I have noticed that there is a trend on eBay for sellers to withhold their positive feedback even when the buyer uses PayPal and pays for an item instantly. If you want to be added to buyers' lists of good sellers and truly consider yourself to be a honorable seller than you should immediately leave positive feedback once the buyer completes his obligation in the transaction. To withhold positive feedback even after the buyer has done right by you is like holding the positive feedback hostage. If you have a policy as a seller to not give positive feedback until the buyer gives you positive feedback first, even though the buyer was the first one to complete his part of the bargain, then you are saying to the seller that you do not have confidence in your goods, shipping methods, or integrity.

As a buyer on eBay, after receiving my goods and inspecting them to make sure they are as described I immediately leave positive feedback to the seller. Even then, I see how many sellers still do not bother to leave positive feedback and by doing so send me the message that they do not care about their customer service. If sellers fail to leave me positive feedback, then I place them in a folder I created on my eBay page named "Do Not Buy From."

I realize that sometimes sellers get burnt by unfair negative feedback, but that is no reason to not do the right thing to the rest of the people. As a seller you should not have the attitude that "one bad apple spoiled the whole bunch" because eventually policies based on wide sweeping generalizations will cost you the loss of many potential future sales more than having a few negative nicks in your overall feedback rating. Give your buyers the credit for having some intelligence and have faith in their ability to realize that if they check your rating and see that you have 1,000 positive feedbacks and 3 negatives that it doesn't make you a bad seller, but once in a while some deals just go south usuually due to poor communication or one party being unreasonable or even dishonest. When you receive negative feedback you can always respond on your feedback page. A potential buyer can check that out and most times see which party was being unreasonable just by the tone of what is written. When I buy things on eBay and see that the seller has a high positive feedback, I am slightly more wary when they have no negatives whatsoever because it shows me that they more than likely have such a rating because they hold their positive feedback hostage. The bottom line here is once the buyer has paid you then you should immediately leave positive feedback. If you do not then you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.