posted on June 20, 2001 12:01:59 PM
This is interesting.
We had an auction end the other day. A potential buyer contacted us after the close, apparently via ebay's "Ask Seller a Question" form, saying he missed the auction and wanted to know if we had any more of the item he could purchase.
To be clear: He contacted us, we didn't initiate contact with him!
Regardless of what ebay says we're not going to turn away a customer or make him/her jump through hoops to complete the transaction. So we quoted him a price, he accepted and we sent him payment info.
Well, the buyer just emailed us saying he received a letter (email we presume) from ebay saying that contacting us directly is against ebay's rules.
The BIG question is: How did ebay find out?!?! We certainly didn't say anything. So did ebay monitor the "Ask Seller a Question" message???
posted on June 20, 2001 12:13:07 PM
Yea, that's another possibility. A "sting". Real cheesy if that was the case. Also would wonder, why us?
But we don't think so. A look up of the buyer's ID on ebay shows he's not new and has completed many auctions of similar products. So we don't think it was a sting.
Which brings back the original question - how did ebay find out w/o monitoring the message?!
[ edited by artsnflies on Jun 20, 2001 12:25 PM ]
posted on June 20, 2001 12:36:29 PM
Doesn't the sender of a message get a copy? I don't have one to look at, but maybe there's verbiage on there that says it's against eBay's policy. Pick a closed auction and ask a question about it, and see what you get on your copy. FWIW
posted on June 20, 2001 12:53:42 PM
Yes, eaby does tack on verbage at the end of the message saying it's against the rules.
But this buyer first initiated contact with us 3 days ago. Now they are saying they have received a notice from ebay that it's against the rules.
Taken at face value, it means a message was sent from ebay to the buyer outside of the text at the end of the original contact message.
reamond - Don't think so. We just checked it. If we hit reply from the original contact email sent via ebay it populates the TO email address as that of the buyer, not ebay or anything looking like it routes back through ebay.
[ edited by artsnflies on Jun 20, 2001 12:53 PM ]
[ edited by artsnflies on Jun 20, 2001 12:56 PM ]
posted on June 20, 2001 01:10:51 PM
that is interesting. i suppose it's *possible* it was a coincidence, although it doesn't sound like it, and i haven't received any generic reminder from ebay about the rules.
when i was new, several times i missed an auction i'd bookmarked, and if it hadn't sold, emailed the seller about buying it. didn't know it was against the rules, never occurred to me it would be. seemed like calling on a classified in a week-old paper.
posted on June 20, 2001 02:46:24 PM
Its also possible the buyer saw a message about not trading off site and asked ebay about it. In other words, the email he got was in response to an email he sent ebay...more probable scenario than the "conspiracy" theory
Here is the verbage tacked on to the end of an email sent through ebay to a seller who's item has ended and I did not bid on the item:
This email was sent by an eBay member via eBay's email forwarding system.
If you reply to the email, your response will go directly to the member and
not through eBay.
eBay does not tolerate spam (i.e., unsolicited commercial email) and is
taking steps to protect members from this abuse. In addition, solicitations
to buy or sell items outside of eBay violate eBay rules and are not covered
by services that protect members such as feedback, insurance, escrow, and
dispute resolution. If this is an offer to buy/sell items outside of eBay,
please do not participate. Enter the following link into your browser to learn more. Link: http://pages.ebay.com/help/email_info.html
