Strange email from Ebid!

[deltadelta48]

It is a shame we get so much email junk. Free to send so why not send out 1000!

When I do any marketing or advertising, I get better response actually sending a letter or postcard. I bet 95% of emails like this get tossed.

[OldPostcards]

Serves them right for spamming!

[marschenegger]

I'm confused. We encourage eBid users to send e-mails and invitations to their clients from other sites, to friends, and to the world at large. The message received by the person who began this thread is exactly the message ebid sends when they are provided with a referral. So why do several of the respondents to this thread sound unhappy about these messages? My address book is full of people with whom my only correspondence was receiving a PayPal payment for an item purchased from me via that other auction site. I was encouraged to send invitations to those people, and I have. Suddenly, the tide of popular opinion is reversed and now I'm seen as a spammer for doing this? What has changed? Is this tied to the e-mails eBid sends as feedback reminders? I'm stultified by the number people who get irrational about that topic.

[CrazyJay]

I certainly wasn't unhappy about recieving it, and perhaps should have written back. I'm pretty snowed under at work at the moment, so any messages which are cold as it were (ie sent out to multiple users) tend to get pushed aside.

Would I have looked if I was not already a member? - I can't honestly say. I think it would depend on how busy I was, and if I was actively looking for an online sales platform. - I don't know.

It's certainly worth thinking about from both sides.

[bykimbo]

My address book is full of people with whom my only correspondence was receiving a PayPal payment for an item purchased from me via that other auction site. I was encouraged to send invitations to those people, and I have. Suddenly, the tide of popular opinion is reversed and now I'm seen as a spammer for doing this? What has changed? .

I can't answer for "popular opinion" but I have always identified contacting your back customer list this way as spamming, and in the early days used to bother to say so whenever it was recommended. I got bored and stopped. It doesn't mean I changed my mind and suddenly thought it was a spiffy idea.

[OldPostcards]

Let me clarify my initial objection to receiving the email. My objection to it was purely based on the fact that the Ebid message referred to this person as my 'friend'.

I have never heard of the person before, never bought off her or to my knowledge, or sold to her. The email address it was sent to, has never been used here on Ebid.

So to conclude, she decided to send an email via the Ebid system pretending she already 'knew' me from elsewhere, suggesting that I join the site. She must have picked up my email address somewhere but goodness knows where. On a forum perhaps as Kimbo suggested.

If I HAD have known her then I wouldn't have minded. In this case, it amounts to spamming and can only give Ebid a bad name in my view.

[OldPostcards]

PS - I am not going to name the person who sent the email; I am not into that kind of thing.

Suffice to say that she may even be reading this thread - I acknowledge that at the end of the day she is just trying to grow her business and boost Ebid's name; full marks for that but I just did not agree with the particular method she chose. Fine for writing to people with whom she has had past dealings, but in my view NOT fine to pick email addresses at random and send a message purporting to be from a 'friend'.

If she is reading this thread perhaps she will take that on board; I am not reporting it to Ebid.

[marschenegger]

There's no way to know if a person is already an eBid member just by looking at an e-mail address in one's address book! Maybe I accidentally sent a couple of invitations to eBid members. So what? Is a skimmity ride being prepared with my effigy??

[islandbuckman]

I sent this "invitation" to join ebid to a few people shortly after I joined. Well the people tried to join up but were barred as the ebid gods thought it was some sort of a scam. SO I have never sent any type of invitation to anyone ever again! Try to grow your business and you get a kick in the head!

[deltadelta48]

Let me clarify my initial objection to receiving the email. My objection to it was purely based on the fact that the Ebid message referred to this person as my 'friend'.

I have never heard of the person before, never bought off her or to my knowledge, or sold to her. The email address it was sent to, has never been used here on Ebid.

So to conclude, she decided to send an email via the Ebid system pretending she already 'knew' me from elsewhere, suggesting that I join the site. She must have picked up my email address somewhere but goodness knows where. On a forum perhaps as Kimbo suggested.

If I HAD have known her then I wouldn't have minded. In this case, it amounts to spamming and can only give Ebid a bad name in my view.

No one has to apologize for not "accepting a friendship". I think I got this invite too, now that I think about it and I deleted it too. Just one of many junk mails.

I know we all work at marketing our businesses and ebid, and I have mailed and emailed my past customers to tell them where I moved, and have given info to others who were interested,and mailed invites to groups of people who tended to buy my things (with success).

But, it appears this person has pulled names off of ebid (from listings or forums, etc) and turned them into ebid saying he/she wants to invite them to join ebid. Obviously it is not a poor guess, this person knows we are members. Is this a way to earn buddy points (ebid- ah look they are members now, lets give her some buddy points?).