“Hallo, heb artikel van U via e-bay aangekocht, graag rekening nummer waarop ik de storting kan doen, alsook het Bic nummer en Iban nummer Met vriendelijke groeten”

What do you do if you receive an email with such content? No, you can’t safely brush this off as a garbage or junk email because from your inbox it says:

The only thing that makes sense to me in this case is ‘Hallo’. But I do not want to ignore this message as this is from my potential customer and usually customers send a message when they have something to ask about the auctions.

I found out his email address is from .be, which means he is from Belgium. So, I went into a language translation site Babelfish to perform a translation. And select to translate from Dutch to English:

“Hello, by means of e-bay Article of you, gladly account have bought number on which I can discharge do, as well as bic number and Iban number with pleasant groeten”

I know it still sound a little off-beat; however, by this translation at least I can tell that the customer is trying to say:

“Hello, regarding the eBay item I bought from you, I’d appreciate if you can send me your payment account number (bic and ban? *shrug*) so that I can pay you. Regards, Groeten.”

After this, I go on to reply his email either in
1. Dutch (of course you type in English and translate it back to Dutch)
2. English and ask if it is okay to communicate through English.

Let me tell you a little secret, I used to list in eBay Germany too because I found that there is a huge potential over there. And if you look at eBay.de, people only list their items using German. In order to make my listings more comprehensive to the Germans, I used the Babelfish to translate some descriptions.

So, go on and explore further the world out there! You will be amazed with the outcome! Think about it!