Emailing 'buddies'

Hello, I'm referring to the ability to send out emails in an attempt to increase bidders and maybe earn some 'buddy' points.

I was just wondering what is and is not considered acceptable here as in bold print above email addresses box it states:

"Note : Users attempting to artificially inflate their Buddy Points balance will have all their points removed and their eBid account placed on hold."

I've been selling on various platforms for about 7 years and have a list of all of my buyers email addresses, around 2500 in total, would emailing these people be considered OK?

I don't wan't to fall foul of anything so thought I would ask first :)

My personal view on this is that it is not OK. If buyers have furnished me with information for the purposes of facilitating a transaction that does not give me the right to use that information for any other purpose without their explicit consent.

I know what you mean, its a list I've not used in the past.

Has this been the strategy of some of the 'buddy point behemoths'?

You would be surprised by how many of my buyers have added me to their mailing lists, twitters, facebooks etc.

When I first came here I emailed a some of the people that had bought from me on TOS and a few of them contacted me, delighted because they were desperate to get away from there. So I then sent them the email from eBid but, unfortunately, one of them reported it as spam which gets eBid into trouble.

Dont know if it was deliberate or accidental, I remember when I had aol software on my computer it would report some automatically without me realizing that it had.

I clear my spam folder every morning and delete dozens of emails in my inbox, it only takes a couple of minutes and doesn't bother me at all but we are all different.

Thanks for the replies - I guess I'll leave it for now, don't much like the possible negatives.

Please beware that emailing though the buddy referral could result in ebid being reported for spam you should never send buddy emails though ebid as also can suspend your account unless you know the person personally i know as this happened to me in the past there is no harm in adding your link to the bottom of your emails etc.And thinking up other ways of advertising ebid I should know i advertise ebid all the time

Which makes one wonder why eBid provides the on site facility to email people when it could be the cause of problems for the site.

It may have seemed like a good idea when it was set up, but data protection regulations have moved on since then.

It would probably be better if the facility were removed.

I agree maybe it needs looking at you are of course invite people you know to join as ebid is a great site

Thanks all for the advice - glad I waited before 'pulling the trigger', I guess other routes are the way to go from here.