How to Check an eBay Seller's Reputation
(and Why You Should Do It).

When you buy something from an eBay seller, you
are giving them your money and hoping that you
will get something in return.

However many guarantees of safety eBay might
make to you, nothing is certain: if you just give your
money to scammers all the time without doing any
checks then the chances are you won't get all of
that money back.

That's why you should always check the seller's
reputation, or 'feedback rating'. This is a quick and
easy-to-read summary of their history as an eBay
seller, which gives you some idea of whether or not
you should trust them with your money.

Buying anything is a calculated risk: you want to
minimise that risk.

How to Check Feedback Ratings.

On each item's description page, there is a box in the top-right hand corner about the seller, with the
title 'Seller information'. This contains the seller's name, their feedback score, and their positive
feedback percentage, as well as any stars they have earned.

Different coloured stars are given to eBay sellers depending on their rating, in this sequence: yellow,
blue, turquoise, purple, red, green, shooting yellow, shooting turquoise, shooting purple, shooting red.
Anyone with a 'shooting' star is an experienced eBay member who you should be able to trust.

If you click on the seller's name, you can get to a more detailed view of their reputation - their 'member
profile' page. This page shows the total number of people who gave them a positive or negative
rating, as well as a breakdown by time. You can also see a complete history of all the comments that
have ever been left about them, with the most recent first.

What to Look For.

You might assume that anyone with a very high number can be trusted, but that isn't always true. It is
more important to look at their positive feedback percentage - and you should really consider
anything below 99% to be a red flag and investigate further.

Take a look through the first visible page with the most recent transactions: are there any negative
comments? What do they say? Take others' experiences into account, as they could happen to you if
you deal with this person. Be careful not to punish sellers unfairly, however, if they did bad things in
their past on eBay but have improved since. You should look at the breakdown by time and ignore
any negative feedback that was left a long time ago. Equally, though, you should sit up and pay
attention if a seller seems to have been left an out-of-character amount of bad feedback in the last
month or so.

Now that you know who to trust, it is worth learning
a little more about how the different kinds of
auctions work, so that you don't accidentally slip
up and make yourself and your feedback page
look bad.

Our next page will be about the different kinds of
auctions you can expect to encounter during your
time on eBay.
This Website is published by F.P. Publishing (UK).  11, Zinzan St, Reading, Berks. RG1 7UG (UK)
All work is World copyright protected - P. Moring      2009
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