Is it obligatory for eBay.com to ban me from communication with seller?

[tomahak0]

I am an eBay.com buyer that need more information from seller on advertised items up for sale before buying items.                           

Seller welcomes questions from buyers on item to omit misunderstanding in ad descriptions at eBay.com .   I am logged in with my eBay account prior to sending my questions to seller on eBay.com.Next to item I choose to contact seller by writing my queries inside the message box with limited space for text. [Many times my specific questions includes information on how the item is to be used and my expecting result from its capacity during usage - most of the times, the items is no longer manufactured and cannot be seen in reality at a sellers store in the country where I am.                                                                                                         Simply, there is not enough space to write down the details for the limited characters to use including the spaces.                                                                                                                                                                                                                I work outside of USA in a different time zone in the continent where I operate and cannot use the telephone for calling seller at 2.30 AM for answering my question on item.                                                                                               I understand the seller can provide me with E-mail address for communication outside of closed-in eBay.com regulations but in some cases eBay.com interferes actively with closing down my communication via eBay.com, which prohibits me accessing the seller.This has happened in the past and I lost the deal in that business.For that loss, I contacted an outside secure website for help, and with participating authority filed claim against eBay.com.Later eBay.com sends me information on a similar deal, that I turn down because selling price is too expensive for my economy, and the fact of (in my experience) targeted interferences resulting in deliberately annoying me to become furious towards eBay.com.

Anyway, this time seller has received one part of my message, sent 2023-06-12, but not the important second part on specific details for item including my offered buying price for discontinued Casio watch.      Today 2023-06-13 is next day and the block prohibiting me to communicate with seller is active.                  From experience, with some of the other sellers at eBay.com, this one is not living up to the 100% trusted seller criterium because of deleted e-mail address (that I had for contact with seller outside of https://www.eBay.com) including wiping away all information with history from data base after the items is sold behind my back, not respecting our mutual agreement to wait for my money arriving to my account in bank.(The seller is informed of my low economy).Possibility to solve this, I found the similar item for sale on eBay.com in Canada with active Buy Now listing that later on is sold in auction (ended on Jun 11, 2023 at  10:40PM).Prior for item going to auction, I clicked the Make offer button and contacted the seller for offer.As reference to his product, I enclosed photos on item recently lost with seller (from Japan and selling in Japan) that did not conform to mutual agreed business deal.                                                                                                                The new seller answers my message with informing me listing is old and accusing me of being a scammer.    He is going to report this to eBay including me having active account since year 2017, and he is not answering to my price offer for his item.  ?.                                                                                                                                          Nearly five days later from his received message, eBay.com sends me an e-mail notifying me to not forget the auction for that item ending in 16 hours (from the time I opened the message in my e-mail client).Confident with informative message, online I open the auction for bidding and a pop-up window from eBay.com informs me that seller is not accepting delivery to address in the USA.I log out from auction with my eBay.com account.Anew, I log in one more time to the auction and repeat the same previous steps.New message informs me of NO delivery in USA.                                                                                                                                      I close down the active eBay auction site and log-out from my eBay.com account.                                                      In short time (in two to three and a half weeks) Japanese seller in Japan actively did a breach in mutual business agreement by selling item to somebody else without notifying me.The same scenario happened recently with new seller in Canada.                                                                                                                                                         I do comply with eBay.com policy for online business and want to get a good deal that my finances allow to pay for.    

I have no bad history with eBay.com and am a returning buyer to eBay.com.

If eBay.com is not the platform for people selling goods to buyers (and vice versa) then my recent perceived experience is not positive. I do not find eBay.com helpful at all. However, previous experiences with eBay.com have only been positive.

Should I be skeptical now?  

tomahak0

🙂

[evry1nositswindy]

You cannot contact a seller outside of eBay messages.  No emailing, no calling, no texting.  This is against policy.  You were th  one who could be reported, not the seller.  If you ran out of characters that means your message was way too long.   There should be no reason to send long or multiple messages.  To be honest, the seller doesn't need to know you don't have much to spend or how much someone else is selling the item for.  The item is theirs and they can price is as they see fit.  Prices are not set by eBay.

You have probably been blocked by that seller.  Sending multiple messages and contacting outside of eBay are red flags to sellers.  

[wastingtime101]

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@tomahak0 wrote:

Next to item I choose to contact seller by writing my queries inside the message box with limited space for text. [Many times my specific questions includes information on how the item is to be used and my expecting result from its capacity during usage - most of the times, the items is no longer manufactured and cannot be seen in reality at a sellers store in the country where I am. Simply, there is not enough space to write down the details for the limited characters to use including the spaces.                                                                          

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If you cannot fit your question into the space provided, your questions are way too long and could be why some sellers are blocking you.

Your above post is very long, much longer than it needed to be to get your point across.

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@tomahak0 wrote:

I understand the seller can provide me with E-mail address for communication outside of closed-in eBay.com regulations but in some cases eBay.com interferes actively with closing down my communication via eBay.com, which prohibits me accessing the seller.This has happened in the past and I lost the deal in that business.For that loss, I contacted an outside secure website for help, and with participating authority filed claim against eBay.com.

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No you cannot exchange email address with the seller before you pay for an item. That's considered taking the transaction off eBay and can result in penalties to both the seller and yourself. If you're asking sellers to take communication off eBay the seller can report you and eBay can suspend your account with repeat offenses.

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@tomahak0 wrote:

The new seller answers my message with informing me listing is old and accusing me of being a scammer.    He is going to report this to eBay including me having active account since year 2017, and he is not answering to my price offer for his item.  ?.       

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It's a common tactic for scammers to take messaging off-site. It's natural for sellers to be suspicious of anybody that tries to take communication off site.

If the seller does not have a blue "make offer" button on their listing, then chances are they're not willing to consider offers and you're wasting their (and your) time - especially if you're sending low offers.

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@tomahak0 wrote:

Later eBay.com sends me information on a similar deal, that I turn down because selling price is too expensive for my economy, and the fact of (in my experience) targeted interferences resulting in deliberately annoying me to become furious towards eBay.com.

Nearly five days later from his received message, eBay.com sends me an e-mail notifying me to not forget the auction for that item ending in 16 hours (from the time I opened the message in my e-mail client).Confident with informative message, online I open the auction for bidding and a pop-up window from eBay.com informs me that seller is not accepting delivery to address in the USA.

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Those messages are automatically generated by eBay's system to interested shoppers. Nobody is doing anything to deliberately annoy you. If you don't want to receive those messages you can turn them off in your account settings under communication preferences.

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@tomahak0 wrote:

not respecting our mutual agreement to wait for my money arriving to my account in bank.(The seller is informed of my low economy).

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There is a site setting a seller can turn on for the system to automatically cancel any transaction that's not paid for within 4 days. Non-paying buyers are a big problem on this site.

Don't make a purchase or submit an offer unless you have the funds to pay right away. It's that simple.

You have a tough financial situation, but so do many sellers. It's why they're on this platform trying to earn money to put food on their table. They don't want to hear why a buyer can't pay or why a buyer can't offer a higher amount for an item.

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@tomahak0 wrote:

Anyway, this time seller has received one part of my message, sent 2023-06-12, but not the important second part on specific details for item including my offered buying price for discontinued Casio watch.

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A discontinued Casio watch is not a "need" it's a "want." This reinforces my above advice to not submit offers on items you can't pay for right away.

It also has me wondering what you could possibly be asking about a watch that won't fit in a standard eBay message?

[mudshark61369]

@tomahak0,

Because you do not use paragraph breaks it is very hard to read your topic.  From what I have been able to figure out you seem to have a few issues.

A) 2,000 characters is not enough for you to ask some questions. 

If your questions are as overly wordy as the topic you wrote, maybe you should limit your messages to specifics only. 

Ex: What is the capacity of this unit.  What are its main uses, and so forth.

If start you start to run out of space, say that in message one and tell them you will send another, with additional questions. You can use the contact seller button again to ask more questions.

B) If a seller does not have a Best Offer button on their listing you can specifically ask if they will accept one, and give your reasons why you are offering that price.  Do not say it is because I cannot afford it at the price the seller is asking, or because one sold for a lower price.   Do be aware, if the seller does not want to accept offers, they may ignore your message and block you from buying their items.  Why would you include a photo of another seller's item? If it was to show a lower selling price, that is a good way to end up being blocked by a seller.

C) Trying to get a seller to contact you outside of ebay using your regular email,  is a policy violation. It is often used by scammers, and many sellers will block you from sending more messages, and being able to buy the item, and they may report you to ebay.

D)  If you find an item you like you should click on the Shipping, Returns & Payments button to see if the seller offers shipping to a specific country.  Your country of registration is Sweden, but if you want an item sent to the U.S. for some reason, you would have to add the U.S. address to your address list, and for purposes of getting the item sent there, temporarily make the U.S.  address your primary one. Do not forget to change it back after making the purchase.   If a seller refuses to send an item to a country not on their Ships to: list,  do not continue to ask about it.

E)  If a seller has an item listed as an Auction with the Best offer option, as soon as a bid comes in, all offers are immediately cancelled if not yet accepted by the seller.  Making an offer but asking a seller to allow you to delay payment will probably get your offer declined or ignored.