Now it's getting beyond stupid.

[odditiesandantiquities1]

I went to contact one of my customers who had made a major purchase a couple of weeks ago. I put in a small gift with the items and she left glowing feedback for me.

I just wanted to say thanks again and tell her a little bit about the gift I sent her. I used one of her old emails to reply to. Well what do you think happened. Of course,  it would not allow me to send the message, so I had to respond to her through the purchase record. Good grief!!!!!!! Don't they want sales??? Communication is how to get them. I'm fed up.

You are attempting to communicate about an invalid item.

We monitor messages sent through eBay for fraud, abuse, spam, and other violations of our policy. 

[gramophone-georg]

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@ladypostingid wrote:

Are you making sales, or trying to get life long penpals?

Having went back to your past threads, I have to wonder if its not the latter. If so, you need to decide whats more important, friends, or cash

---

I have lots of customers who have been friends for many years. I don't know what YOU sell but in the antiques/ collectbles lines I deal in the one time customer is by FAR the exception.

This is just another example of eBay overreach. You don't need to tell the OP how she should run her business... and neither does eBay.

[gramophone-georg]

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@coolections wrote:

Simple. Ebay is not going to have access to someones personal email account and are not able to read their email. The message between the OP and the buyer had to include an email address or wording about an email transaction . It is called common sense. Hopefully I explained it well enough because you seem to always have a hard time understanding and I am trying to help you.

---

Utter nonsense. I'd suggest reading the thread or at least the OP first.

[gramophone-georg]

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@hatchchilibaby wrote:

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@coolections wrote:

@d-k_treasures

Well she came back and replied and basically admitted of doing shenanigans. Ebay can read the messages, thus the warning. Please stop blaming Ebay.

---

Sounds to me like the OP tried again to get up to shenanigans and it failed. It also sounds like the OP will continue to try and do this until her account gets banned

---

What "shenanigans"? Following up with a customer? You two slay me.

[gramophone-georg]

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@lemarcheaupuces wrote:

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@odditiesandantiquities1 wrote:

---

@lemarcheaupuces wrote:

---

@odditiesandantiquities1 wrote:

I went to contact one of my customers who had made a major purchase a couple of weeks ago. I put in a small gift with the items and she left glowing feedback for me.

I just wanted to say thanks again and tell her a little bit about the gift I sent her. I used one of her old emails to reply to. Well what do you think happened. Of course,  it would not allow me to send the message, so I had to respond to her through the purchase record. Good grief!!!!!!! Don't they want sales??? Communication is how to get them. I'm fed up.

You are attempting to communicate about an invalid item.

We monitor messages sent through eBay for fraud, abuse, spam, and other violations of our policy. 

---

i read such threads quite often on this board.

a few was enough for me.

i have told myself no more friendly conversation with users through ebay msgs.

not that i had a habit of doing so.

but would happen once in a while like in a similar situation as yours.

happened a few months ago.

the user then replied and sent her personal infos.

i never asked for them it was just a casual and friendly chat.

guessed i dodged the bullet.

users communicating through ebay msgs (beside business) are asking for trouble (not saying it is right but there has been way too many threads about it).

we have been warned and know the consequences.

OP...

if you feel you have to communicate with a buyer why don't you pull the email address from the PP payment?

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I was communicating with her about an aspect of the sale.

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quote from your OP...

"I just wanted to say thanks again and tell her a little bit about the gift I sent her."

purchase per your OP was made a few weeks ago.

it was way past the aspect of sale.

hey...

i know how good it feels to have a good sale.

but based on all the threads i have read about this topic,

all conversation through ebay msgs is a risk.

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I fixed that last line for you.

[thenobletuckylife]

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

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@hatchchilibaby wrote:

---

@coolections wrote:

@d-k_treasures

Well she came back and replied and basically admitted of doing shenanigans. Ebay can read the messages, thus the warning. Please stop blaming Ebay.

---

Sounds to me like the OP tried again to get up to shenanigans and it failed. It also sounds like the OP will continue to try and do this until her account gets banned

---

What "shenanigans"? Following up with a customer? You two slay me.

---

Hi George,

I am confused so maybe others are as well.

First of all I built my successful selling career here based on excellent customer service and that involved many emails before/during/ and at times...after the sale.

I understand the OP from the point of view of building a business model that obviously has made her succeed.

I think the confusion has come about because originally it sounded like the OP had a delayed reply to an older sale and ebay flagged it.

Later on the OP indicated that the buyer only recently received the item and based on ebay's crazy need to be involved at every step, ebay would have also just sent off an acknowledgement email to the buyer that the item was delivered if the OP provided tracking recorded with the sale.

So if it is the first scenario...well the bots are out...but if it is the latter scenario this is even more of a problem for sellers here because it would be still within the window of the sale.

I strongly suggest the OP with this type of sales find out what is REALLY going on because she most likely is on ebays radar and may find herself in the new purge it appears ebay is doing.

Mr C

[gramophone-georg]

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@thenobletuckylife wrote:

---

@gramophone-georg wrote:

---

@hatchchilibaby wrote:

---

@coolections wrote:

@d-k_treasures

Well she came back and replied and basically admitted of doing shenanigans. Ebay can read the messages, thus the warning. Please stop blaming Ebay.

---

Sounds to me like the OP tried again to get up to shenanigans and it failed. It also sounds like the OP will continue to try and do this until her account gets banned

---

What "shenanigans"? Following up with a customer? You two slay me.

---

Hi George,

I am confused so maybe others are as well.

First of all I built my successful selling career here based on excellent customer service and that involved many emails before/during/ and at times...after the sale.

I understand the OP from the point of view of building a business model that obviously has made her succeed.

I think the confusion has come about because originally it sounded like the OP had a delayed reply to an older sale and ebay flagged it.

Later on the OP indicated that the buyer only recently received the item and based on ebay's crazy need to be involved at every step, ebay would have also just sent off an acknowledgement email to the buyer that the item was delivered if the OP provided tracking recorded with the sale.

So if it is the first scenario...well the bots are out...but if it is the latter scenario this is even more of a problem for sellers here because it would be still within the window of the sale.

I strongly suggest the OP with this type of sales find out what is REALLY going on because she most likely is on ebays radar and may find herself in the new purge it appears ebay is doing.

Mr C

---

I agree with what you're saying and it's shaping up like another Holiday Selling Season Purge in my eyes too.

It's quite ironic that in the interest of preventing sales going off eBay they are making the platform impossible for buyers and sellers to complete sales or even communicate here.

As a buyer I keep encountering nonfuctioning shipping calculators, hidden descriptions, forced IPRs with the inability to request a combined shipping invoice, a shopping cart that doesn't work, and a host of other malfunctions "enhancements" that make trying to buy here an enormous challenge.

So now if I ask a seller about a hidden description (I've had several of them show up as just HTML lately) or about shipping or about combining multiple purchases, I run the risk of getting the seller a nastygram or the boot.

I think the whole thing stinks. If eBay doesn't want transactions going off site, then STOP MAKING IT SO DIFFICULT to complete them here! Fix the site! It's not rocket science.

To top it off, if you really want to contact eBay- they'll tell you to do it on Facebook... A COMPETING MARKETPLACE!!!

What is the MATTER with these people???

So. I want to buy 30 Buy It Now widgets from a seller. ebay jammed IPR on all of them so I load them in the cart to request a total. Oops, cart says this seller doesn't combine shipping even though the listing says he does. I send a message. Seller won't answer because he's being warned about off eBay transactions.

I post to the eBay Community Boards  but I'm told to go to Facebook for faster service. So, off I go to FB to try to find the eBay customer service people... BUT WAIT!!! THERE ARE THE WIDGETS I WANTED!! Cool, sez I, as I buy buy buy. Wait- What need for eBay had I?

[hatchchilibaby]

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

---

@ladypostingid wrote:

Are you making sales, or trying to get life long penpals?

Having went back to your past threads, I have to wonder if its not the latter. If so, you need to decide whats more important, friends, or cash

---

I have lots of customers who have been friends for many years. I don't know what YOU sell but in the antiques/ collectbles lines I deal in the one time customer is by FAR the exception.

This is just another example of eBay overreach. You don't need to tell the OP how she should run her business... and neither does eBay.

---

If her business is on Ebay, they have every right to tell her what she can and cant do.

[hatchchilibaby]

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

---

@hatchchilibaby wrote:

---

@coolections wrote:

@d-k_treasures

Well she came back and replied and basically admitted of doing shenanigans. Ebay can read the messages, thus the warning. Please stop blaming Ebay.

---

Sounds to me like the OP tried again to get up to shenanigans and it failed. It also sounds like the OP will continue to try and do this until her account gets banned

---

What "shenanigans"? Following up with a customer? You two slay me.

---

Shes already taken a 7 day suspension for "an old friend" from another site contacting her and her giving the friend her contact info.

Shes going to end up losing her ability to sell if she insists on making every buyer her friend.

[lemarcheaupuces]

well 1 has to answer questions.

so some conversations are unavoidable.

[gramophone-georg]

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@hatchchilibaby wrote:

---

@gramophone-georg wrote:

---

@ladypostingid wrote:

Are you making sales, or trying to get life long penpals?

Having went back to your past threads, I have to wonder if its not the latter. If so, you need to decide whats more important, friends, or cash

---

I have lots of customers who have been friends for many years. I don't know what YOU sell but in the antiques/ collectbles lines I deal in the one time customer is by FAR the exception.

This is just another example of eBay overreach. You don't need to tell the OP how she should run her business... and neither does eBay.

---

If her business is on Ebay, they have every right to tell her what she can and cant do. Plus, sellers are PAYING FOR an agreed service here.

---

They could at least be upfront about things. They never are.

[gramophone-georg]

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@hatchchilibaby wrote:

---

@gramophone-georg wrote:

---

@hatchchilibaby wrote:

---

@coolections wrote:

@d-k_treasures

Well she came back and replied and basically admitted of doing shenanigans. Ebay can read the messages, thus the warning. Please stop blaming Ebay.

---

Sounds to me like the OP tried again to get up to shenanigans and it failed. It also sounds like the OP will continue to try and do this until her account gets banned

---

What "shenanigans"? Following up with a customer? You two slay me.

---

Shes already taken a 7 day suspension for "an old friend" from another site contacting her and her giving the friend her contact info.

Shes going to end up losing her ability to sell if she insists on making every buyer her friend.

---

She won't lose the ability to sell to her buyers, only to her buyers on eBay which means that eBay is perpetuating the exact behavior they claim they're trying to control.

[gramophone-georg]

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

---

@hatchchilibaby wrote:

---

@gramophone-georg wrote:

---

@ladypostingid wrote:

Are you making sales, or trying to get life long penpals?

Having went back to your past threads, I have to wonder if its not the latter. If so, you need to decide whats more important, friends, or cash

---

I have lots of customers who have been friends for many years. I don't know what YOU sell but in the antiques/ collectbles lines I deal in the one time customer is by FAR the exception.

This is just another example of eBay overreach. You don't need to tell the OP how she should run her business... and neither does eBay.

---

If her business is on Ebay, they have every right to tell her what she can and cant do. Plus, sellers are PAYING FOR an agreed service here.

---

They could at least be upfront about things. They never are.

---

In addition, sellers pay eBay for a service here.

[ted_200]

Yes that's true, but what I think is happening is that people were getting these dangerous give me your Pay Pal account info...

What is happening is a couple of things... One, they think they're losing fee revenue from off-eBay transactions.  That's the obvious one. 

Two, the big sellers they favor and are trying to lure onto the platform don't really want to be answering Messages from prospective buyers, and the culture at eBay has always been "ask questions before bidding / buying".   It costs money to answer questions, and the big sellers don't have anyone that knows how to answer the questions anyhow... the people answering are hourly, have never seen the item, and don't know any more than the buyer because they know nothing more than what's in the listing themselves.  Asking questions to these sellers is just a waste of everyone's time, no better than asking a WalMart employee about an item in their store.  The new way is "just buy the thing, you can send it back if there's a problem" - they think they're losing purchases because the buyer is hesitating while they wait for a reply. 

Either they're playing lip service with this "communication is important" stuff they keep putting in these "best practices" propaganda blogs... or if they're serious, they fail to understand how all this Message censoring and threatening people is a huge impediment to customer service communications.  The only communication they want happening is "so sorry you don't like it, send it back, it won't cost you a dime" - preferrably from an instant spam sent out by their automated returns program. 

They still don't understand this is a mail order platform, and needlessly mailling stuff back and forth will quickly make mail order unpleasant for buyers and unprofitable for sellers.  Communication and detailed descriptions are the key to preventing that, and hiding Item Descriptions... using canned catalog information that is incomplete and/or wrong... and jamming up the messaging system... is going to prove a bad business decision for everyone involved. 

[ted_200 · Accepted solution]

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

---

@ladypostingid wrote:

Are you making sales, or trying to get life long penpals?

Having went back to your past threads, I have to wonder if its not the latter. If so, you need to decide whats more important, friends, or cash

---

I have lots of customers who have been friends for many years. I don't know what YOU sell but in the antiques/ collectbles lines I deal in the one time customer is by FAR the exception.

This is just another example of eBay overreach. You don't need to tell the OP how she should run her business... and neither does eBay.

---

In today's world, personal service and personal contact... with someone who isn't hourly and wearing a blue smock... is a rarity.  It is a great way to build relationships with customers, and make them loyal to you (seller, or site).  It is particularly important when selling stuff to specialty niche buyers, where your reputation and knowledge make a lot of difference. 

Corporate sellers don't do personal service and personal contact - at best, they'll spam you with some generic feel-good stuff that is "tailored" to whatever their bot told them you're about - which almost always feels impersonal and intrusive instead. 

On another site, where I sell a different line of specialty niche items, the bulk of my sales come from large quantity purchases that add up to big money transactions.  These always start off with questions about a single item, and do I have any more... it usually takes many such conversations before I finish selling them stuff and complete the transaction.  I happily pay the site's reasonable fees on the entire sale by creating a Reserved listing, because they SUPPORT this method of selling. 

...you need to decide whats more important, friends, or cash...

Well, actually, when you sell the type of stuff we do, they're equally important.  And you won't end up with one without the other. 

[ted_200]

So now if I ask a seller about a hidden description (I've had several of them show up as just HTML lately) or about shipping or about combining multiple purchases, I run the risk of getting the seller a nastygram or the boot.

Seller will probably think this is your fault... and put you on their BBL.