I’ve sold my fair share of items on eBay and the feedback game never gets old. Personally I think the feedback system is worthless and here’s why. Say you buy an item from somebody, pay instantly, and overall do everything a good buyer needs to do. Basically you have gone through the motions and now you are waiting for your precious feedback. Well, the item shows up not as described or damaged. Yes, you got screwed. So, what do you do? Leave a negative? Try to work it out? None of the above?

It’s a well known fact that most people will do anything to avoid a fight. Most eBayers would rather eat the loss than have to confront the seller. Leaving a negative feedback doesn’t always have the right effect. Plus, there’s no stopping the seller from leaving YOU a negative in return just to “teach you a lesson”. That’s called holding somebody’s feedback hostage. There are some sellers who won’t even leave ANY feedback until you first leave feedback for them. This is not only ridiculous, but, very unfair. As the buyer, once you have paid for the item your part is over. If you paid quickly and provided the seller with a legitimate physical shipping address, you deserve a positive feedback. Most sellers are scared of negative feedback so they would rather force you to either leave nothing, or leave a positive just so you can get a positive in return and in turn avoid a possible negative that wouldn’t even be your fault.

As you can see this is something I am just a little bit passionate about. Sure I like eBay. Sure I think that no other auction service comes close to eBay, BUT, there are things such as the feedback system that really get to me. In the end, the people with high amounts of positive feedback are most likely safe to use, but, even the really good looking sellers can end up being “not as described”. I bought a $600 item on eBay a few years ago only to find out that the seller had actually had his account hacked (most likely after falling victem to a physhing scam) and the person I had just paid was actually in Cuba. Ooops. Needless to say, the 100% and 1,000+ positive feedback that he had didn’t do a whole lot of good. Within a month he had hundreds of negatives.

There is no way to trust the eBay feedback system 100%. If you are going to purchase an expensive item off of eBay, you should be willing to take a loss if it turns out too good to be true. You have to decide if saving a few bucks is worth risking most of the full price. I only use eBay for hard to find items now. Otherwise I’d rather go with a sure deal and not have to deal with all of the hassle that can come up unexpectedly with an eBay transaction.