eBay message policy

FFHillbilly

anyone else had a message like this?

"Hi XXXX We wanted to let you know that some of the emails you sent to your buyers this week couldn’t be sent because they violated our member-to-member contact policy. We know how important it is to communicate with your buyers, so we wanted to remind you that your eBay emails should only be about your eBay transactions and can’t be used for promotions outside of our marketplace.

Here’s what you should do

• Take a look at the email you sent to 1..234738923......c00c...@members.ebay.com. This is an example of an email that couldn’t be sent because it violated our messaging policy. • To help make sure your emails always get through, review our member-to-member contact policy to learn more about the types of content we block. A few weeks previously I got another message like this on my other account, I sold a jacket and me and the buyer struck up a conversation about cycling jackets and sizing(after the sale), he started asking questions about where I got it, I obliged and answered his questions and gave him some advice.  So I know exactly what I did wrong there which is fair enough and I won't do it again (well I'll try) but this message was on my other account, and I've checked all the messages I sent in the last week and they all dull and boring standard replies about sizes, postage and I've got no idea what they are on about. the email it lists is no help as I don't know who or what that e-mail address pertains too (I've edited it btw for privacy)

soolin

There’s been a few reports of these messages going around, it looks like they have tightened up their system for the bots who know identify more and more key words as a breach of the rules. 

Personally I would steer clear of any messages apart from absolute basic ones. Stuff like postage and sizing should be in the listing, so perhaps a brief reply along the lines of ‘sizing as shown in eBay listing’ or postage methods as per eBay listing.

ebay seem to like to have little purges like this, one month it will be warnings about key words, the next messages and so on. now that you have a warning I would even be tempted not to respond to any messages at all for a while. 

FFHillbilly

yeah it must be an overly-aggressive AI thats flagged it up.

I think it must be this : Buyer sent an offer on item A, and said they would buy Item B at asking price if I accepted. which I did.
when I packed them together in the same box item A was small and could have easily been discarded with the packaging, so  sent a message saying that both items are being sent today in the same parcel

Buster_Danog

If this is in relation to active listings it seems reasonable. However, I am just thinking of an item I bought outside of ebay when the seller contacted me about 8 weeks after closing the listing on ebay. I am not sure if I broke the rules but under those circumstances the seller wanted to sell outside of ebay and the listing was closed. I am glad I didn't get nabbed by the Ai then as it was a great purchase.