E bay Respond to question silliness

HugoSP

Once you have responded to a question that a buyer asks on a listing, you cannot then respond to it again!

I found this out today when someone from Vancouver wanted to know how much it would be to post an item to him from the UK. Being the courteous type (obviously a facet that e bay doesn't want to encourage) I e mailed him to let him know that I'd received his message and would get back to him with an answer.

Once I had the answer, I then found that I could not respond to him again!

OK, I used the usual message to the member button, and after 3 attempts at that pesky anti spam measure I finally guessed the right 6 didgit number (I mean, can anyone read those things?). I did manage to message him.

Why do they have to make an easy task impossible?

H

Sugar_Coated_Owl

I wasn't aware that you couldn't respond again to a buyers question. Silly eBay.

Don't get me started on that anti-spam thing. I can never see those stupid numbers. Not once have I ever got it right first time. Some of them are impossible to see.

cookiemonster25

you can respond to the copy of the question sent to your home email addy, i have done this before, but it is a bit annoying when you cant give more info via the messages section

Chalky87

You're right about the anti spam numbers...why do they make them so hard to read? I know they're to stop programs sending messages and signing up to things automatically, but they can't read the picture!!! So why make it so hard for ordinary people to read them!!! Must be one of the most 'stupidist' things ever!!!

Timmy

I think this is a new thing. I had the same problem the other day when someone asked me to give a postage quote and it's never happened before. It's a rubbish idea if you ask me. I can't see what they are trying to prevent!

golddustmedia

The anti-spam numbers are to prevent software using optical character recognition to bulk email ebay members with spam mail. Which I'm sure deep down we're all happy they do. I appreciate the numbers are a bit iffy, but if you take a step back and squint a bit I normally get them right first time.

As for the questions, it is a bit daft to prevent repsonding more than once, but again you can see the larger idea that they want to reduce spam or duplicate messages. Also I gather they lose a fair amount of sales through people arranging out of auction deals.

I think deep down ebay may have things slightly wrong, what people need is an advertising forum rather than an auction system. Hence why so many people list an item, get an illicit offer to buy and cancel the auction to make their own sale.

soolin

golddustmedia wrote:

I think deep down ebay may have things slightly wrong, what people need is an advertising forum rather than an auction system. Hence why so many people list an item, get an illicit offer to buy and cancel the auction to make their own sale.

I'm not sure I follow your argument here. Ebay is for auctioning goods, and they make plenty of money out of people doing just that successfully, I'm not sure that anyone making that sort of money can be getting it so wrong? If you want to advertise your goods then find a site like LOOT or one of the other small ad type sites and use that. Obviously no one can stop people behaving dishinestly and dealing off ebay, that is inevitable but with millions of sales every day I hardly think it is endemic.

I sell quite a bit and rarely get questions. I try and keep my listings clear and concise so everything that everything a bidder needs is already showing. I do sometimes get offers to end an auction early but they are actually quite rare, occassionally i have duplicate items so if I am offered a good amount of money I just list one as a bIN and let the buyer have that.

However, I do agree that those number thingies are very irritating, It often takes me three or four attempts to get it right. I am pleased though that there has been a change in the second chance offer procedure in that when you send a SCO now you get the chance to add a message, so that stops a seller having to negotiate the message to other user maze to contact that buyer to explain why a SCO has been made.

Soo

Contains_Mild_Peril

The SCO form used to have a message section, but for some inexplicable reason ebay stopped it for while then reinstated it. Not only might I want to explain the reason to the potential buyer, and make it clear whether it's the same item or another one, but there may be occasions when I want to use it to offer a very similar but not quite identical item, in which case I'd use the message part to tell them what the difference is between the item they bid for and the one I'm offering.