PRIVATE FEEDBACK/PRIVATE AUCTIONS: If you can't see why they received a neg, why would you buy from them? As far as i'm concerned, for the most part, they have something to hide. IN GENERAL, SELLERS WITH PRIVATE FEEDBACK/AUCTIONS ARE SELLERS TO AVOID UNLESS YOU'VE DONE GREAT BUSINESS WITH THEM BEFORE AND/OR DONE TEDIOUS WORK TO CONTACT/VERIFY/CONFIRM THEM AS AN EXCELLENT SELLER UNDER THE SECTION UNDER "VERIFYING THAT SELLER WHEN EBAY WON'T."
It's becoming a trend now that scammers use Private Auctions to stop ebayers from checking whether they are shilling their auctions, have shill feedback, whether they have hijacked accounts, etc., basically stops other ebayers from emailing & warning & discussing the scam seller's past & present bidders about what their transactions with the scam seller were/are like and that the scam seller is more than likely a fraud.
Yeah, a seller may have a legitimate reason for having private feedback:
CLICK HERE FOR 1ST SERIOUS ILLUSTRATION OF PRIVATE AUCTIONS
0CLICK HERE FOR 2ND SERIOUS ILLUSTRATION OF PRIVATE AUCTIONS
PREAPPROVAL: In the past and still today, preapproval auctions were and still are used by sellers to measure if a buyer was serious about bidding (especially for expensive items) and not just a flaky bidder wasting their time and ebay listings fees. The bidder was required to email the seller for approval to bid. Upon seller approval, the bidder was then allowed to bid on the seller's auctions.
In addition to Private Auctions/Private Bidding, you'll see this in COMBINATION WITH PREAPPROVAL AUCTIONS THAT SCAMMERS LIST. It's becoming a trend now that scammers use Preapproval Auctions to instantly email the bidder to do business OUTSIDE of ebay for the purpose of scamming the bidder into using money wire transfer, money acct deposit transfer or fake escrow sites to instantly pay the SCAM "seller." Making the format "Preapproval," basically "hidden" from ebay's monitoring, helps the scammer so he can continue to use his stolen-CC-registered-ebay-I.D. or hijacked account I.D. It's also used by scammers to stop Vigilante Bidders from bidding on their auctions. Vigilante Bidders are buyers who have been ripped off by scammers and bid unrealistically high amounts to warn other bidders NOT to bid and to mess up the scammers' auctions.
IN GENERAL, SELLERS WITH PREAPPROVAL AUCTIONS ARE SELLERS TO AVOID UNLESS YOU'VE DONE GREAT BUSINESS WITH THEM BEFORE AND/OR DONE TEDIOUS WORK TO CONTACT/VERIFY/CONFIRM THEM AS AN EXCELLENT SELLER UNDER THE SECTION "VERIFYING THAT SELLER WHEN EBAY WON'T." .
1. CHECK CURRENT AUCTIONS: Always check ALL of the seller's current auctions that he's been running for the past month before, during, and since your auction. Go to SEARCH at the top of ebay and click BY SELLER and type his name in and include all auctions including completed auctions. Click at PRICE to organize his items with highest prices first. Look at what types of things he's sold or is selling and the price and the NUMBER of auctions he's running. If I see too many expensive items over $50 like for Laptops, Computers, electronics, plasma tv's, Rare, Hard-to-Find, other EXPENSIVE items, etc. especially using BIN and/or (1-day or 3-day) auctions and there aren't any feedbacks yet from people for those auctions, I DON'T BID!! it's too scary. Remember, ebay PUTS NO LIMIT as to how many auctions a seller can run, so a scammer can run a whole bunch of auctions to scam people.
Here's an example of a 0 seller with i.d. created just recently (Remember, never bid on 0 sellers!) who had over 13 pages of CURRENT auctions who became NARU'd by ebay the same day or week. His auctions weren't necessarily expensive with $18 shirts, but he had ALOT of them!! The scammer could bait a lot of victims handing over $18 each and get away with a HUGE bunch of loot.
READ THE NEGS/NEUTRALS DETAILS: I don't bid on anyone below 98% positives and even then, I READ THOROUGHLY THROUGH ALL THE NEGATIVES AND NEUTRALS, then glance over all the positives and see if i can still deal with the seller.
Here's a URL and a software for checking negatives/neutrals:
http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs
Gutcheck is a free downloadable software made by an honest ebayer which you can use to check up negs/neutrals:
--0 FEEDBACK OR LOW FEEDBACK SELLERS: NEVER bid on sellers with 0 or only a few feedbacks since they don't have a long record built up. Also, it's too easy for scammers to get on ebay with 0 feedback and start "selling" and ripping people out of their money AND THIS HAPPENS OFTEN. Regular ebayers know better than to buy from 0 or low feedback sellers. (Many ebayers are very strict that they consider any ebayer that only has 3 years or less with 150 or less FB to be a "low feedback seller.") Assuming excellent feedback based on the VERY DETAILED criteria on my website, I treat feedback number on a sliding scale before I reach 200 feedbacks. Again, remember that my limits may be too low for you. Any scammer can sell/buy 1 cent FB to himself or from other FB scammers, so for them, 50 FB's will only cost them 50 cents!!!!! That's why you MUST LOOK AT WHAT TYPES OF ITEMS AND AT WHAT PRICES THE SELLER SOLD IN HIS PREVIOUS AUCTIONS.
This is a general outline of how I'd bid based on the
-READ POSITIVE FEEDBACK DETAILS: Make sure you read all the positives, too since buyers will list negative things in the positive feedback. I once posted positive feedback but commented on the feedback that the seller sold me a smoky stinking video. He got pissed off at me and wrote me a LOOOOONG Email (hehehehe). I said he should be glad I didn't give him a neg and my feedback will disappear from the 1st page with a page more of feedbacks.:-) Also, some pissed off impatient buyers ACCIDENTALLY click the positive button instead of the negative button, so DEFINITELY READ THRU ALL THE POSITIVES!!
High % Positive Feedbacks: In general, when you take tests, 70% or higher is passing. ON EBAY, ANYTHING LOWER THAN 98% positives means the seller is not a seller you want to do business with. NEVER BUY FROM ANY SELLER BELOW 98% positives. Too many ebayers think "as long as the seller has a high positive feedback rating like 90%, then it's o.k., right? after all, ebay would kick them out if they were bad sellers, right?" WRONG. Ebay won't kick off a seller unless he's at a -4 or a lot of buyers complain to ebay about him. ALWAYS REMEMBER, ALL SORTS OF BAD SELLERS ARE LISTED ALONGSIDE the decent sellers. In retail, you shop for the item. On ebay, when you shop, shop for the seller, not the item.
AVOID LOTS OF NEGS NO MATTER IF SELLER HAS EXCELLENT FEEDBACK: On the other end of the spectrum, if a seller has thousands of feedback and has 98%+ positive feedbacks AND SELLER HAS THOUSANDS OF NEGS, it's STILL a bad sign. A bad seller can keep padding or shilling his feedback in all those thousands of feedbacks. Therefore, AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE sellers with more than 999 negative feedbacks regardless of the number of positive feedback comments. Just because a seller has more positives than negatives should not be a consideration. Too many negs is too many negs.
LOTS OF RECENT NEGS BUT 98%+ POSITIVE FEEDBACK: The seller has 98% or more positive feedback, but lately in the past week or 2 weeks or sometime in the last 3 months suddenly has negative feedbacks? AVOID the seller like a plague. It could be a scammer HIJACKING an honest seller's account or a regular scam seller who has padded (shilled[created other user names to bid on his own stuff] and/or bidpadded with one cent cooking recipes) his feedback and suddenly decides to scam his buyers.
DON'T BE LULLED BY EXCELLENT FEEDBACK: People will tell you to check the feedback but coming from someone who's bought lots of stuff on ebay, even if someone has perfect feedback without negs or neutrals, you can still be taken. There are a whole range of ebayers out there from some who scam most of the time to some who scam only part of the time and then will "satisfy" the customer by "accepting returns" once a loud customer complains, but he'll scam everybody else who doesn't complain. Also, many buyers give excellent feedback even if a video or designer bag is a bootleg because they don't care if it's original or not and/or they may not have educated themselves as to what is allowed and not allowed on ebay.
DON'T BE LULLED BY EXCELLENT FEEDBACK GIVEN BY EXPERIENCED EBAYERS:
Also, I run into many scammed ebay bidders who say,
"Well, i looked at the feedback profile and many of the feedbackers had high numbers and so they should be experts, right? The many high feedback feedbackers, hence, EXPERIENCED ebayers, gave excellent feedback for this seller saying stuff like "would do biz again!!". That's why I bid."That's true or semi-true. Many ebayers with high feedback have more experience and can spot scams faster, but you have to look at the CONTEXT. If the transaction only involved a $10 or other cheap price item and he gave a positive feedback, he gave a positive feedback based on THAT SPECIFIC TRANSACTION, -- an ebayer can never guarantee the overall integrity of a seller on ebay, no matter how many times he's done business with them. I have done business with some sellers time and time again and will continue to do so, but I can only base it on MY experience of the type of items I've bought from him before. Think about ebay, especially how ebay will delete the transaction details of price and item details from the ebay database after a few months and it IS STILL HARD to know how a seller operates. In addition, you could be running into "Feedback Shilling" by other experienced ebayers who are friends of the seller. The seller I "trust" for certain items can just decide to leave ebay and fleece all his buyers the next day. So, just because an experienced ebayer who has high feedback leaves great feedback about transaction(s) with the seller, that is not the end of the story.
-NO NEGATIVE FEEDBACK DOESN'T NECESSARILY MEAN OK SELLER: A lot of buyers don't post negative feedback and so the feedback profile of the seller is not truly accurate, maybe because:
In my personal experience, I left negative feedback regarding a seller's overpriced shipping. The seller then left negative feedback in retaliation. When I went back and read the POSITIVE comments, I found that many of them were, in fact, negative - they'd just been rated positively, but they contained complaints. DON'T TRUST THE RATING!!! Read every bit of feedback first!!!
MOST PEOPLE ON EBAY ARE AFRAID TO LEAVE NEGATIVE FEEDBACK so just because you don't see a lot of negs doesn't mean he's o.k. I WILL ACTUALLY BUY FROM A SELLER WITH NEGS SINCE I KNOW THEY PROBABLY HAVEN'T TAMPERED WITH THEIR FEEDBACK BUT I'LL ONLY BUY FROM SELLERS WITH NEGS WHO HAVE NEGS FOR GOOD REASONS like they only accept certain payments (e.g. checks, money orders) and the bidder was just too dense to read the seller's tos on the auction ad.
Here's the profile of an unnamed seller whose ratings you would think are the greatest to have on ebay, 99.7% positives with over 900 feedbacks. However, 
here's what the feedbackers left as far as negatives/neutrals detail comments for him. THIS IS DEFINITELY A SELLER I WOULD NOT WANT TO DO BUSINESS WITH! Based on the comments, there's quite a few misrepresentation comments. In fact, the bidder as of May of this year 2004 mailed in over $300 and did not receive her item, even after waiting over 2 months and many emails with the seller. This goes to show that you MUST LOOK AT negs/neutrals even if the seller has a high feedback and even if she's over 98%+ positive.
First of all, before we talk about the scams with regards to feedback, let's go over the fact that you can only really know how good a seller is based on feedback from other BUYERS, not other sellers. So, a seller getting a lot of buyer feedbackers is WAY more important than getting a lot of seller feedbackers. We want to know HOW A SELLER SELLS to other ebayers, not how a seller buys from other ebayers. It's easy to rack up feedback just by buying up lots of 1 cent doodads. In the past, ebay didn't separate buyer feedbackers from seller feedbackers so you had to guess based on the comments of the feedbacker. Later, when there was more scamming from an ever growing scammer base, buyers complained and so ebay added that feature in. AVOID sellers whose auctions you can't compare in the last 1 to 3 months. Unless you're going to check/verify Contact Info, don't bid on these sellers' auctions.
This seller's ebay profile is a good example of a seller who only has 1 buyer feedbacker and the rest are seller feedbackers. (Part of the feedbackers' names and item#'s removed since this is only an example). As a bidder, this is not what you want to look at--this is not a "seller" you want to deal with. They don't have enough of a profile as a seller for you do business with them. Actually, the bidder that did business with this seller sent in nearly $100 for an item which he received damaged/misrepresented. So......it's important to have a looooong record of buyer feedbackers on the seller's ebay profile. The higher priced the item you're looking to bid on, the more buyer feedbackers you want to see.
NO OLD AUCTIONS TO COMPARE WITH: On the same note, Scammers who are feedback padding or feedback shilling will take a "vacation" from selling for a while to let their old low dollar auctions get deleted from the ebay database. Then, they'll come back on and scam everybody.
Also, hijack account scam sellers will steal an honest ebayer's account(by hacking the ebayer's computer or email OR conning the ebayer to reveal their ebay password) and one of the only ways to tell automatically that the account is hijacked is by looking at the history of items the sellers sold before in the last few months to what he's selling now. The hijack account scam seller will start selling EXPENSIVE ITEMS like $1,000 laptop computers, $1000 plasma tv's, $1000 gamestations or other electronics or other expensive items/equipment because the hijack scam seller wants to take in as much $$$'s as possible!! OR the hijack scam seller may put out 10 to 100 or more pages of items selling non-existent beanie babies(since the ebayer they stole the account from dealt with selling beanie babies in the past). Either way, by either selling expensive $$ items or selling MANY PAGES of small $ items, this can be easily seen by looking over past auctions and comparing them with present auctions if the scam acct hijacker is taking any of these 2 approaches.
abbreviations for many ebay terms
Updates page-contains any major updates after 6/8/04
