’s help page “Blocking a buyer on eBay” explains, “If you’ve had an issue with a buyer and don’t want them to purchase or bid on your items, you can add them to your Blocked buyers list. They’ll be unable to place bids or buy from you until you remove them from the list.”
But in 2023, eBay removed the ability for sellers to send or receive messages from buyers on their BBL lists. (Note that eBay’s feature that lets sellers set buyer requirements is a different feature.)
A common complaint comes from sellers in the middle of handling a transaction with a difficult buyer with whom they need to continue to communicate, but want to prevent those buyers from making additional (and potentially malicious) purchases.
Wastingtime101 posted the new thread on the topic this month because eBay moderators closed previous posts that wastingtime101 had created. “So yeah, people can report threads as old and get them locked despite the topic not actually being old with all info still as relevant today as it was when this started. I’ll just keep creating new posts about it.”
The poster said if sellers stop talking about the issue, “eBay will lower the priority status instead of raising it, thinking users no longer care about it. I’m hoping the priority has continued to climb with the efforts of those who have tirelessly advocated for this.”
Other sellers chimed in to share their opinions that eBay should return Blocked Bidder Lists to their original state, and some said the change hurt buyers as much as it hurt sellers, such as these two sellers:
hartungcards wrote, “This is a problem for sellers as outlined by several posters above, but it is also a problem for buyers who have been blocked by a seller. Once blocked, they then have no way to contact the seller in order to ask if they might consider unblocking them. Blocked buyers, while sometimes a necessity, are never good for anyone’s business — including eBay’s.”
jonathanbrightlight wrote, “I don’t even care if buyers have the ability to petition to be unblocked necessarily, but right now they don’t even know they’re blocked when they send a message. It just looks like they’re sending messages to a seller and being ignored. That makes the issue worse, not better.”
Another seller said it didn’t seem it should be a big deal for eBay to make the change: “Thing is, this ‘fix’ isn’t asking for something NEW. We’re asking for it to be put BACK to the way it was before ebay decided “Oh no, the sellers don’t need that option”.”
