It may seem rather odd that there is a section on Feedback, but it is a significant part of the online auction community. People want to deal with honest merchants and feedback is how to determine who is trustworthy. Positive feedback means more people will trust you while an excessive amount of negative feedback means fewer people will be willing to purchase from you. There are several ways to build a positive feedback record. This can range from asking for positive feedback to offering guarantees on your products.

How customers will deal with you really does depend on how you've dealt with others in the past and that is directly reflected in your feedback score.

Feedback is an extremely important tool for both auction buyers and sellers. eBay allows you to leave feedback about the other member of the transaction after your auction is completed. Feedback can be positive, negative or neutral. Good feedback influences people to place their trust in you while bad feedback will cause them to mistrust your intentions. Don’t get fooled into thinking that feedback doesn’t matter. It does. It even controls what types of auctions you will be allowed to conduct.

You will only be permitted to conduct Dutch auctions when you have a positive feedback rating of ten or more. eBay has a number of different feedback levels. Once you have achieved these different levels the icon next to your name will change. This will let everyone know how much you sell and how good your customer service is. The more you sell and the better your feedback rating the more you can expect to sell in the future.

It’s difficult to judge someone’s character in the anonymous atmosphere of the Internet. Instead of face-to-face contact, you have feedback. The better your rating the more potential customers will trust you. Whereas the more negative feedback you have the less people will trust you and your business practices.

Don’t worry if you happen to get a negative comment or two. Nearly every eBay seller has a scuff or two on their record. You can’t satisfy every customer no matter how hard you try. The cumulative feedback number is a lifetime number and one or two smudges should be expected.

You can expect to have to ask for feedback. Most people either won’t think about leaving feedback or just won’t bother to do it without being asked. Your best bet is to offer to leave positive feedback for timely payment and ask them to give you positive feedback once the item has been received. You may even decide to follow up after you have mailed them their merchandise. In most cases the customer will be more than happy to oblige and will leave a glowing response.

eBay notes whether your feedback came from buying or selling. However, they all count toward your cumulative total. You can build your positive feedback up quickly by purchasing a lot of small, inexpensive items before you get too involved in selling. When you do this you can send an e-mail to the seller asking them to leave positive feedback for prompt payment. Let them know you will reciprocate once you receive your item. In this way you can raise your feedback rating very quickly allowing you access to everything eBay has to offer.

This may seem rather trite but it is always important to leave a good impression no matter how difficult a customer may be. Leave positive feedback. Offer to assist your customer in any way possible. All this will go a long way toward helping people feel comfortable with you as a merchant. The goal is to help people want to help you. It’s always better to refund money or replace an item than leave a bad impression. Negative word of mouth travels a lot faster and farther than good advertising and can only cause you to lose customers.

Even though you want to leave a good impression don’t allow people to take advantage of you. Sometimes a customer isn’t going to be satisfied. In these cases it is best to cut your losses. Offer a refund if necessary, then walk away from the transaction. There is nothing you can do except learn from the situation and move on.

One of the best ways to avoid problems is to offer a 30-day guarantee. This may sound expensive since most people are bidding on used merchandise or on something that may have cost them all of five dollars, but this is a good business practice that can potentially translate into additional revenue. Often people will feel they were cheated or that the product was misrepresented. In those situations you can ward off negative feedback by offering to refund the customers money or exchanging the product within the first 30 days. Good customer relations sometimes cost money. Offering a guarantee costs money. However, making a customer happy is invaluable. Positive word of mouth advertising costs you nothing and will create more sales for you.