Auction 411

The most important aspect of an eBay business is developing trust with your customers, so that they can help build your brand through word of mouth advertising and also to ensure they come back to purchase more items from you. One of the easiest ways to build trust is to show that others trust you and that is how eBay maintains such a healthy marketplace.

Before you can ever set up your eBay Store, you’ll want to build some Positive Feedback for your account — this is almost standard practice and advice for anyone just starting out on eBay. It’s going to cost you a little bit, but the easiest and fastest way to get positive feeback is to buy stuff from trusted eBay members who have lots of feedback. You might recall us telling you that it’s best to keep your Buyer and Seller accounts separate; well that rule still applies. However, just think of these purchases as leverage-building tactics.

Once you’ve received 10 positive feedback ratings, you’ll receive your first eBay star, and at that point you should start selling (and don’t make anymore purchases with your Seller account). Make some small Buy-It-Now purchases so you don’t have to wait until the auction ends, and leave positive feedback for the Seller. You can’t force your future buyers into leaving you positive feedback, but if you ask them nicely after leaving positive feedback, they may or may not do so, but it’s up to you if you want to ask them.

Now there’s a debate on eBay as to when you leave feedback for the buyer. It’s your choice if you want to leave feedback immediately or if you decide to wait until you receive positive feedback (after you sell an item). Here are a few ways to contemplate each situation:

1. Leaving Feedback Immediately After You’re Paid

Some sellers follow this rule as standard practice to encourage other buyers to buy from them — it’s just good business. You won’t leave the buyer wondering if you’re going to leave them feedback or not.

2. Leaving Feedback Only After the Buyer Leaves Feedback

Does this sound petty? Well imagine leaving the buyer positive feedback 10 minutes after receiving their payment, and the bidder subsequently fails to contact you regarding a problem, and leaves you neutral or negative feedback. Had you waited to leave them feedback, they may have thought twice about leaving the comment and possibly contacted you privately first. You cannot rescind your positive feedback, nor delete the negative feedback you’ve received. The buyer has just tarnished your beautifully perfect 100% rating.

Should you have used the feedback as leverage? Some say yes, that you should wait to leave feedback. But the problem is that if an issue does arise, then at what point do you leave the feedback, positive or negative? If you wait to resolve the problem and leave them feedback after it’s been resolved, they still have an opportunity to leave negative feedback, or the fact that you’ve waited to leave them feedback could leave a bad taste in their mouth, leaving you no opportunity to win back their business. This decision is really your call.

3. Leaving Feedback On a Schedule

If you get to a point where you are selling a lot of merchandise, pick one day out of the week or the month to leave feedback all at once. This can resolve the “first-or-last” issue mentioned above. Just make sure that the customers understand this is part of your policy, so they are not offended if they don’t see the feedback right away.

Regardless of when you leave feedback, remember to always be professional.

Tip: Leave the package tracking information in the feedback comment itself. Making the tracking information public shows everyone that the item was shipped.

So how do you handle negative feedback? First, you want to avoid receiving negative feedback from buyers. Always be professional, and don’t leave negative feedback first. This will almost guarantee you will receive negative feedback in return. Even if the bidder doesn’t send payment for the closed auction, you can file a non-paying bidder claim instead of leaving negative feedback. What if you don’t receive payment and the person was in the hospital visiting their dying grandmother, only to come home 3 days later to negative feedback? You will be blasted for that one. Submit your claim to eBay, do not take out your frustrations on the bidder. Leaving negative feedback is always a risk of receiving negative feedback — always.

If you actually do receive negative feedback and you feel it was unjustified, you can respond to it by going to your member profile page and click on the Reply to Feedback Received link. Your negative feedback won’t be removed, but you’ll be able to speak in your own defense to your potential buyers who are viewing your feedback.

If you absolutely feel the negative feedback was unjust and should rightfully be removed, you can submit a request to eBay and press your luck. Just remember that it is not standard practice for them to remove negative feedback.

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