Coming Soon: Enhancements to My Messages
In response to the comments and suggestions of many eBay users, My Messages is being upgraded with important new features. You will soon be able to receive important messages about your eBay account, as well as responses to your Customer Support inquiries in My Messages. You will also be able to exchange messages confidently and securely with other eBay members.
Beginning in late May, you will begin to see visual enhancements related to these new features, though some of the features will not be operational until late June:
On your My Messages page you will be able to manage up to ten personal folders for organizing your My Messages communications in the way that works best for you.
A Sent folder will let you keep copies of your outgoing messages. (Your sent folder will be empty until the full launch of My Messages in late June.)
The addition of an alert reminder (with the "Hello, username" greeting) at the top of your page. This reminder will only be present when you have account alerts in My Messages and will remain until the alert has been acted upon.
The modification of Customer Support forms. (You'll notice slight changes to these forms - both color and layout.)
Please take some time to become familiar with the upcoming changes to My Messages by taking a quick tour and reading our Frequently Asked Questions. As always, we value and welcome your ongoing feedback.
Regards,
eBay, Inc.
Answer
Well the groups announcement I got was a bit more detailed:
The initial phase of My Messages, launched earlier this year, has been a read-only Inbox for members to receive information about buying, selling, and other activities and events on eBay. This second phase of My Messages allows for two-way communication with eBay and with other eBay members. Soon you'll start receiving:The above bolding is mine. I noticed a couple of days ago when I sent a message to someone that I bought from that I did not get to see their email addy nor they mine.
-important account-related messages (e.g. billing invoices, password change notices, and other Trust & Safety messages),
-Customer Support responses and
-member-to-member communications
ALL in your My Messages Inbox. This will ensure you never miss an important message because of spam blockers or a full email box. Additionally, you will continue to get a copy of these communications to your registered email address.
This brings us one huge step closer to not having any direct contact with our buyers. Most already believe they bought it from eBay -- not me.
Just a venue. .....right! And the moon is made of green cheese.
Dee
Edited to say I wonder how much longer it will be before I am not permitted to put my email address in my auctions and must remove the phone number that I list there. After all eBay wouldn't want me to interface with MY customer.
The full text for those who did not receive it:
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***Important Safety News from Rob Chesnut Expansion of My Messages Coming Soon***
June 01, 2005 | 09:14AM PST/PT
Hi I'm Rob Chesnut, and I'm the head of eBay's global Trust & Safety organization. By now, I think the entire eBay community is familiar with the problem of spoof/phishing emails, and I'm sure that many of you have gotten one or more of these fraudulent messages in your home or business email account over the last year. Spoof emails have become a serious problem for banks and major ecommerce sites, and they are a significant threat to ecommerce globally. They are crafted by bad guys and appear to come from a trusted source, such as your bank, your ISP, or eBay itself. They often contain all the correct logos and headers that give them the appearance of legitimacy. These emails usually contain some call to action, some urgency designed to trick users into clicking a link that takes them to a legitimate-looking website where they enter their personal financial information and passwords.
As the sophistication of these emails has increased, it has become evident that we all need help to weed out these fraudulent emails from our systems. Over the last year, eBay has rolled out one industry-leading product, the eBay Toolbar with Account Guard, that helps protect users from spoof sites by alerting users whenever they are about to go to a spoof eBay or PayPal site. If you don't have the eBay Toolbar, I strongly urge you to go to the eBay Security & Resolution Center and download it today.
http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter/?ssPageName=CMDV:AB
But it's clear that we need to do more. That's why I'm particularly happy to announce that eBay will be rolling out one of our most effective measures to combat spoof the second phase of My Messages (available in My eBay). With the second phase of My Messages, launching in late June, you can trust that important eBay account-related messages you receive in My Messages will be legitimate.
From a safety perspective, the bottom line is this If the email affects your eBay account, it's in My Messages. If you get an email that looks like it's from eBay about a problem with your account or requests personal information and it's not in My Messages, it's a fake email. Please forward it to spoof*ebay.com.
The initial phase of My Messages, launched earlier this year, has been a read-only Inbox for members to receive information about buying, selling, and other activities and events on eBay. This second phase of My Messages allows for two-way communication with eBay and with other eBay members. Soon you'll start receiving:
-important account-related messages (e.g. billing invoices, password change notices, and other Trust & Safety messages),
-Customer Support responses and
-member-to-member communications
ALL in your My Messages Inbox. This will ensure you never miss an important message because of spam blockers or a full email box. Additionally, you will continue to get a copy of these communications to your registered email address.
Since upgrading My Messages is a large, global project, you'll start noticing some visual changes to My Messages in a few days folders/folder management, consolidated views of all unread messages, the ability to forward a message to your address, and other changes. However, the bulk of the new features (and all of the new messages) will not be available until late June. We'll keep you updated on progress on the General Announcements board.
I hope you will take some time to become familiar with the upcoming changes to My Messages by reading our Frequently Asked Questions [http://pages.ebay.com/help/myebay/my-messages-faq.html?ssPageName=CMDV:AB] and taking the My Messages tour [http://pages.ebay.com/MyMessages/Preview/index1.html?ssPageName=CMDV:AB]. As always, we value and welcome your ongoing feedback and we hope you'll let us know your thoughts on the My eBay discussion board [http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=200103036]. While we're not able to respond to all comments directly, they will be read and considered for future enhancements. The My Messages team will also be hosting a workshop after the launch to review the new features and answer member questions, so stay tuned for more details.
Sincerely,
Rob Chesnut
Senior Vice President, Trust & Safety
Answer
Well, heck.
Maybe eBay thinks it's a good idea to make all its sellers stay logged into My EBay all the time or at least check it 50 times a day in order to catch any correspondence, but I betcha anything the servers won't be upgraded to handle the load until after there are crashes and problems.
eBay needs to have total control of every transaction. Yep. But they don't forget to insert
Seller assumes all responsibility for listing this item. into every listing. Just incase there might be some liability issues...
Answer
My buyers are already sending payment to ebay via paypal for my items. My email address stopped showing up in the invoices at all and all of them have been sending payment to the email address that ebay puts in checkout*ebay.com Nice huh? And it's showing in my ebay as paid!
I think the direct buyer to seller communication will be totally gone before the end of this year.
Answer
Originally Posted by mysteriouscutie I think the direct buyer to seller communication will be totally gone before the end of this year. I agree. This new "My messages" thing, the ability to mark paid/shipped, etc. status on the auction page, removal of buyer's/seller's email addresses after 14 days ...it all adds up. Bet they'll do it at Christmas.
Answer
Well, golly! Soon I can just toss my email program out the window and do EVERYTHING with My eBay.