OT: Another eBay Enhancement

[Buythatcard]

Just got off the phone with their customer service. They say that they no longer will include the eMail address.

They told me that if I want the buyer's email addres, I would need to contact the buyer. I said I can't contact the buyer because I don't have their eMail address.

They said I need to go thru eBay to contact the buyer. At that point I just hung up.

[glchen]

I use the ebay Seller Manager add-on, which is free, and there it lists the email addresses for the recent transactions. I always copy these into my spreadsheet which tracks my sales, which I later use for tax purposes. (The emails are also in paypal.) Here's a snapshot of the Seller Manager.

Edit: To subscribe to the free Seller Manager, go to My Ebay -> Account -> Subscriptions. Then subscribe to the free ebay Seller Manager. (The Pro version may have a fee if you don't have an ebay store.)

Edit 2: Scrubbed the email addresses in the picture slightly to protect the privacy of those customers.

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Buythatcard

They told me that if I want the buyer's email addres, I would need to contact the buyer. I said I can't contact the buyer because I don't have their eMail address.

They said I need to go thru eBay to contact the buyer.

Yeeeeaaahhh... see, that's going to be a problem, because eBay will block any message sent through their system that includes an e-mail address.

So in other words, eBay has decided that there is no possible reason that sellers should ever need to know buyers' e-mail addresses. Great.

The up side is that, because Paypal is tied to your e-mail address, you should still be able to get to it that way for the 99% of buyers who pay with Paypal.

[swarmee]

As a buyer, I'm actually pretty happy about this. Nothing worse than buying a $5 item and being added to a mailing list that you didn't want because the seller wants to make extra coin off of you.
Plus, almost all transactions are made from PayPal, right? And that requires an email address in order to track payments? Don't see a problem here.

[Buythatcard]

The problem relying on Paypal is that you can only see the eMail address after the Buyer pays. Until then, you need to search it out by other means.

This change that eBay is implementing will not stop Sellers from creating mailing lists. As some of you mentioned, there are other ways to get the eMail address. It just requires more work for the Seller.

Gary, thanks for your suggestions and I will try them out.