It is No Glitch: eBay’s Confusing Yellow RESPOND Button Disappears

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Recently I received an email from an eBay member inquiring about a current listing of mine.  The email was rather strange email because the return email address was odd and looked like this:

x11-xxx11xxxxx@members.ebay.com.au

Note that I replaced all letters with “x” and all numbers with “1″.

The email was missing the Yellow Respond button that normally appears in emails:

My first inclination was that I had received a spoof email.  So, I checked the eBay messaging system and I was surprised to see the eBay message did appear.  However, the message lacked the yellow Respond Now button:

Frankly, I was at a loss.  I wasn’t sure how to respond to the potential buyer so I emailed my TSAM.  Once again, my TSAM answered me in only a matter of hours (more of this kind of treatment and he will be on my Christmas card list this year).

What I learned is that Australia recently changed their member-to-member communications:

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/au/200809.shtml

Because this potential buyer was from Australia, his message to me appeared different from all other messages that I had received but now I know how to respond to him.

A seller on eBay.com who receives a message from a potential customer from Australia can respond by:

1. Hitting the Email Reply button on the actual email and the response message will be routed through to the member.  The Australian member’s email address looks really strange but it is a pseudo-email address which will supposedly be delivered to the member’s real email address.  I have not yet been able to confirm this directly.

2. Through the eBay messaging system, the yellow Respond Now button is not available but there is a Grey button near the very top of the message that has the word “Respond” on it.  It is very easy to overlook if you do not know it is there.

Now, while I understand that change is necessary and nobody (including me) likes change…. my frustration is not with the eBay change itself but rather I am frustrated at the fact that I was not informed of the change.  As a result, I was not able to respond to this potential buyer in time (the listing ended) and I had to spend my time emailing my TSAM and further researching the change.  In addition, my TSAM had to spend his time inquiring and then responding to me.  I would claim that this is a waste of resources — a waste of my time and eBay’s time — and this unannounced change (not announced on eBay.com) may have caused an eBay buyer to be dissatisfied with me because I did not respond to the inquiry in a timely manner.

Note to eBay: When you make changes, we have a basic expectation that you will at least inform us.  Informing us doesn’t mean you are asking for our approval (since we most often disagree with your wacky changes) but informing us does allow us to operate more efficiently and to at least try to satisfy customers within the eBay system, a task that becomes more difficult each day.

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