eBay has rolled out some key changes with regards to how members can email and communicate with each other.

Many of these changes are targeted to improve the buying experience by enabling sellers to quickly and easily respond to questions from prospective eBay buyers. They include:

• Allowing both sellers and buyers to answer all member questions using their existing email clients such as Outlook or other internet email applications.
• Allowing members to route these messages to a secondary email address specified solely for processing member inquiries. Members can now separate these critical, time-sensitive communications from other eBay notifications and announcements.
• Adding structured content to the subject line of member messages so that members can quickly search for a particular message or create custom routing rules to ensure a question is answered by the right person as fast as possible.

In addition to improving the member-to-member communication experience, eBay will introduce some additional changes to improve the trust and safety of member communications.

Specifically, email addresses sent through the system (ie Ask Seller a Question, Reply to Question and Contact eBay Member links on the site) will be made anonymous in emails sent before a sale takes place. This applies to members who have not recently transacted with each other. Once the item is purchased, the member’s email address will be visible. Until then, eBay will replace the sender’s email address in the “From” field with a temporary anonymous address.

A short grace period will apply before eBay begin to validate the email address a member is using to reply to member messages. This validation is a secondary security measure to prevent a fraudster from trying to gain access to your account.

eBay is introducing these changes to protect its members from opportunistic fraudsters who try to entice members into completing transactions outside of eBay. Such buyers not only risk losing their money, but also their trust in the eBay experience, and in eBay sellers. By intermediating the communications between members that have the highest exposure for abuse, eBay will be in a position to detect and stop fraudulent messages and spam.

Learn more about these changes.