I've just noticed that negative and neutral feedback can't be given to buyers by sellers. I don't understand how that can be a good thing - what am I missing?
I believe that e-bay were worried about buyers not leaving negative feedback for fear of negative feedback from the seller.
when i first started buying on e-bay, i got feedback once i paid for the item (normally immediately after the item had ended), now i get feedback from most sellers once i have left feedback.
Now i can leave negative feedback and not worry about the seller doing the same. I think the seller can still reply / post a comment on any negative feedback left by buyers.
Thanks for explaining Brendan. As a seller, I leave feedback after I've posted the item. I was wanting to leave neutral feedback for the seller as they took ages to pay and I had to remind them a few times. Seems a bit unfair that I can either leave positive feedback which doesn't really reflect the transaction or I can leave no feedback and will probably get no feedback as a result! Seems a bit daft in all honesty.
I agree Monty..... I plan to start selling items on e-bay soon and obviously would like to be able to see comments about potential buyers who may have dodgy history with payment.
Well exactly, you can't choose your buyers so if you get a buyer who is a non-payer or there is some other gripe, you can't leave negative/neutral feedback to let others know. This was the point of feedback - to let buyers and sellers know if they were buying from or selling to someone who had a good reputation.
In my experience, dodgy buyers simply create new eBay ids to hide their bad feedback - so it is not helpful to sellers in any way.
I always kept my buying and selling accounts seperate - firstly to stop people seeing how much I paid for goods I bought through eBay to sell for a profit and secondly so that I could leave honest feedback on my buyers' accounts without jeopardising the feedback on my sellers' accounts.
Feedback is meaningless for purely buying accounts - it is sellers feedback that is important. Whenever a seller sent a message along the lines of 'leave positive feedback for me and I'll do the same for you' - I never ever left feedback unless they asked again. Then I left a negative with the comment 'nags for feedback'.