Ebay Messages Not Being Received "Sorry! There has been an error retrieving your messages..."

[kbcate]

Only because my ebay messages are forwarded to my personal e-mail address was I able to see that a buyer contacted me. When I clicked on the photo that they had attached I was directed back to ebay messages with "Sorry! There has been an error retrieving your message from the server." The original message from the buyer was no where to be found in the ebay message area. 

[eburtonlab]

eBay may have removed the message due to a policy violation.

Was this a buyer you were already involved in a transaction with that would have a reason to send you an image?

Scammers often embed prohibited contact information such as email or phone numbers in images in an attempt to avoid eBay message filters. When detected, eBay removes such messages.

[kbcate]

Hi eburtonlab. Thank you for the reply. Yes, this is a buyer involved in a transaction. I understand and appreciate your info on how a scammer could use this practice to scam. Good to know. Just curious though since we are both ebay members, wouldn't one of us receive a message from ebay saying that the message violated ebay policy? No biggie now that I understand that it might have been a legit reason on ebay's behalf. Now if you could just tell me why, for the past several weeks, it has been taking around or more than 24 hours for ebay to make collectibles militaria WWII go live I'd be a happy camper! Thanks again. 

[eburtonlab · Accepted solution]

You are welcome.

If you are engaged in an actual transaction with the buyer, that obviously makes it much less likely that the message was removed for a real policy violation, though it still may have been caught by some sort of retroactive detection filter as collateral damage.

If the transaction was long enough ago, the transaction may have expired. This can cause issues when sending messages regarding the transaction.

Or it could just be some sort of problem retrieving messages that is totally unrelated to any of that.

Ideally, eBay should send a note indicating that a message was blocked (and provide some explanation of why), though eBay is hesitant to be too informative, lest scammers be able to figure out the boundaries of eBay's detection system and better avoid the blocking.