SolveYourProblem
Article Series:
Small Business Guide To Buying Items:
eBay Auctions
How
Important is Your Buyer’s Reputation?
by Jeff Cohen
Your reputation as a buyer (or ‘feedback rating’)
is the most important thing people see when they deal with
you on eBay. It is on the basis of this little number that
they will decide whether they can trust you or not.
Each time you buy or sell something on eBay, people can leave
feedback for you, and you can leave feedback for them. This
feedback can be positive, negative, or neutral, along with
a comment. Your feedback rating, then, is worked out using
a very simple sum: the number of positive feedback comments
people have left for you, minus the number of negative ones.
This means that someone with a feedback rating of 28, for example,
might have 30 positive ratings and 2 negative ones.
If you are a considerate buyer, then you should find that
positive feedback will just appear next to your username, without
you needing to do anything. If you want to help it along, though,
there are a few things you can do.
Always
leave feedback for others: People will feel an obligation
to leave feedback for you if you leave it for them (eBay will
send you an email after each transaction to offer you the opportunity).
Take the time to write a positive comment about sellers who
do what they should and the chances are they’ll do the same
for you.
Pay
promptly: Sellers love nothing more than to be paid promptly
– paying as soon as the auction ends saves the seller all sorts
of worry, especially if you pay by credit card or another electronic
method. You will often find that your positive feedback appears
within a few minutes of you paying if you pay as soon as the
auction ends.
Don’t
be a difficult customer: Understand that your seller
might take a day or so to respond to you, and perhaps a few
days to send your item – harassing them is nasty and unnecessary,
and won’t get you good feedback.
Build
relationships: If a seller sells a lot of a certain
kind of thing you like, buy from them a few more times. They
will be very happy to find a regular customer, and will go
out of their way to leave positive feedback like ‘a joy to
deal with as ever’. Also, they might offer you a few special
deals!
Sellers won’t generally be reluctant to sell to buyers without
much of a reputation, simply because it is the buyer who takes
most of the risk in a transaction. It is worth remembering,
however, that transactions where you are the seller and where
you are the buyer are counted towards the same feedback total
– so if you ever want to start selling, being a good buyer
is especially worthwhile.
On
eBay, people pay far more attention to sellers’ ratings than
they do to buyers’ – most sellers can’t be bothered to
check their buyers’ feedback, while bad feedback on a seller
can (and should) be a dealbreaker. When you are buying, then,
you need to worry more about the seller’s reputation than you
do about your own. # # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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