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Help: Email Notifications

  1. Prevent Email Notifications Being Deleted as Spam
  2. The Importance of Speedy Receipt of Emails
  3. Test Your Speed of Receipt of Emails
  4. Ensuring Speedy Receipt of Emails
  5. Noticing New Search Notification Emails in Your Inbox
  6. The Contents of the Email Notifications

Prevent Email Notifications Being Deleted as Spam

Whilst we attempt to ensure that our notification emails have a good reputation for not being spam we cannot control every eventuality.

Please recognise that searches that bring results containing words that are common to spam emails may cause deliverability problems (please note our Terms and Conditions). For example you may wish to not use our system to alert you to eBay items for medicines that are commonly advertised in spam emails.

You may wish to add the email address that we send search result notifications from to your email client's address book or sender whitelist.

The Importance Quickly Noticing Email Notifications

The purpose of the Buy Now Search system is to quickly alert you to new fixed price items on eBay. There are two factors to being alerted:

  1. Receiving emails promptly into the inbox of your email software.
  2. Becoming aware of Buy Now Search emails in your inbox.

Test Your Speed of Receipt of Emails

To test how quickly emails get to you, send an email to the email address that you are using for your Buy Now Search account. Send it from an entirely separate account - i.e. from a different domain that is run by a different provider (e.g. from gmail.com if your account is with hotmail.com).

Note how long it takes for the email to appear in your inbox (without 'helping' it by forcing 'receives' or 'syncs').

Repeat this process a few times in order to get an idea of the average amount of time taken to receive an email.

You may wish to use a different email provider or email client (the software that you are using to access your emails) if you do not receive emails promptly on your existing account.

Ensuring Speedy Receipt of Emails

If you are using the POP3 or IMAP protocol to access your email, set your email client (the software that you are using to access your emails), to regularly 'poll' (attempt to receive new emails) your incoming mail server. Perhaps set it to a polling interval of one minute.

Some email providers won't let you check your email too often - they may limit you to checking every ten minutes for example.

If necessary, get a new email provider.

Noticing New Search Notification Emails in Your Inbox

Some email clients (the software that you are using to access your emails) are able to alert you of new emails by sound.

Some email clients allow you to set rules which trigger alerts. For example a rule which looks for incoming emails with [bnsearch] in the subject could be used to trigger a visual or sound alert.

Alternatively you may be able to find a tool that checks your mailbox for new mails and notifies you of them.

If you cannot differentiate between Buy Now Search emails and your other incoming emails, you may wish to use a different email address for Buy Now Search and possibly a different email client to receive them on.

The Contents of the Email Notifications

Buy Now Search is not responsible for the content of the email notifications (see Terms and Conditions) - which are dependent upon the nature of your searches and the nature of items listed on eBay.

You will receive one email per search/item combination. So, if you have two searches that 'find' the same item then you will receive two emails notifying you of that item - one for each search.

The subject of the email will begin with [bnsearch] and continue with the title of the found eBay item.

If the item has been listed with an image, then that image will be displayed in the email. Then further information will be presented and finally the search that brought this result is referenced.

The link to edit the search is helpful in order for you to refine your search further to prevent false alarms.