"This is bad," said Kathy Harvey, an eBay seller from Moline, Ill. "We
all knew in advance that this was not going to work, and it's not
working."
eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove said that members' mail filters are
weeding out some of the messages sent by the company's new mail system.
Some members have been able to address the problem by modifying their
filters, he said.
"We're looking at some ways to address it here to make this more
convenient for people," he said. "We're exploring a number of options."
eBay announced the
new e-mail system last month as part of a policy that restricts access to
customer e-mail addresses. Before the policy, any member could look up
another member's e-mail address.
Now, sellers can access the e-mail addresses of bidders on their
auctions, and winning bidders can access the e-mail addresses of sellers.
eBay funnels all other member e-mail messages through a mail system on its
servers.
The company has said that spam is among the biggest complaints of its
members. But some members have charged that the purpose of the policy is
to prevent members from making deals outside of eBay. eBay has taken steps to
discourage off-system deals, but eBay representatives say they cannot stop
them.
The new e-mail system directs messages sent through it to recipients
without placing anything in the "send to" field of the message. Since the
sender can receive a carbon copy of the e-mail, the ostensible purpose is
to hide the recipient's e-mail address from the sender.
But many filtering programs are weeding out messages that omit a
recipient's address, because spammers often send blind carbon copy
messages to dozens of recipients at one time. The recipient of a blind
carbon copied message often will not see anything in the "send to" field.
Although some filtering programs can be adjusted to allow desired mail
to pass through, the only way for sellers to guarantee that they will
receive legitimate messages would be to turn off the filters.
eBay's new mail system is an "imperfect solution to a legitimate
problem," said Eytan Urbas, vice president of marketing at Mailshell.com, which provides a
service that weeds out junk mail. "In order to effectively use eBay,
members will have to accept a greater amount of spam. That seems to me an
unfair trade off."
Kathy, a seller from Rockford, Mich., who declined to give her last
name, said her e-mail filters were placing messages from her bidders into
her junk mail folder. She turned off the filters and said she is now
getting about 30 spam messages a day in her in-box.
"This has become nuisance," she said. "It is totally unacceptable to
me."
