I have received this message as well and I am only an occasional seller. I figured it was just Ebay tooting their horn to show how great they are at taking care of sellers... yea, right....
First time I've seen anyone mention this action. Hmmm. I agree, it seems to be a bit of horn tooting. Can't see real value in it any other way.
Maybe the auction sites claim that they have helped your account by stopping three money-back guarantee requests filed too early, does not mean that they have done this specifically on your sales. But that are helping protect you as seller by having done this three times over all the billions of transactions in their system. Isn't that a logical and reasonable explanation?
Having re-read the notice I got... I think we have a winner here! Please tell Ken what he's won! It's a month's supply of Loopholes from the Acme Fine Loophole Company! Remember, whether you're writing a contract or selling items on internet auction sites, be sure to have plenty of high quality loopholes on hand... and count on Acme for the Finest Loopholes a Three Dollar Bill can buy!
Three spread amongst the entirety of their site over two months seems to be an impossibly small number, especially with the grumps we have all read. The notice as George quoted it states "...to protect your account:..." It doesn't seem to be a generalization over all their transactions, but reads for me as being specific to just George and his own account. If this is true, and they did stop three, it likely wouldn't show up in any use statistics he could access, not being allowed to get that far.
George, not saying you haven't thought on these lines as well, but in the email you received maybe check the extended version of the originating address? I've received a couple of notices about PayPal over the years saying there is a dispute to be resolved. Look at the full email address and it is not from PayPal, so it gets dispatched to digital purgatory or the Spam folder, whichever is closer.
Used to be a rash of spam like that that appeared out of the blue associated with phony PayPal actions. Seemed to have died off for awhile. Most of it involved phishing attempts. So maybe their back.
No, it's really from eBay... it's in my "Messages" box inside my eBay account also, when I log into the eBay site. "Spam" was actually my first thought.
Just call them on the phone and ask them to explain. I have had good luck getting questions answered when calling them.
Another thread discusses trying to find a guide to identifying old rolling stock etc. One responder (logandsawman) mentioned using eBay as a research tool (rather than just a deal hunter as intended by the site.) I do that fairly often, to try to find the catalog number of a car I am trying to identify, or to see what models might exist of some roadname etc. I take what I find with a shaker of salt, not just a pinch, since sellers are not always painfully accurate. But a hint can point me toward something to verify elsewhere. What I notice when I hunt up something on eBay just for information, is that eBay takes its record of my search and puts it up again whenever I go onto eBay, and tells me, "LOOK. WHAT YOU WERE LOOKING AT IS STILL AVAILABLE!!! HURRY UP AND BID!!!" Or I get an email to that effect. Or eBay puts a "personalizsed" ad to me on my facebook page. Funniest is when I am checking an item I want to sell, see if anybody else is selling it, what is somebody else's price, etc. Then I put my item up for sale, and eBay sends me multiple messages with pictures and links TO MY OWN FOR-SALE ITEM telling me excitedly they have what I was looking for!!! (I decided maybe I should also put this comment under "eBay humor".)
Wow. I was just browsing the auction listings. After about a dozen pages, nothing really jumped out as being too far out in left field. Are they watching us, and perhaps listening? Ha ha.
Challenge accepted! This one seems a little high for an old Concor loco and 5 passenger cars: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Con-Cor-N-S...286?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3aa8525d46
Full Bachmann retail for this is $475 and it can easily be found for under $300 on the net http://www.ebay.com/itm/BAC24131-N-...355?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e9a3174fb
Can't even tell if this is n scale and it's been here before. If it is n scale, it seems pricy for a bus. Love the description...'Worth to keep. Valuable item. Must see.' http://www.ebay.com/itm/Model-Bus-D...489?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a43153411
It could use a better description, too! Just what are we buying? I doubt the "set" came with that SW also shown? Is that included?
Since Atlas has announced that they are re-running the shays, here's some of the first run for double the original MSRP: http://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-Atl...162?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19fca7ab2a http://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-Atl...976?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19fca7d180 http://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-Atl...865?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19fca7dcc9 http://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-Atl...613?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19fca80e95 http://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-Atl...716?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19fca816cc http://www.ebay.com/itm/N-Scale-Atl...071?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item234e5a67ff