How can I contact a Canadian seller who blocks Oz?

[five_eyes]

I would like to ask a Canadian seller if I can bid on one of his Auctions.

His listing says he only posts to Canada & the USA.

When I have tried to send an ebay message to ask if he will post to Oz, all I get is an ebay message telling me he does not accept questions.

The stupid part is that I have bought from him a year ago, when he did ship to Oz.

I tried to bid but it would not accept my bid.

I have a saved search set up and this is the first time in over 2 years that this item has been listed anywhere worldwide on ebay.

It is so frustrating because I am sure he would be happy for me to bid, if only I could get a message through to him!

Any bright ideas from the wizards here would be appreciated.

Ta,

[thecatspjs]

Patchoo, can you point me in the direction of the policy that outlines this message rule that you can not put your email addresses in your messages. 

thank you

[***super_nova***]

I still maintain I did nothing wrong, but I doubt that ebay read the accompanying reports and just remove posts as they see fit. Still, it's their playground, so their rules.

If eBay have made it clear that you can't include your email address in a message to a seller/buyer, then you can't. Using any work around as was suggested by catspjs is seen as circumventing eBay policy

eBay does not want people to do "off eBay" transactions and therefore they want all communications via eBay messages.  They have bots that check messages and if anything contains @ it does not get sent.  So, yes I do not think that eBay could have made it any clearer that email addresses are not permitted.

[thesoulyearns]

Gosh, how terrible, what is the world coming to, that sellers on a trading forum might get a lot of messages containing offers from buyers wanting to buy their goods  ;\ 

I understand your point, re: being grateful for the interest in the item. Sellers want to sell at the end of the day. The thing is, if a seller has blocks in place where they don't want to sell to a seller from X or Y country... then that's all there is to it. That should be respected. Of course, there's no harm in a buyer enquiring about international postage but it's not a rule that a seller must accept every single offer from every person just to get a sale.

A person from italy bid on an item recently that I specified Post To: Australia. No International Postage. I cancelled their bid and blocked them.

Sure, money is great from potential buyers who are interested... but you have to respect the seller's wishes if they choose to do... or not do... something. It's both a buyer's AND seller's market. Not just a buyer's.

[thecatspjs]

eBay does not want people to do "off eBay" transactions and therefore they want all communications via eBay messages.  They have bots that check messages and if anything contains @ it does not get sent.  So, yes I do not think that eBay could have made it any clearer that email addresses are not permitted.

That removal of @ relates to the protection of peoples privacy by removing the @ - it is an ebay commitment to us that they will not provide your personal email address.

I understand that, but where is the policy that Patchoo posted about that says you can not send your email address in messages in any format?

[lyndal1838]

Policy or not, it is a cold hard fact that messages do not go through if there is an email address in it.

Most of us have just learned to live with it...why buck the system just for the sake of it?

[thecatspjs]

I am not "bucking" the system.

Patchoo accused me of circumventing ebay policy

[patchoo78]

The point is.. The seller for whatever reason, obviously doesn't want to be contacted,