Error: Message Not Sent

[castironbysam]

I tried messaging a seller asking if they'd combine shipping on 3 items I was interested in. I got that error message with the little red (!) and tried another message re-wording it, assuming eBay AI filtered it for whatever reason. The big auto message above each message mentions you can't provide any personal info or try to arrange off-eBay deals. Maybe something in my wording triggered that? The rephrasing didn't go through, so I thought maybe it was too late. So I tried on one of the other items, and just said "Hey there" first. Same thing. I contacted eBay via phone and they said no problem, they could see all my messages and assured me my messages were sent. But they're not. The conversation is nowhere, not in my email, not in the chat if I open up a communication through the item again, and not in my eBay inbox. I have another message to another seller that worked just fine since then. And since I got off the phone with eBay, that 2nd seller responded back to me. The 1st still has not.

So then I got on my Dad's account, who hasn't used it for several months and went straight to one of these items, and Contact Seller, and just asked, "will you combine shipping?" and just got blank. No error message, nothing sent. Went to another item, same thing. I'm lost.

There's a different error message for seller who choose not receive messages at all. And I've never done business with this seller before for them to have blocked me or something. I'm considering calling eBay back again and having someone else investigate further, but maybe someone else has come across this before. Any response is helpful, even insulting me for low intelligence or inadequacy. I'm an adult, I can take it.

[jaja_2942]

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@castironbysam wrote:

I contacted eBay via phone and they said no problem, they could see all my messages and assured me my messages were sent.

But they're not. The conversation is nowhere, not in my email, not in the chat if I open up a communication through the item again, and not in my eBay inbox.

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Whenever something doesn't work, you can ask eBay to get on your account to try exactly the steps you were doing, to see the problem themselves. If you checkbox the message to send yourself a copy, you'll get that by email as well as the usual copy in the Sent folder at eBay, which apparently you didn't get either.

By the way, were you really talking to eBay, or did you find some scammer's number on the internet claiming to be eBay?

[castironbysam]

I've been on eBay 25 years, I don't search the internet for eBay spoof numbers. But I know a lot of people do! I went through eBay support and they called me. She read my message back to me right after I typed it. But I'm pretty sure she's just seeing that it was *sent*, not that it was *received*. And I was sending it from my phone app, I don't know that I've seen the checkbox for "send copy to my email" for quite some time. But I can try from my desktop browser and see if that's any different.

[kathiec · Accepted solution]

Most of the eBay phone reps are clueless. You might want to post this on the Technical Issues forum.

[ise710]

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@castironbysam wrote:

I've been on eBay 25 years, I don't search the internet for eBay spoof numbers. But I know a lot of people do! I went through eBay support and they called me. 

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But that isn't what you wrote, is it?

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@castironbysam wrote:

I contacted eBay via phone and they said no problem, they could see all my messages and assured me my messages were sent.

I'm considering calling eBay back again and having someone else investigate further, but maybe someone else has come across this before. 

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Hence the doubt @castironbysam and concern.

[kathiec]

Why the antagonism @ise710 (or @jaja_2942)? How does this in any way help the OP? 

[castironbysam]

I did say that I contacted them via phone. Whether I went through their callback service or got their phone number from their website isn't relevant, really. I didn't say I called them, but I'm also unscammable. It's just something I am. Don't get lost in the weeds here. 

I did end up getting in touch with eBay again, via a phone rep, and had them dig further into it. They were unable to go into my account and contact anyone, due to permissions or whatever. But were able to try contacting the seller on their own account. He or she (I couldn't tell and it's irrelevant) couldn't get a message through, but got an error message that I wasn't getting. Something about the volume of messages received by this seller. They are either not checking their messages or have something so popular that they're getting inundated and can't handle the influx, and eBay isn't letting any more messages go through. Or the software is having difficulty doing so, it wasn't clear. 

At any rate, he/she assured me all of my previous messages had gone through even though I couldn't see them. Whatever. It's a very silly system to not let me know what the issue is. Sellers have every right to just let their messages back up, I suppose.