Please review our messaging policy message received but only message to that buyer is from Royal Mai

[j_n_tee]

Hi, I received a surprised email from ebay saying  "email couldn’t be sent because they violated our member-to-member contact policy." reminding me "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."

They sent me the email address is sent the supposed email to, so.

I searched the email address and couldn't find any email sent from to me to that address! then I search my RM account, to find the order.

I found the order, and i would have had no reason to message/email that buyer as it's a 'normal' order/transaction. So i've not had any direct communication with buyer.

Only email the buyer would have got would have been from Royal Mail advising the status of the delivery expect, but i dont know which status email would have been flagged .etc. So why is ebay flagging up emails sent to buyer from Royal Mail! There is no violation on my part! 

Is there a glitch? Why is ebay flagging up emails sent to buyers from Royal Mail re order track status or delivery update? 

[j_n_tee]

Has anyone else had this recently - or any plausible explanations?

[2retropickers]

I’ve received two of these emails so far, but only to my private email address — nothing has appeared in my eBay Messages inbox, which is unusual. I’ve never sent any messages that could have breached eBay’s policy, so I suspect these are phishing emails. They look very genuine, which is concerning.

[j_n_tee]

Hi to be fair I didn't think it was a phishing email as it wasn't trying to get any information from me and the link was to it's messaging policy. I did ring ebay, and a manager was meant to call me back in the next 24hrs ... and that was 2/3 weeks ago....I guess they must be busy 😜

[gbrtrading1]

I just got one of these emails.

It is from ebay and not phishing. It is asking users to review an email sent, but that ebay did not send onwards, saying it violated messaging policy.

I managed to find the buyer linked to the proxy email they gave in the example, so I know I've never contacted them. They placed an order which was dispatched on Monday via RM click and drop online, and I got the email from ebay today (Wednesday). Best guess, Royal Mail sent an email notification and for some reason, ebay didn't like it. Or perhaps it is worse than that. Perhaps RM have made a slight change to email notifications and ebay didn't like any of them, just used this one as the example. That could be a problem, as there will be a lot of those notifications. 

[j_n_tee]

Hi, Yep thats my concern as ebay is flagging up messages not sent by us BUT by Royal Mail re delivery status or update or some sort of message.  I'm expecting this may turn into a bigger problem at some stage as ebay are seeing RM messages as policy violation at some point they may take action rather than warning us sellers - when in truth message s/was from RM to buyer re their delivery.

Dave@ebay has something change thats causing ebay to flag up messages

[moldosgifts]

These carrier emails will be sent to ebay messages as that is the only email address linked to the order,

So if it as service that updates seller at every opportunity then of course the buyer will get messages from an external system.

Have you noted the service for each notification? this could be for one particular service.

Ebay should use common sense ( yeah right!) can you teach ai system common sense?

[gbrtrading1]

I had a look at an example notification from Royal Mail. I couldn't see anything in it that would violate ebay messaging policy. These notifications are sent from the Royal Mail no-reply email address, and don't mention our email addresses anywhere, so ebay would have to do some poor quality automated work to conclude incorrectly who sent the message.

[j_n_tee]

Great got another one today saying 'my' message violated ebays messaging policy.  I checked the email address they referred to which the message was sent to. I checked it on my RM account and searched the email address to locate the buyer.

I had sent no message to him or her, BUT I have now as i believe ebay blocked the message to them telling them that their item is ready to pick up at their nominated pick-up point.  So i thought i'd better message the buyer consider ebay probably blocked that update. - Which is not helpful! 

Dave@ebay why is ebay seeing message sent to buyers from Royal Mail as policy violations! I got a feeling it maybe be blocking those letting buyers know items is at Pick-up point? as thats the last tracking status on that order by RM. 

[valcotrade]

I get these "Some of your emails couldn't be sent" emails almost weekly now from eBay.

I am sure these are caused by messages sent from Royal Mail to our customers giving delivery updates.

Our Royal Mail account is linked to eBay so it pulls through the customer email address as part of the address details. 

EBay hides customers real email addresses and instead uses an alias. They say it is to protect customer privacy, but we all know it is so they can monitor messages that we send to our customers. That is why the email address is a long number like 01041629cc68a369a058 at members.ebay.com.

That alias email address is routed via eBay to the customer. We never use that email address to directly contact customers, so I think it can only be Royal Mail delivery updates causing this.

I did contact eBay about this as I was worried it might add defects to my account. But the support person didn't really seem to understand and just said don't worry about it and that there were no defects against my account.

So for now I am ignoring the warning emails from eBay.

[gbrtrading1]

I got my latest "Please review..." email from ebay at 10:03, Sat 6th September 2025. The example email (which I couldn't check of course, having not sent one) related to a proxy email address which I traced back through Royal Mail click and drop, to a manifest from a few days earlier. When I looked at the tracking, it showed delivery had been attempted unsuccessfully (no answer/inaccessible) on Fri 5th, and that the buyer had arranged for it to be delivered to a collection point, which was the local post office.

There were two entries on the Royal Mail tracking on Sat 6th September 2025 for "Delivered to Your Collection Point" and "Available for collection" have a wild guess at what time is marked next to both of those. If you guessed 10:03, well done!

This might be specifically what is triggering these emails from ebay. They need to have a look into it, because sellers, who have not sent any violating emails, cannot solve the issue by reviewing messaging policy.

[down_in2u]

We have complained 4 times now to eBay about this by phone, requested call backs from managers. no manager has called back. they just cannot get a grip on this issue

The tech team just don’t understand that they have an overactive AI blocking far too much on eBay messages

We received an email from eBay saying”email couldn’t be sent because they violated our member-to-member contact policy.  Your eBay emails should only be about your eBay transactions and can’t be used for promotions outside of our marketplace." 

It basically accuses you of promoting sales outside of eBay

We searched the email address of the example provided and found it on one of the orders

There was no member to member contact thru eBay messages for any of the buyers orders

Only email the buyer would have got would have been from Royal Mail advising the status of the delivery. bear in mind this was on a click and collect order. So Royal Mail will be notifying them probably before click and collect is.

This is a serious issue as its causing a lot of unease within the eBay community and it’s driving us nuts

And yes it’s a genuine email because it comes from the same eBay email address that sends the payout email notifications

Please people; don’t stop complaining about this issue!  Because it is a major problem especially when trying to communicate with others members or ask and answer simply questions, we have found even mentioning the word "online" in ebay messages gets flagged by the AI and causes this warning email to be generated.

[down_in2u]

example of email 

[j_n_tee]

Dave@ebay Marco@ebay 

Are you guys aware of this issue. 

I think the pattern is when Royal Mail orders are sent to collection point and for some reason ebay messaging system is blocking messages to buyers making them aware that their order is at the collection point / ready for collection. (thats the only pattern I'm seeing)

Ebay is them messaging us telling us we violating ebay messaging policy when we've not actually

communicated with the said buyer (only RM have). I expect at some point ebay will then take action on our accounts at some point as RM will continue sending the messages to buyers which is out of our control.

I too was told a manage will get in touch - Weeks ago. 

PS My items are still sitting at the collection point as ebay seems to be blocking messages to the buyer from Royal Mail and i've also messaged separately but god know if that went through or ebay block it. (Which i think is the case as the orders are still awaiting collection!)

[down_in2u]

So looking into our incident further when Royal Mail delivered the parcel to the buyers click and collect collection point at 14.35 this afternoon. (Scanned as delivered ).

This generated the eBay messaging system. 

EBay sent us the message telling us we are violating eBay member to member messaging policy at exactly 14.35 the same time as the Royal Mail delivery scan. 

The email notifications / tracking updates generated by the courier to the buyer are causing this issue.

We have been uploading this information to eBay via their document uploaded.

Speaking to eBay they say they cannot see the member to member policy violation email been sent, because they do not show up in eBay messages – but that is just as concerning as they should be able to see and have a record of every email they are sending whether it be sent thru eBay or to your private email address that is linked to your eBay account

That in itself is a serious issue that eBay are stating they cannot see their own messages that they are sending to its members  

it scream MAJOR PROBLEM !!!

This is pretty basic stuff,  – it’s not hard for eBay to understand.

[down_in2u]

So spent 1 hour 30 on the phone to eBay today about this issue, agent was very helpful.

The agent liaised with a number of departments however that’s when they all started to claim this is a phishing email or spoof email to the agent making the enquires.

It’s the easy, quickest answer isn’t it?

And so the push back there is a problem, and the denial begins...

So the big question and dispute to this is how come the eBay members private email address is in the email? How come it matches the eBay members email address to the order involved?

If this was phishing or spam, this would mean a serious data breach has happened at eBay as the email contains the member’s genuine private “@eBay” email addresses (which remember is only visible to sellers for limited amount of time anyway in the order details)

If it is phishing or spam, why does the email have a unique email reference number at the bottom, that is in-line with every other genuine eBay email – surely using this email ref eBay are able to track these emails?

It is too much of a coincidence that the (Some of your emails couldn’t be sent Please review our messaging policy) email was generated by eBay at 14.35 the exact same time Royal Mail scanned the item as delivered at 14.35 generating the automated Royal Mail delivery email notification to the buyer.

It is too much of a coincidence that the eBay order details is still not updating to show click and collect “ready for collection” even after 24 hours after delivery

It is too much of a coincidence that the email is coming the same email address that all eBay emails come from i.e.: payout info emails, returns, purchases etc etc

It is too much of a coincidence that the email contains links directly to eBay’s genuine website pages

It is too much of a coincidence that the email says the email has been blocked when the tracking shows it was delivered 24 hours ago and eBay order details is saying it’s still only at the dispatch stage and now running behind schedule

Again we was ask to provide and upload multiple screenshots to eBay, which we did

We advised the balance of probability here is that this is a technical issue with AI over reaching and causing problems with seller and buyer communication and disrupting buyer tracking notification information and delivery

The agent could see the problem but could not resolve, as it’s an IT issue, we was advised "oh the buyer will know to collect the parcel".

We questioned how? When the agent had just admitted there is an additional technical problem with the click and collect not updating to show it’s ready for collection, so we stated and what do you think has caused this ? exactly what we have been discussing with you for the past 90 minutes....

So after all this we ended up hitting a brick wall

There just seems to be lack of common sense at eBay when trying to communicate issues and you’re constantly waiting for that magical moment when the penny finally drops.

[e-buy-uk]

Yes I had the same message last week and just had another today.

haven’t got a clue what they are on about