I would imagine that most people have experience on eBay – if they’ve ever been on the internet. eBay is seen by many as a great opportunity to make a living from home, as long as you can find the right products at the right price to resell. My wife is a Powerseller on eBay, and it’s anything but easy. It’s work. But she enjoys it, and makes a great sideline income from it.

Those of you who are sellers on eBay, what do you think of the feedback system?

It seems that no matter how careful you are, and no matter how good the customer service you provide is, sooner or later some idiot is going to leave you negative feedback. Personally, I’ve dealt with a few people who probably deserved a negative, but I’m slow to leave a negative because of the permanence of a negative comment. You see, if you leave a seller or a buyer negative feedback, it hurts their feedback rating…..permanently. On eBay, the feedback rating you have is your reputation. With this knowledge, there are some buyers who will use this to try and bully you into doing anything they want. They will hint around that they’ll leave negative feedback if they aren’t 100% satisfied (this usually comes with the feeling that they are gonna be extremely hard to satisfy).

Do buyers really look at that feedback rating seriously?

You better believe they do. On a number of occasions, I’ve decided not to bid on items due to the seller’s feedback rating. On the other hand, if a seller has a couple of negatives out of a huge number of positives, they’re probably very good to do business with. If you actually go to their feedback page and read through it, many times those who left a negative are obviously in the wrong. What prompted this post, was a negative my wife received back four or five months ago. At the time, she had built her feedback rating up over 1200 transactions, with 100% positive feedback. After receiving the item, a buyer decided they didn’t want the product after all. They were offered a refund. Because she wouldn’t refund their money + the shipping charges paid sending the product to them, they left a negative.

Since that time, she’s come in contact with, what’s the best way to say it, other buyers who were unreasonable. To date, she still only has the one negative in her career on eBay, despite this. I was thinking about a few traits that seem to be common among eBay buyers who are quick to leave negative feedback and/or be unreasonable:

• They usually have a fairly new eBay id. This makes you wonder if they are really new, or they had to start over due to their past on eBay. If they are new, they really should learn how the system works before bidding.
• If you look at their “feedback left for others“, they leave negative feedback on a regular basis. I know we’ve dealt with a few people we thought were going to be a problem. When we looked at what type of feedback they left others, that didn’t help our feelings in most cases.
• They are usually slow to pay when the auction ends. It’s a bad sign when you’re paid through Paypal a week after the end of the auction. That’s usually the buyers who start sending emails wanting to know when the package was shipped and how quick they can expect it.
• They are usually the ones who will not answer emails at the end of the auction. Then all of a sudden they are unreasonable.

So my little piece of advice is this – if you can’t be reasonable, you’re better off not using eBay. The eBay community will be better off without you as well. If a buyer or a seller deserves negative feedback, by all means leave it for them. Let others know that this person wasn’t that great to deal with. However, understand that you are doing PERMANENT damage to their reputation. Once you leave it, it can’t be undone……..so think twice before you do it.