I recently sold one of my import DS games on eBay. It was a game I preordered last year and it was released around the same time as the Wii launch date, so I ended up never opening it. I took a bit of a loss on it, but oh well.
I just now realized that the buyer who bought it has never ever left anybody any feedback at all for anything (even though he has 39+ feedback)! So it looks like yet another successful eBay sale where I won’t be getting feedback yet I know I deserve positive.
When it comes to feedback, it’s really more important that sellers get feedback than buyers (unless it’s negative for a buyer, so other sellers will be informed of a deadbeat bidder). That helps establish your selling credibility. So when buyers don’t leave me feedback, it makes me look like I haven’t been selling anything at all in the most recent months when I have.
Oh, and I have a few rules I go by for leaving feedback for other people. If I’m the buyer, I leave feedback for the seller as soon as I receive the item and have tested/inspected it. If I have any problems, I contact the seller to try to resolve them before leaving my feedback. Like one time, I ordered two camcorder batteries and only got one. Instead of leaving neutral/negative for the seller, I contacted them first, so that they could have a chance to still get positive feedback. Contact is the key to any good transaction. So another battery was sent to me. 🙂
I don’t expect sellers to leave any feedback for me until I’ve left one for them (as the buyer)… because, really, the buyer’s part of the transaction isn’t complete the moment you pay. It’s complete when you get your item and have had a chance to see if it’s as described.
When I’m the seller. I usually don’t leave feedback until after a buyer has left feedback for me. Luckily, I haven’t had any complaints from any of my buyers for anything I’ve sold (mostly my used stuff/games that I don’t want anymore). But I hold my feedback for them in case they need to contact me about anything after they get their item. If they just leave me a negative without even trying to contact me (which hasn’t happened at all, thankfully), I don’t think that’s fair when I would’ve tried to solve their problem. I haven’t left one neutral or negative feedback for anybody (buyer/seller) yet and I hope to keep it that way.
But I wish everybody would leave me some kind of feedback. It really doesn’t take long at all and I don’t know why people don’t do it sometimes.
I have an idea of how I can improve the feedback system. Not in the ways that eBay has been adding features too it, but my idea is much much better and will ensure that everybody leaves feedback and that there’s no such thing as retaliation. But I’ll keep my idea to myself for the day when I start up an auction site to compete against eBay. 😉