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eBay Mysteries Include Missing Bodies, Duplicate Listings
 

Readers have asked me about some problems they've been having this week. An email came in this evening with the subject line, "eBay Email Bodies Missing":

Ina, For the last two days I have sent messages to ebay thru the ebay messaging system. For each message, I had a copy sent to my email address so I can retain the communication. Lo and Behold the email gets sent to my email address however the body of each message is missing, however the message headers are intact. I went into my ebay message "sent" folder and it's the same there, it shows the message as sent but there is no message or body type to be displayed. I guess they do not want a paper trail on emails to ebay or retention of those messages anymore!

I found others were having the same problem according to this August 23rd eBay Discussion Board post on the Technical Issues board, "Impossible to submit a question to Customer Support - question deleted!"

Another email came in reporting a problem, this one about duplicate listings on eBay. The seller's the problem has been ongoing - "I will list an item and it will sell. A few months later the same item will sell again."

Another person emailed reporting that there was a new problem involving duplicate listings: "I just checked my "seller's other items" There was one that was in there 3 times, and three others that duplicated once." That seller said eBay customer service told them, "This is a technical issue that we are currently aware of and working on," and credited the fees. eBay did not respond to an inquiry about a duplicate listing problem by press time.

I've gotten additional inquires about the media category shipping-caps question raised by Griff since I wrote about the issue on Monday. eBay did not respond by press time to inquiries sent on Monday and again today.

I've found Auctiva occasionally duplicates listings. And in summer 2007, they sent hundreds of listings with blank descriptions I didn't know of, though Auctiva's never done that again.

When I email eBay, if I email them about one issue and then email them on another issue, they only read the first email and discard the rest. They've done that for a year or more. It used to be they'd have to go through every one and emailing em a lot would make em help better. eBay's staff also if they don't understand something (which happens occassionally), half the time they won't even send an unrelated form letter, they'll just delete it.