I got an interesting email from eBay this evening – it was a form letter that seemed to be generated from some of my buying patterns.
Site interference auto-generated email
We’re pleased to have you as part of the eBay Community. However, we are contacting you regarding a violation of eBay?s Site Interference policy.
Listings promoted on the eBay Deals have a cost factor associated with them. While we are happy to provide great deals to our customers, we do so with hopes that our customers will buy or sell other items on the site.
We have become aware of your purchase activity being focused primarily on high demand Deals items. This behavior may be consistent with inventory procurement for resell. For this reason we would like to offer our recommendation that you be considerate of the cost factor to ebay in order to provide high demand items such as the ones you have been purchasing. We understand that you may not have been aware of this policy, and we invite you to learn more about this policy at the link below in order to keep your experiences on eBay pleasant and successful.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-interference.htmlYou are still welcome to purchase from the eBay Deals section, but you are advised that buying for resell may result in action against your account. Please be aware that additional violations of this policy may result in your purchases being cancelled and a restriction of your buying privileges.
We appreciate your understanding.
Thanks,
eBay
I’ve been on eBay for many years, but this is the first I had heard of this. I went to the link about “Site interference” that they shared in the email, but I actually didn’t see any additional information or guidelines (it seemed to focus mostly on things like creating multiple accounts, buying your own listings, or being deceptive when listing items.
Has anyone else ever gotten an email like this?
This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as thepointsguy.com. This may impact how and where links appear on this site. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers and that compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners and I do not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers and other offers and benefits listed on this page. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
User Generated Content Disclosure: Points With a Crew encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
yep – got one today.
“Glad” to know I’m not alone!
Cant tell if they cancelled my orders or just sent one item per or if they let it go through. Actually my 2 brothers who also buy got those notices as well. Wonder if its an IP address thing or not. Waiting to see what happens.
Weird. All sorts of people buy stuff on ebay to resale. Seems stupid.
indeed…. how do you have an ebay without re-sellers? Isn’t that the whole idea?
Maybe the idea here was to preserve special deals for the broad ebay base, to restrict high volume re-sellers (whatever that is) from “hoarding” deals meant to draw traffic to the ebay site.
But if that’s the strategy, why not simply restrict #’s to be purchased of each item…. rather than trying to restrict, vaguely, the buyers…. who aren’t quite sure what lines they’ve crossed.
Makes as much sense as Meg Whitman thinking she could merely walk into the white house, with the adoring e-bay masses showering her with their votes. (then again… ;-( )
Its policies like this from ebay and amazon and the worst of all three paypal that keep me away from these sites. sure I buy stuff occasionally but I really don’t get involved.
Sites like these are in a crux because people like me dont want to figure out how ebay works, dont want to sign in to buy something and dont want to have to purchase “plans” to just purchase a single item. These sites want engaged customers just not smart/clever engaged customers.
Their goal is find stupid customers addicted to their sites but not “smart shoppers”
This is also a trend of More of fire your bad customers theme. And be warned because these horrible T&C or “tricks and traps” as Sen Warren(D MA) says with adhesion clauses make it impossible to sue them even if they try and steal your gift card balances. Its their money, whether its loaded to their site or not, in your pocket or in your online acct. Skype is an expert at that trick with prepaid “vouchers/gift cards.”
Sure points are fun, but be warned miles, pts come with horrible T&C and there are no legal redress or due process. And they think that you are too good at the game they will start to steal from you!!!
FYI
Yeah – Paypal is the worst
This is very strange. I am not buying to resell from eBay so I do not expect a letter like this, but I get 2-3 emails from eBay A DAY about deals urging me to buy, buy, buy. If they do not want people to buy all this stuff (that they profit from the sale of), then they ought to stop pushing it so hard. I see the same things over and over from them that they are promoting.
I love selling on eBay (Yeah, I am nuts) because it is the place to sell. At least for the kind of junk I sell, anyhow. But dealing with them is often hard as they do very weird things and are so difficult to deal with.
My thinking on this is definitely set up a “straw man” account somewhere or with someone else and use that until it gets killed, one that cannot be linked directly to you and your reselling. It’s shady behavior but encouraged by the crazy policies of eBay itself.
Must be linked to IP addresses somehow cause my brother used his new account but purchased on my computer. All similar orders to mine we cancelled as well
Recently researched the details of reselling products on Ebay and solicited the advise of a friend who has been selling on Ebay for years. She told me how within the last two years, Ebay limits your online store’s visibility once you’ve reached the 8% sales range presumably to level the playing field for all sellers. It can’t be coincidence that once she hits the 8% mark, the sales and visibility suddenly drop off until the next month.
What a joke. Sounds to me like senior management is worried that more and more people may do the same thing, forcing them to downsize their yachts.
Yeah I wish they’d just be a BIT more consistent – I mean even today, less than 24 hours after sending out those emails, I get another email practically BEGGING me to come buy some more “eBay deals”
So ebay did end up cancelling 4 of 5 of the items ordered and was issued a refund.
Yes, I received this as well. Apparently they sent it out en masse. I think it’s funny they link their “Site Interference Policy” that doesn’t mention anything about reselling. In fact, it would appear they have no policy that does. You are interfering with the site by purchasing too much! Makes sense.
I would guess they don’t like that we get eBay bucks on purchases. Okay, so stop sending me 5x eBay bucks promotions maybe? Or, I don’t know, restrict Daily Deals to one per customer. Crazy ideas!
I wonder what moron executive thought up this e-mail. In their mind it made sense I suppose.
So don’t buy from the eBay Deals section because buying too much is too expensive for eBay and they are afraid you are reselling the merchandise at some flea market? That is so weird but duly noted: henceforth I will never buy from the eBay Deals section. It is so weird though that I can’t believe it is legal. It is like eBay is a country with its own laws.