kat@ebay
Hello again, thanks for your latest reply. Brace yourself for mine!
Sorry if I didn't make it clear first time round, glad you understand now! As I said, part of the confusion arises because eBay use the term 'email' for eBay messages. The distinction is clear in my head, as I use the term 'email' for emails to a personal email account, and 'eBay messages' for, well, eBay messages! I'd be the first to raise my hand at the charge of "Pedant!", but the importance of the distinction in this case has already been established. Not that I can expect you or anyone else to fall in line with my customary usage!
Okay, so from your latest post, I should have been receiving personal emails with those announcements after all. I'm somewhat relieved to learn that the issue isn't just affecting me. Obviously, I don't mean I'm happy that others are experiencing the same thing, I just mean that the scale of the problem means that your tech team have it on their radar.
I take your point about email providers and anti-spam laws, and acknowledge that this is beyond eBay's control, but is it entirely beyond eBay's sphere of influence? Surely, if eBay, as a corporate entity, contacted the relevant email providers to inform them that they'd identified a large-scale issue of emails to members being blocked, this would have a lot more clout than mere individuals like myself reporting to their email providers ad hoc. I would like to think that, after "a lot of investigation from tech", eBay would then try to further support its members by liaising with the relevant email providers (you did say "certain" and "some" providers, not all) with the mutual aim of trying to iron out the issues. After all, investigating and identifying the causes of issues is all well and good, but how much better would it be (especially for us end users) if this was followed up by a concerted effort to actually resolve them? I know that I'm on the outside looking in, and have no real insight into eBay's internal practices, but my gut feeling is that they could be doing more to help us. If eBay have already tried to work with the email providers, but the latter have refused to engage, then fair enough, there really isn't much more that eBay could do*, but your reply indicates that the work stopped at the 'issue identification' stage.
* Although, given that the tech team have identified this issue, eBay could at least communicate this to members via its own channels, an announcement along the lines of "We have identified a situation where some members are not receiving eBay communications sent to their personal email accounts. We would encourage members, especially those who suspect that they are affected by this, to periodically check their accounts and/or eBay UK's Community forums for any announcements they may have missed via email [whilst we continue working to resolve the issue]" - the last bit in brackets depending on whether or not that is feasible, as covered above. It's not an actual fix, but at least people would be better informed. One of the most regular complaints about eBay, on these boards and elsewhere, is about non-communication (or mis-communication). Indeed, I'm now left wondering why eBay haven't put out such an announcement, given that the tech team have positively and conclusively identified the issue (sincere apologies if this has already been communicated, and I've simply missed it). Maybe the issue is only affecting a small minority, so eBay doesn't deem it worthy of an announcement (although, if only a small percentage of users were affected, would the tech team really have done "a lot of investigation"?). Or maybe it's just that such a message would not reflect well on eBay, even though the issue isn't down to them. It's still not as bad a look as not communicating at all.
I'd like to reiterate that I haven't been getting the announcement emails at all, not even routed to my spam folder - so either eBay haven't been sending me them in the first place, or Outlook has been blocking them totally, not even filtering them as spam. The latter scenario does seem unlikely, to be honest, given the stuff that Outlook does allow into my spam folder. Would Outlook really block 'ebay.co.uk' and 'ebay.com', yet allow something like '420va9TVaH@vietnam.tellingme.net' (actual example from my Blocked Senders list) through? If so, I'd say that our anti-spam laws aren't so much strict as not fit for purpose!
I apologize if it feels like I'm forensically picking your reply apart, but you only mentioned that the tech team had identified an issue with some email providers processing emails from eBay as spam, whereas the issue I'm having is some (usually important) emails not reaching me at all, not even in my spam folder. There's a critical difference between the two. I'd much rather have your emails land in Spam than not arrive at all. Most people who use email a lot, myself included, are at least savvy enough to check the provenance and legitimacy of emails in their spam folder before deleting and/or blocking them; it's widely known that the odd genuine email is routed to Spam (and, conversely, that obvious junk emails sometimes turn up in one's inbox).
The more I think about this, and check eBay emails that I have received (that sounds a bit daft, I could hardly check ones I hadn't received!), the less I'm inclined to believe that my issue is due to Outlook blocking emails from the 'ebay.com' and 'ebay.co.uk' domains. For example, yesterday I received two offers from a seller with items I've added to my Watch List - both emails were sent from 'ebay@ebay.com' (clearly from the 'ebay.com' domain). I'll spare you further examples, but there are plenty of them.
I accept that there may be a certain element of randomness at play. Going back to my 'LEAFY15' code example, I was only informed of this via app notification. But the fact that I didn't even get this in my eBay messages (let alone my personal email), indicates that this was only meant to be sent via app notification - or should I have had it in eBay messages, too? In that case, there's another bug doing the rounds! It just seems very odd (and hard to put down to mere coincidence) that I get emails like the aforementioned seller offers, yet for months haven't received any emails with the big announcements. They all originate from an eBay domain name.
I've followed your advice anyway, and have added 'ebay.co.uk' and 'ebay.com' to my Safe Senders list. 'ebay@ebay.co.uk' and 'ebay@ebay.com' were already in the safe list. I have also looked through my Blocked Senders list, and no eBay domain names were to be found there.
I appreciate the information and advice you've provided, but the mystery remains! According to your reply, the very worst I should be experiencing is eBay emails going to my Spam folder - not failing to reach me at all. However, I'll refrain from harping on about the issue in subsequent posts. The announcements are occasional, and I'll still find out about major changes sooner or later via the community, my eBay account, and various other channels. I'd just rather it were 'sooner', which emails would ensure. I'll monitor the issue, though, and, should the issue persist, I will - as you've advised - tag the team on these boards to feed back to the tech department (not the same as harping on!). I will also follow up your suggestion of contacting my email provider. I've never done this before, and judging by the little test I've just done, that will be a challenge in itself, but that's beyond the scope of this thread, more something I'd have to ask about on a Microsoft community forum.
Considering my doubts (legitimate, I feel, given the reasoning above) that the issue is not exclusively a matter of Outlook blocking emails from eBay domain names due to anti-spam laws, could you please pass my experience on to the tech team? Are they absolutely positive that it isn't down to some issue at eBay's end, at least to some degree? Without being overly critical, it wouldn't be the first time that eBay had denied there was an issue at their end, only for it to transpire that actually there was.
Sorry for another wordy post (and all the repetition - goodness knows what the word count for "email" and "spam" is), and thanks again for your information and suggestions. By replying here, you saved me from having to raise the matter in the Weekly Chat - which I'm now going to scoot off and check.
