New eBay enhancement - hiding your email address

pacray

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Anyone else notice that ebay has changed the way you send messages to and from buyers? There used to be an option that allowed you to send a message with your real email address in the return field. Not any more.

Now they assign you an anonymous email address, like this one:

[email protected]

And don't try to attach high resolution pictures, as there is a 2MB size limit and they will bounce back, eventually.

I am sure this is all just an effort to protect the privacy of the seller and the buyer and has nothing to do with ebay limiting any off-ebay transactions.

Also, there seems to be a significant delay between the time you send a message this way, and the time it arrives, making me think there is some sort of filtering happening, possibly flagging certain keywords which might indicate a transaction that is against the rules.

It seems that certain messages never get through, and you don't even get notified.
 
I hate that they tell you that these changes are designed for your protection. What we need is a huge corporation that is brutally honest.
 
I hate that they tell you that these changes are designed for your protection. What we need is a huge corporation that is brutally honest.

I think they are being honest... That statement indicates that it was not designed to be efficient, easy to use, reliable or even an improvement over the previous system for anything beyond privacy. Just attach an image of your email address. :D
 
What I can't believe is, that with all this eBay douchyness, a major online player (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Amazon) hasn't stepped up to offer a rival to eBay. It's like no one thinks they can duplicate the original premise of eBay in a big way. It was simple premise - America's Biggest Yard Sale!

Why hasn't another power player with a lot of capital and infrastructure stepped in to rival eBay?

Where's Richard Branson for fuck's sake? I want VirginAuctions!



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What I can't believe is, that with all this eBay douchyness, a major online player (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Amazon) hasn't stepped up to offer a rival to eBay. It's like no one thinks they can duplicate the original premise of eBay in a big way. It was simple premise - America's Biggest Yard Sale!

Why hasn't another power player with a lot of capital and infrastructure stepped in to rival eBay?

It's hard to stop the kind of momentum that eBay has. Yahoo has already tried (Yahoo Auctions), over 10 years ago (when eBay had much less momentum), but they never really reached relevancy, and are essentially irrelevant today (the U.S. and Canada sections closed two years ago).

The only site that seems able to rival eBay in any way is Craigslist, and that is only because they do things totally differently. The fact that listings are free, and you don't even have to be a member to post listings or reply to them (making it hassle-free as well), is the major ingredient for its success IMO.
 
It's hard to stop the kind of momentum that eBay has. Yahoo has already tried (Yahoo Auctions), over 10 years ago (when eBay had much less momentum), but they never really reached relevancy, and are essentially irrelevant today (the U.S. and Canada sections closed two years ago).

However, that was back when eBay was cool, and less fee ridden. Now it totally sucks and people are crying out for something better. The time is ripe!
 
Agreed. But you have to be a major player already to pull this off. I just don't understand it. Remember MySpace dominance? Now you have FaceBook, Twitter.

It's just fascinating to me why the effort by competitors is lacking. With enough money behind any venture, you could force name recognition through constant advertising. The big boys could rival eBay if they wanted to. Maybe they figure it isn't a profitable enough business model at peek staturation to warrant the investment.

Last year the eBay big wigs decided the original business model had realized it's potential and that the only avenue for growth was to go with an Amazon.com model pushing retail goods through their website. As a result, the focus is now on major vendors instead of the little guy wanting to sale their wares.
 
I hate eBay as much as the next guy, but am I the only one here who agrees with eBay on this one? There are way too many scams today and I cant even list one item without getting a few spoofs. eBay is doing exactly what CL is doing, concealing your email address in an effort to reduce spam and spoofs. Kudos to them for doing something right for once.
 
I hate eBay as much as the next guy, but am I the only one here who agrees with eBay on this one? There are way too many scams today and I cant even list one item without getting a few spoofs. eBay is doing exactly what CL is doing, concealing your email address in an effort to reduce spam and spoofs. Kudos to them for doing something right for once.

They used to give you a choice to hide or not. They just removed the choice.
 
I hate eBay as much as the next guy, but am I the only one here who agrees with eBay on this one? There are way too many scams today and I cant even list one item without getting a few spoofs. eBay is doing exactly what CL is doing, concealing your email address in an effort to reduce spam and spoofs. Kudos to them for doing something right for once.

I don't think that the complaint is that they hide the information. Looked more to me like that they hid the information, but their system sucks and you cannot use anything else. They should not be hiding that information if they can't make a reliable messaging system for people to use as part of the site. Just dumb to force the change when they are obviously not ready for it. They could have left it optional while they worked all the bugs out. Poor execution on their part, yet again!
 
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