I have been an active member of the eBay community since April 2001 and I have seen the good, the bad, and the down right ugly. I have been both a buyer and seller in great transactions and really bad transactions and I wanted to share some of what I have learned along the way.
First of all do not take feedback at face value, let me tell you why. eBay decided long ago that it did not want to police the community as it was growing so fast they could not keep up with the growth, enter stage left ~ feedback forum ~ this forum has one purpose, to keep each other honest, do you see a problem with this? I sure do.
So my own story goes like this: I just started selling and was doing it to make a few dollars on left over yard sale things I had lying around, my sister said get a PayPal account so more people will bid, so I did that but I only opened a basic account, that meant I could only take cash, no credit cards. Remember I was only making a dollar or two so I had no extra $$ to give to PayPal. I have my auction going and I have clearly stated in the auction that PayPal can be used but only for cash transaction, no credit. Now I have a buyer and he sends me a credit card payment through PayPal, I reject the payment and contact the buyer and he gets mad at me because he has an unlimited amount of credit on that line and why is his money no good…. So after he sent the credit card payment again and I had to reject the payment again he got really mad and left me bad feedback.

After many years eBay has listened to the sellers and they did make changes to the old feedback policy and it does help some, but please keep in mind that feedback is not always what it looks like both good and bad. Take a minute and really look at what is said in the comment section, if you have nothing but generic feedback by low rated buyers and sellers chances are the feedback rating is false and should not be trusted at face value. Take care as a buyer to say specific praise if the seller was really good, and if you are a seller make a point to be specific if your buyer did a good job in the transaction. Remember that feedback is our only way to check in on a buyer or seller so do your part to leave correct and accurate feedback about each and every transaction.

Have a great eBay day