We have received a warning email from eBay stating we have contravened their member to member communications policy. The email did not come into our eBay messages but was sent to our eBay registered email address.
Having located the buyers order from the eBay alias email address contained in their warning email, we could not locate any message from us to the buyer, so we contacted eBay customer services and spoke with a fantastic member of the Leadership Team who took the issue away and advised the following which we are sharing in case other sellers receive the same warning:
1. The email was not a spoof email and was generated by eBay
2. They confirmed it was not as a result of us sending any member to member communcation
3. However, it was because we purchased a label from eBay. When we purchased the label, like all sellers, the buyers eBay alias email address was given to the courier for delivery updates to be sent by the courier to the buyer.
4. The courier, when sending a delivery update to the buyer via the eBay alias email address, also included some html in their courier update email
5. As the courier's email was sent via eBay, the eBay bots saw the courier's html which included a link off the eBay website
6. Links in member to member communications are not allowed to contain links off the eBay platform, so the eBay bot stopped the courier's email being sent and sent us a warning message.
7. The eBay Leadership team have now identified this issue and admit the system is NOT working as it should and their IT teams are looking into this "glitch" to see it is a one off or site wide.
8. We have been advised no misconduct has been recorded against our account and no sanctions will be taken, but were advised to continue to monitor it to see if it occurs again and liaise with eBay should it continue to ensure no future emails will impact our account.
9. No expected time of fix could be given, which is understandable as software updates need recoding and testing before deployment
We are more than happy with eBay's response and have posted this advisory in case we are not alone in having received the eBay warning email yesterday.
In the interim, as eBay blocked the courier's email update, we also reached out to our customer on eBay messages to advise they may not get updates direct from the courier due to this glitch.
