While many eBayers are acutely aware of the recently announced fee hike—thinly disguised as an "insertion fee decrease"—few may have noticed another change that's likely to have a far greater impact on both buyers and sellers.

For years, eBay's feedback system has been the foundation of trust at the world's largest garage sale. Buyers can publicly praise or condemn sellers based on the service they receive, and in turn, sellers can do the same. These ratings then serve as guidelines for future trading partners. But starting in May, 2008, sellers can no longer leave negative feedback about buyers under any circumstances, leaving their own reputations—and more, as it turns out—subject to the whims of newly emboldened bidders.

The change will certainly be a hit with buyers, who for the first time can post negative feedback for the worst sellers without fear of retaliation. eBay will no longer be a safe haven for sellers who charge $18.99 to ship a 35-cent item, hucksters who sell broken cameras described as "like new," or hoodlums who just take your money and run.
more.. link to news article

I too am against such practices. The fact that it happens all the time, however, is a good reason to stay off eBay permanently.

alphaleap wrote (View Post): › Each negative feedback can always be countered by buying yourself 20-30 positives http://www.alphaleap.com/articles.php?action=viewarticle&articleID=3 And, when the chargebacks from fraudulent buyers start eating away at your profits, you can start checking charge back reports for each buyer and reporting them to http://www.chargebackreports.com prior to shipping.

I just want to point out that PSU is against people buying feedback.

Great Point! I wasn't aware of this site before and it looks like they could use more service providers.

I also left eBay. With a total revenue of $400,000+ in 2005, I think it'd surprise many to know that a lot of sellers on eBay are not making a profit - regardless of revenue.

I'm going to give http://www.guru.com a try. I've started a new successful business using GAF and RAC and always looking for other places to promote my services.

If you're looking for a Unix system's administrator, Ecommerce specialist, or interested in building a new community using Boonex Dolphin or forum, send me a private message with the details of your project. From Perl, PHP, C and Bash, I can also provide programming work for other projects including data mining, crawlers, indexers.

Many jobs recently acquired include taking suppliers' product lists (in any format) and creating automation tools to import 100's of thousands of products with remote images in just a few minutes for osCommerce and Joomla compatibility. The process of automation can save literally months of work for a fraction of the cost.

James Berry

Leaving ebay and pay pal are the ONLY options. Why waste time there with all that?

I have another business that has tripled since leaving ebay. This is not my company, but I am a Professional on here and do quite well.

check out www.guru.com

It's not an auction site but if you have any kind of skill or talent you can bid on projects that will help support you until you find your new auction site!

Or, perhaps the best advise I can give anyone - Leave eBay all together.

Each negative feedback can always be countered by buying yourself 20-30 positives http://www.alphaleap.com/articles.php?action=viewarticle&articleID=3

And, when the chargebacks from fraudulent buyers start eating away at your profits, you can start checking charge back reports for each buyer and reporting them to http://www.chargebackreports.com prior to shipping.

Here is a few more tips (from selling on Amazon which has a very similar type of feedback system)

1) Make sure you can use some type of mental telepathy to teleport yourself into the buyers mind and make sure your description matches what they see in their mind

2) Scrap shipping via any type of service, hop in your car and physically drive to the buyers home and hand deliver the item (only works if buyer is in the same country as you.. for international sales just hop the next flight out!!)

3) When it comes to shipping ONLY charge exactly what the shipper charges (IE: Post office, UPS, Fed Ex charges) Heaven forbid you add in the cost of bubble envelopes, boxes, shipping labels, printer ink or laser toner, your time standing in line to ship it out, the cost to transport the item to the shipper, for some big sellers the cost of hiring someone just to sit and answer email after email of stupid common sense shipping questions.

4) Make sure to offer a 100% No Cost refund policy to all buyers who are unhappy for any reason.. Make sure that when they are not happy for any reason you send them $$$ to return the item back to you, and when it arrives make sure to include the original cost of shipping with the full refund you offer them

5) Let them know you will kiss their A$$ at no matter what cost to insure they have a pleasant transaction and don't leave you negative feedback.

All this aside even the above would not guarantee negative feedback, buyers who do not face the risk of getting negative feedback will be quick to post negative feedback for ANY reason they see fit, sellers fault or not.. On Amazon I've received negative feedback for some of the most ignorant reasons... a few that stand out are a buyer who placed an order, then had his mail forwarded from the shipping address to another address in a different state/town... the item was delivered in 8 days and he left negative feedback that he received a slow delivery of his merchandise....
Another lady left me negative feedback because she bought a DVD and thought the movie stunk, another bought an item imported from Germany and left negative feedback because there was German text on the packaging, another bought an item to be shipped to Italy, when it had not arrived 7 days after she purchased she left negative feedback.....

Had the buyers known they could receive negative feedback that would bring their ratings down all of these probably could have been avoided.. when contacting these buyers everyone of them have ignored my requests to remove the negative feedback (your supposed to contact them through Amazon links as Amazon now makes it next to impossible now for you to get the buyers email address)

Feedback was intended to keep buyers and sellers on a level playing field.. If a buyer has been a headache for other sellers in the past I want to know so I can refuse to sell to him/her, not be forced to sell and then get bashed in the end with negative feedback because the buyer has unrealistic expectations.....

Ebay is ruining themselves I just wish someone else would step up to the plate and bring us a service to take their place... but I don't think it's going to happen until Ebay finally goes under

My2Cents

I love this...my only neg is from this winner: stout5771. She said her 7 year old daughter placed the bid, but if you look at her feedback left, she has left several stating "my daughter loves the ring"....they are all size 8 rings! Really fat 7 year old, I guess. She then stated that she doesn't have Paypal, so I was stupid enough to allow her to send a money order, which she never sent.

I checked the auctions she has listed, and everyone has a Paypal logo in it, HOWEVER, she writes in at the bottom "checks and money orders only - no Paypal".

Now, this puts her in the searches for sellers that accept Paypal, and she's even negged one buyer for not seeing her typed in info. Ebay refuses to remove her listings, because it is boycott week! WTF????

This looks like a site to watch. http://www.ebuyer-feedback.com/

Square trade no longer has the authority to negotiate anythine BUT mutual withdrawal, so don't waste your time or your money!