I know there are so many guides on here already dealing with this subject matter, plus eBay's helpful info pages, so why am I even writing this article...because I just discovered a new way...

As you can see from my profile I rarely receive any negatives or neutrals, but in 7 years and about 8-9,000 transactions later, I found myself receiving an undeserved Neutral Feedback. On one of my other articles I talk about this issue as well, but this article is sort of a follow up on the other one.

Here are the details of a transaction I recently had. The buyer bought two LED Flashlights from me at a substantially lower cost then he would have paid retail. By purchasing two, he ended up saving money on the S&H of the second one. He paid me promptly and that very day, I shipped the items to him with a note to let me know when they arrive so we can both leave feedback for each other. Two weeks go by and I don't hear a thing from him and I decide it must have arrived safely and I go ahead and leave him positive feedback.

The next day, to my surprise, I see he has left me a neutral feedback that stated I "refused to combine S&H on three items" he purchased and "didn't reply to his emails". Of course it was not the case at all. I went to his profile to see that he had purchased 4 other flashlights from another seller. Each flashlight he bought from the other seller, was an individual auction and there was a S&H on each one. I realized then, that he had confused me with the other seller and should have left the feedback for that seller, not me.

Writing him about this received no replies. I decided to call him to discuss this error and if he agreed, I could apply for a mutual withdrawal of feedback through eBay. This would wipe out both of our respective feedbacks and the Neutral he had left me in error would be gone. Unfortunately his contact phone number on file at eBay was not a working number.

I wrote to eBay to report this incident and informed them that not only was the feedback in error, but his phone number was not working and I couldn't contact the member to resolve this problem.

After a number of days I got the form emails from eBay stating they couldn't do anything about the feedback and I should contact the member and obtain his phone number from eBay. It appeared they never even read my email, or would have realized I had tried that already.

After the 3rd attempt with eBay I finally got someone to really read my email and realize what had happened.

They informed me that this buyers phone number was just updated and according to eBay rules the neutral feedback had been removed from my profile. Wow, imagine that, they took it off, but why?

Well, here is the reason for this entire article...It seems that if a person who has left a neutral or negative feedback does not have correct contact information on file with eBay, it is cause for removal of their feedback on your profile. I assume the reason is that a seller (or buyer) cannot contact the other party about issues and work it out. So if you couldn't contact the member and there was a possiblity of working out any issues, then it was not your fault. You might have been able to resolve any issues and thus have prevented them from leaving the poor feedback. Makes a lot of sense to me, since eBay is always encouraging all of us to communicate with members BEFORE leaving poor feedback.

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Here is the information straight from eBay:

Feedback left by a member who provided eBay with false contact information and could not be contacted. In general, the transaction period is considered to be 90 days from the end of the listing or 30 days from the date the feedback was left, whichever was longer.

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So the moral of this story is a simple one, if you receive poor feedback, immediately check the buyer or sellers contact information. Attempt to call them to find out why they left you poor feedback and try to discuss the problems and then offer a mutual withdrawal of feedback.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/questions/mutual-withdrawal.html

If however, the phone number or contact information is incorrect, contact eBay and apply to have the poor feedback removed for this reason.

It has helped me this time and I won't have to look at a (1) Neutral appear on my profile for a full year before it disappears.

Hope this is one trick that can help you too.

Happy Holiday and don't forget to vote on all my guides so you can help me go to the number one spot at eBay's top reviewer.

Thanks to all the others that have already made me number 7 ranking reviewer on eBay.

Len