________Buying Hints &  Understanding the Rating Numbers________

Don't look at ONLY the positive percent. It can be 99.5% but still be a bad seller
if the seller will refund the buyers money IF they remove the negative feedback.
Look for the "Rating Mutually Withdrawn" number. Some sellers have a 98 or 99
percent positive but also have a high "mutually withdrawn" number because the
seller puts negative feedback against the buyer as a way to make themselves
look innocent and to force the buyer to remove their feedback so the buyer won't
 have negative feedback. Also , many buyers won't put negative feedback for fear
 of the seller putting negative feedback. And "mutually withdrawn" doesn't show
 when it happened. Some sellers have over 500 "mutually withdrawn" out of
several thousand sales ! Beware of sellers like that !

Check the recent 1 month and 6 month negative feedback. The seller can have
 a 99 percent rating from the past but be doing terrible business now. Since it
rating is an average it won't show up if they have had 50 negative in the past month
if they have had a high number of positive numbers in the past. For example, if the
 seller has 50 negative this month but 5000 positive in the past it will still show a
 99 percent rating.

Some sellers also try to look innocent in the comments. I recently had a seller
send me the wrong item twice. I tried to contact the seller over 20 times with
email, phone calls, "contact seller" on Ebay, and even left messages on Paypal
 dispute that they didn't answer after several weeks. Paypal sided with me to have
 my money refunded, but the seller then left a message saying :
"You never contacted me. Please call !"
 AFTER the 3 weeks of calls, email, etc being IGNORED. So it looked like the
seller was innocent! After the seller FINALLY responded, being ordered by Paypal
 they tried to tell me I never contacted them! Then said they had  to fire an employee
 for deleting all the emails without reading them! That still didn't explain the lack of
returned phone calls!

I also had to pay for shipping the wrong item but Paypal doesn't allow you to ask
 for more that the purchase price. I doesn't matter that the seller promised to refund
the shipping to me before. Then the seller said they would ONLY refund the money
 IF I removed the negative feedback! Then they said they were VERY HONEST.
 I Don't consider BLACKMAIL HONEST ! I contacted EBay about the message and
 they ignored it and said the selling price had been refunded. It didn't matter to them
 that the extra shipping was almost EQUAL to the purchase price. So I had to remove
 the feedback if I wanted my money back !

Watch out for low selling price but high shipping price. Ebay says this isn't tolerated but
 nobody seems to be stopping it. Like $20 cell phones with $39.95 UPS ground shipping,
 laptops with $39 to $79 even $99 shipping for UPS ground ! Ipods with $39 shipping UPS
 ground. Use the sort  "price + shipping". But many sellers intentionally  show "contact seller"
 in the shipping price so the shipping price looks like it's FREE but when you read the
listing page for shipping it says $20 to $39 for shipping or MORE !

________Remember:__________


Look out  for  high "mutually withdrawn feedback" numbers.

Check the recent 1 and 6 month negative feedback numbers compared to total business
 for the 1 or 6 month period.

Look at all the recent feedback. If many of the negative feedback buyers are saying the
same thing then beware of the seller.

Use search for text on the page to search for "fake", "lied", "bad seller" etc. to save
 time when reading the pages.

Select "view 200 comments at a time" on the bottom of the feedback page to save time
 from having to keep clicking "next page" as often.

If you can find it, some programs will show negative feedback only just like the positive
 feedback only. But EBay doesn't like programs that do that even though it's only fair.

Watch out for sellers that have "private user" bids. Some sellers use this to drive up their
 own price by bidding under other user names or having other people doing it for them.

Check for reviews on other blogs of the seller.


Happy Bidding & be carefull !