Ebay began allowing buyers to post seller rating confidentially. This is good. As I explained in another guide, if you leave honest feedback, you can get zapped.

Detailed seller ratings include:

• item as described: How accurate was the item description?
• communication:  How satisfied were you with the seller's communication?
• shipping time: How quickly did the seller ship the item?
• shipping and handling charges: How reasonable were the shipping and handling charges?

One small problem with the DETAILED SELLER RATINGS.. is that a three rating..often means AS EXPECTED or neutral. But there is nothing to explain that.

The way it appears, to me, without a detailed rating explanation anything lower than a five star means shipping is not reasonable.

A one means very unreasonable. A two is unreasonable. If you think shipping was neither reasonable nor unreasonable (i.e. you are neutral), you would give a three. You would only give a four on shipping if perhaps lower than expected (reasonable) and a five for free shipping or very reasonable.



Communication:  Three star means communication neither satisfied nor unsatisfied.

Item description:  Three star means description neither accurate nor inaccurate.

Shipping time:  Three star means time neither slow nor fast.



While I applaud Ebay for these private seller ratings,  an explanation of the rating scale is needed.


ALSO, there was a seller that failed to deliver the product as promised. They cancelled the bids, then gave false negative feedback. This rating system would have allowed us to do all ones.

It is a shame detailed seller rating was not in place at the time.

There was also the BAD seller that sent pictures of products. See my BLOG..Judge JUDY let her have it.


There are sellers with totally crazy shipping charges the rating system may help alert you. BUT ALWAYS show shipping in a custom ebay display.



For the most part I can understand shipping and handling

• It is an area to get out of EBAY's astronomical  fees.
• It is a way to ensure you get some money if you are doing an auction and have few bids
  
• Flat rate allows you not to have to spend precious time combining.
• Some items cannot be combined..you have set shipping configuration in flat rate box/envelop makes shipping easier for everywhere.

These are my thoughts.

Detailed Seller Ratings  is a nice feature, although I would love for sellers to have the same option. Now and again an unscrupulous buyer holds seller to grant shipping discounts and every now and then you get a buyer that wants a refund before returning product. Yes fortunately very few, but it is nice to be able to warn..I have even thought of doing delayed feedback..90 days where you can ZAP them and not worry about retaliation (i.e. wait until the last possible moment for feedback tee hee)..but I digress...

I would love to rate buyers.As a seller there is little you can do to avoid bad buyers. You can only block those with an overall negative rating. AGAIN, most buyers are wonderful. I even wrote a funny guide on both buyers and sellers zapping each other. GLAD I personally don't know them. Phew. But it is great to read feedback. Sometimes positive feedback will be given but there are clues in the feedback..that suggest otherwise.

Sometimes I check to see if a seller has automated feedback, yeah then I leave a positive but tell it how it is in the writing, if needed. Most sellers are great..but any mechanism to help a fellow buyer is great.