Begin by setting up separate eBay Buyer and Seller accounts. I have an account setup for my wife that she uses to buy items, and an account setup that I use to sell items. Currently the only requirement for multiple accounts is that the email address for each account be different. You’ll use the eBay Buyer account to purchase items from others, and the eBay Seller account to sell / promote items from you business. By having separate accounts for each, you will be able to better protect you feedback ratings. For instance, we can easily assume that as we sell or promote items from our business, we intend to provide good value at a competitive price, as well as stand behind the products we offer. We would expect that a business that is operating in this manner will receive consistently good feedback from the customers we attract. If you’ve been doing business for several years, you could have hundreds of positive feedbacks fro customers you’ve done business with. Now let’s suppose that you purchase something from someone who isn’t an honest business person, or perhaps they are inexperienced and sloppy eBayers. You are within your rights to report the details of the transaction to eBay, and leave a Negative Feedback rating for the dishonest/sloppy business person (I usually give people the benefit of the doubt, making sure not to exceed the number of days that eBay allows before they refuse to get involved).
Generally what happens next is that they provide a Negative Feedback response in retaliation. What’s happened? With a single click of a Submit button, they’ve destroyed your hundreds of great feedback ratings with a retaliatory Negative rating. On your page instead of seeing 99.9% Positive, they can only see the NEGATIVE RATING (the bright red negative screams WARNING to everyone who visits your auctions) that has happened within the last year. Now people instantly ask themselves, “Is this guy trustworthy? Is he going to rip me off?” What’s worse is that this Negative Feedback stays visible for 1 year. Now you have people questioning your ability to do business honestly for a full year! Not a good thing!
By selling on one account and purchasing on another, you protect yourself from ruining your great feedback ratings. If something happens negatively on something you buy, by using your buyer eBay account only your buying feedback rating is affected. While people do look at your feedback as a buyer, a single incident is less likely to affect your buying capability, however, a single incident on your eBay seller account may turn away many buyers for many months to come as they look for competitors who have no Negative Ratings.
Look at the Feedback ratings below and think about which one gives you the warm and fuzzy you need before you would buy from them. As people look at your feedback ratings, they will get similar feelings about you.
I wouldn’t even look at the details of this guy. I’ll be looking somewhere else (maybe even Wal-Mart) before doing business with this many recent complaints.
Lots of transactions in the previous month with good feedback, but also some neutral. I’ll probably look to see what everyone is dissatisfied with and then make a decision. If I’m a buyer who doesn’t have time to look at the details of all of his transactions, in the words of The Eagles, “I’m already gone.”
This is more along the lines of acceptable. When people see these types of positive numbers over the last year, they assume the single negative entry is likely the fault of the buyer, not the seller. I'll probably bid here.
This is what everyone wants to see! Flawless. Unless this seller is unreasonable on their starting price, I’ll be bidding here!
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