The yellow button returns to eBay My Messages
December 18, 2008
The yellow button has returned to eBay My Messages to allow users to click and reply from within eBay rather than using their email reader such as Outlook.
This disappeared when eBay annonymised email addresses in member to member communications but was promised to be restored by the New Year. It’s still possible to simply click reply in your email reader to respond, but there is now an option to reply through eBay, which has the advantage that messages will be marked as replied to in your My Messages inbox.
Email addresses will still be concealed between eBay users until a transaction has taken place.
My buyer’s email address is out of date
November 14, 2008
Yesterday’s information from eBay on how eBay member to member communications is changing struck a chord with Nick, who trades on eBay as iposters. The following is the history of an unpaid item dispute opened when the buyer failed to pay:
eBay 05-Nov-08 at 09:45:45 GMT
This case has been opened by the seller with the following reason: The buyer has not responded.
eBay 11-Nov-08 at 23:30:36 GMT
Buyer has indicated that they will pay for this item. The item details are as follows:
Item: High School Musical 3 Graduation Poster Brand New Large
Transaction date: 14-Oct-2008
Buyer 11-Nov-08 at 23:35:39 GMT
I have sent message to seller for postal address to send cheque - had no reply - cannot access through the ebay route their address as my email address has changed and not logged as yet with ebay. need seller to send me address as has put cheque as an option but no address.
iposters 12-Nov-08 at 09:13:26 GMT
We have had no emails from you about this.
Our address is as follows. Please make payment to: POP-culture.biz Limited
Buyer 13-Nov-08 at 22:13:58 GMT
Thank you. I can assure you though that 3 messages were indeed sent. Cheque will be in the post tomorrow.
You’d think it might end there, but no, it continues:
eBay 13-Nov-08 at 22:17:14 GMT
Buyer has indicated that they will pay for this item. The item details are as follows:
Item: High School Musical 3 Graduation Poster Brand New Large
Transaction date: 14-Oct-2008
Buyer 13-Nov-08 at 22:19:15 GMT
Please advise as to how much postage and packing is as all I can receive is £3.99 for the poster.
iposters 14-Nov-08 at 08:54:49 GMT
Please click the pay now button on the item. This will take you to the checkout. Select personal cheque as payment method and it will work out the shipping and give you our address.
The news that eBay will begin to ensure users maintain a valid email addresses will solve problems like this at a stroke. The buyer wouldn’t have received the item won email, the invoice, notification that a dispute was opened or indeed any communications at all.
This buyer has over 100 feedback, is aware that the problem is simply that they’re not receiving emails, but still seem incapable of completing the transaction. Enforcing them to update to a working email address would enable them to receive an eBay generated invoice and they could simply pay straight away.
eBay communicate on communicating
November 13, 2008
eBay have provided some additional insight into the annoymisation of eBay communications between buyers and sellers today, explaining why many sellers have received bounced emails when communicating with buyers. There are still some enhancements to be implemented and from early next year eBay member to member communications will be further improved.
Currently when an email is returned by the buyer’s email provider sellers have received a standard reply informing them and advising to resend using eBay My Messages. Some sellers may have received this message even if the original email was sent through an eBay contact webform or My Messages and a fix is being rolled out in the next few days to prevent this.
In the past when My Messages were used rather that direct email communications the data to determine when a users email addresses was invalid wasn’t available (any bounced emails would return to the sender, not to eBay). Now that the data is available to eBay they will introduce a process in early 2009 to force members to update their email preferences with a valid email address.
In the future eBay will also capture the reason for bounced emails and include this information in failure notices, which could be as simple as the mailbox being full, or a spam filter rejecting the email.
An additional process will be to mark messages as replied to in eBay My Messages even though an email client may have been used to send the reply. This means by checking My Messages buyers and sellers will easily be able to identify which emails have been responded to and which still need attention.
Currently the old “Yellow Button” has been removed from notifications leaving users with the option of replying from their email client or navigating to eBay My Messages manually to respond to emails. Next year a button will be restored giving the option of a single click for users who prefer to use My Messages to respond to buyer or seller communications.
The case for changing how eBay communications work is simple, in the past when a bidder sends an ASQ tied to a fraudulent listing, eBay revealed the bidder’s email address to the fraudster. Under the new process replies to anonymized emails are routed through eBay and scanned by multiple security layers including fraud and anti virus checks. Email addresses will automatically be stripped out of anonymous communications, even if they are included in the message body. Only once a valid auction bid or buy it now purchase is made are the buyer’s and seller’s real email addresses revealed.
The changes are great news for sellers, using my normal email client (Outlook) to respond to buyer questions has certainly made my life a lot easier. Once eBay begin forcing users to keep their email addresses up to date, communications will not only be safer from fraud but buyers are likely to see messages sooner - most people check their email more regularly than logging into eBay.
If you would like to send and receive eBay messages from an alternative email address to your eBay registered email, you can change your Member-to-Member email address in the Notification Preferences section of My eBay (Communication preferences if you’re using My eBay Beta)
Anonymous emails highlight invalid addresses
November 11, 2008
Since eBay began concealing eBay users email addresses until a transaction is completed an unexpected bonus is they’re now confirming when a buyer’s email address is incorrect.
If a seller sends a direct email using an anonymous address and the buyer’s email bounces a warning is sent to the seller that the buyer’s email account is not working. The response goes on to suggest sending a message directly to the buyer’s eBay My Messages inbox, with instructions on how to do this on the eBay site.
It’s a condition of trading on eBay that buyers and sellers have a valid email address and buyers risk having their account closed if sellers are unable to contact them. eBay encourage reports of invalid email addresses (which includes those where spam filters are rejecting email).
In the past when using My Messages sellers could never be certain buyers had logged into eBay and received messages, now they’re informed if a buyer isn’t getting their email with the option of reporting them and contacting them via telephone to try and get a transaction completed.
The big question of course is how many sellers have the time or inclination to chase buyers with invalid contact details and how many will simply report them and open an unpaid item dispute once the buyer is no longer a registered user?
(Thanks to Nick @ Iposters for the screen shot)
eBay Australia rolls out anonymous messaging
September 22, 2008
eBay Australia has announced the roll-out of anonymised emails between eBay members. Pre-sale ASQs will no longer show the sender’s email address, but will instead be sent with a temporary eBay-based email address. Recipients will be able to replay directly through their email client to this address, and eBay will forward the messages to the correct, real-world email. The email addresses used by eBay are composed of an apparently-random string of 10-14 letters and numbers: how long these “temporary” addresses remain valid isn’t yet clear. Members where an item has already been purchased will be able to see each other’s email addresses as normal.
Currently, eBay are not verifying that the email used to reply is the “correct” one - i.e. that it matches up with the eBay account to which the message was sent. This is, they say, a “short grace period”, presumably to allow members to ensure their registered email addresses match the ones their email client uses.
So today I’ve been able to reply to trial messages with emails registered with other eBay accounts, and emails that aren’t linked with any eBay account at all, and in all cases, messages sent from the ‘wrong’ email address still arrive with eBay subject lines suggesting they’ve come from the correct eBay member.
If a phisher gets hold of one of these temporary email addresses, or randomly generates the correct sequence of letters and numers, right now eBay’s own system will make their messages look genuine. The only security at present appears to be the obscurity of the email addresses themselves: with the vast amount of processing power at phishers’ disposal, generating some correct matches surely isn’t going to be difficult. eBay would have done better to give members more information about this in advance, so that registered addresses and email clients could have been made to match, rather than leaving the system so insecure, even if temporarily.
There’s currently no published timeline for the implementation of this system on other eBay sites, though it is expected to roll everywhere in the next few months.
eBay Australia introduce anonymous emailing
August 6, 2008
eBay Australia announce today that they are removing email addresses from eBay messages where the two parties have not recently transacted with each other. Messages sent through Ask Seller a Question, Reply to Question and Contact eBay Member links will instead appear to come from a temporary email address: responses will be routed by eBay back to the recipient’s real address and My Messages. The changes will be implemented from 1st September.
Once an item has been purchased, both parties will be able to see each others’ email addresses.
This change was announced at eBay Live as part of the “road map” for the second half of this year, so we can expect to see other sites following suit very soon. Sellers will need to make some changes in their ways of working to allow for this.
First, the good news: automated responses from your email client or server will now work. No more accidental replies to “use the yellow button” will make both automated and ordinary responses a lot more efficient. Buyers no longer have the option to hide email addresses, so all responses can be made via email if that’s your preference.
But there are a couple of potential pitfalls. The email address used to respond to messages must be one registered with eBay: given that emailing “use the yellow button” never produced an error message, it’s worth checking now to make sure email and eBay match. Subject headers are changing too, so your carefully set up mail rules will need to be changed: in typical eBay style, they’ve said that subjects are changing, but not what they’re changing to, so preparation is not possible.
Email addresses within the body of the message will be stripped out by eBay: for those trying to use ASQs as an off-eBay customer acquisition tool, saying “please email me at… ” isn’t going to work any more. I’m surprised there isn’t also a clause saying that web links will also be removed.
And despite recent flim-flamming on the links policy, Australia’s announcement still says that next year, email addresses are to be blocked from listings. That’s one to bear in mind if you’re redesigning templates in the next few months.
We’ve known this one was coming for a while now, and I’ve seen a lot of sellers complaining that it’s going to damage communications with their buyers and ruin their DSRs, but I don’t think so. If anything, it’s going to make communicating a lot easier when I don’t have to go through the hideously clunky My Messages system. But what it will do is make it a bit more difficult for sellers who use eBay primarily as a shop front for their off-eBay sales: gathering emails for your spamming list just got a bit more difficult. I’m not complaining about that either.
What do you think? Has this just made your life easier, or ruined your carefully thought-out marketing plan? Leave us a comment.
eBay to ban email communications from August
July 13, 2008
At the Developer’s Conference, held just prior to eBay Live!, Adam Trachtenberg announced that emails between sellers and buyers prior to a sale would be anonymised. The latest API notes for developers reveal that this change will roll out across eBay sites in late August.
This means that buyers and sellers will no longer have access to each other’s email addresses prior to a sale. Only once a bidder has won an item will the buyer and seller be able to email each other off eBay.
How this will work is that when an email is sent by a buyer using Ask Seller a Question it will still be delivered to your email inbox, as well as to your My Messages on eBay. When replying to the email it will no longer send it directly to the buyers inbox and you won’t be able to see their private email address. Each message will have a unique identifier and the reply will be sent to them via eBay, using the identifier to redirect the message to their real email address as well as placing a copy in their My Messages.
This is great news as it also means buyers will no longer have the choice of hiding their email address which currently results in the dreaded UseTheYellowButton@ebay.com reply to address. For sellers who routinely use email for replies, rather than clicking through to My Messages, it’s all too easy to hit reply without noticing the email is not the user’s address. Replying to the email gives no warning that the buyer will never actually receive it.
Once anonymised emails are introduced sellers will be able to reply from their normal email program, safe in the knowledge that their answer will end up in the buyer’s My Messages on eBay as well as in their inbox.
Once all eBay communications are via My Messages it’s been announced that sellers will have to remove email addresses from their listings. Where this leaves sellers in the UK who make use of Business Seller Information inserts, which automatically inserts their email address into listings, is unclear - currently the UK Contact Information policy specifically allows for the inclusion of email addresses in listings.
Overall I’ll welcome this change, buyers and sellers will have more reliable communications ensuring all emails are routed through My Messages. Also hopefully my personal quota of eBay spam mail will decline as fraudsters will find it increasingly difficult to obtain email addresses.
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