Contacting buyers or sellers

[336randyg]

I cannot contact a buyer or seller.  The contact block comes up, but I cannot type anything in it.

Trying to explain to the bunch of morons who work for eBay is useless.  They send me to a link to contact seller and the same screen comes up that will not allow me to type anything in it.

Windows 11 thing maybe ?  Anyhow, I won't buy or sell anything here until that gets sorted.

No way to do business.

[eburtonlab]

You should be able to use the "contact" link in a seller's listing or in your Purchase History to send a message to the seller.

If you are having problems, try clicking on the "Send message" text to start typing your message.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Ask-a-Mentor/unable-to-contact-seller/m-p/34794053/highlight/true#M790...

[336randyg]

Nothing changes.  Will not let me type any text.

[eburtonlab]

Be sure you are clicking on the "Send message" text line, and then start typing.

If that is not working for you, try another browser.

[336randyg]

I appreciate you trying to help me.  But, I can cop an attitude with the best of them.  eBay can fix it or if it causes me an issue I'll buy it or sell it somewhere else.

[eburtonlab]

Lots of folks have had issues with sending messages since eBay changed the format of the message page. Unless you click on the "Send message" you will have a hard time entering a message.

But for about 95% of folks posting in the last month or so about having problems entering text to send a message, clicking on the "Send message" line was the step they were missing.

If that is not the issue, there may be a problem with your browser or something else may be going wrong.

Are you getting as far as seeing the "Send a copy to my email" option? If so, you should be able to start typing at that point.

[wastingtime101 · Accepted solution]

Messages are no longer formatted like emails; they are formatted like messages. It operates the same way a chat window does. Ex: when you contact customer service here on eBay using the chat option, and when you send a text message on your phone, you type in the space at the bottom, not higher up where messages are displayed.

At the bottom of the message window, the box that says 'send message' is where you click to start typing. I'm hoping eBay will update that 'send message' text to something more instructive in the near future, like 'compose message', and eliminate some of the confusion stemming from the crowd that is not familiar with text message / chat format.

The photo landscape icon on the left is for attaching photos. The paper airplane icon on the right is for sending the message.

[ittybitnot]

@wastingtime101 

Thank you so much for preparing that graphic.  It has helped so many!  You rock! 

[336randyg]

I can click on everything in that window until the end of time and it will not let me type a message.

[eburtonlab]

I can click on everything in that window until the end of time and it will not let me type a message.

Try another browser to rule out a browser issue.

[wastingtime101]

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@336randyg wrote:

I can click on everything in that window until the end of time and it will not let me type a message.

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Click where it says "send message" and that will expand the text box and show the copy to email info.

Once it's expanded, click again where it says "send message" to activate the cursor and start typing @336randyg .

There are no widespread reports about messages not working. In fact, yours is the only report I've seen saying you cannot type after following the instructions provided, which generally points to something on your end and not eBay's end.

As the last poster suggested, try another browser if the one you're using isn't working.

[336randyg]

Out of curiosity I tried it with Edge and it does not work with that either.

Windows 11 deal I suppose.  The only thing I have changed.

[336randyg]

Well, it is working now.  I was expecting the cursor to turn to an arrow to click on send message like it does on everything else in the computing world.  It does not. My bad.