Interesting — it appears that eBay filters the email addresses that people use in their registrations, and somehow decides which it will allow and which it won’t.

For the past three or four weeks, I’ve been dutifully going through all my website registrations and changing the email addresses associated with them to new ones, all at the domain MASSHOLE.US (which I registered a few months ago). I generally haven’t had a problem; sites from Amazon to TypePad have accepted the new email addresses without issue, and the wholesale change has let me make a few changes to my email system that has decreased the amount of spam in my inbox. But eBay has not been as accepting; each time, I get an email to the old inbox saying that I submitted a change request and telling me to expect an email in the inbox of the new address which contains a confirmation code, but I never ever receive that promised confirmation email.

The first two times I tried the change, I figured that their system was just temporarily broken, and that I would be able to try again at some later time without problem. When it didn’t work a third time, I contacted their customer service via email (using the support pages that they provide), but a week later had not received any reply whatsoever. I then tried to make the email address change a fourth time, failed to get the promised confirmation email, and tried contacting their customer service again, but similarly never got a reply. That kind of rookie behavior pissed me off a bit, but I assumed that I’d eventually get some kind of response. Alas, tonight made two weeks of complete eBay silence.

On a lark, I just decideded to try to change my email address to one on my normal domain, QUESO.COM — and lo and behold, the confirmation email arrived instantly! I then tried again to use the MASSHOLE.US address, and still haven’t received any confirmation email. I can only assume that the difference in the two behaviors is rooted in the fact that MASSHOLE.US contains an objectionable word… but the fact that their system fails silently in its rejection, leaving me completely in the dark as to whether this is actually the case, is unbelievably frustrating. Of course, in the end, I don’t know which is worse: the way that the system is set up, or the nonexistent customer service that exists to support that system.