Protect your biggest eBay selling tool!

By: John Thornhill

Every seller on eBay understands the importance of feedback and how crucial it is to protect it. Feedback allows you to know what type of person you are dealing with and is perhaps the most valuable asset you can have when dealing on the largest auction site in the world – eBay!

Every visitor interested in an item on your listing, will quickly go through your feedback before dealing with you. Typically, eBay feedback gives an idea about the way you conduct your dealings and also includes any bid retractions you may have made necessitating you to protect your feedback. Feedback is usually non removable and your feedback profile indicates how efficiently you handle issues and how you deal with winning bidders and offensive customers.

Through your feedback, visitors can find out how long you have been associated with eBay and how many times you have changed your user name. Frequent change in username may create a negative impression about you and imply that you are trying to hide something.

One reason why its so important to protect your feedback is that everyone can view your feedback and a person viewing a feedback profile or a seller doesn't have to be necessarily involved in the transaction.

Now that you have understood how failing to maintain your feedback can lead to damaging consequences, let me quickly tell you how you can protect it.

A golden rule for successful dealings with customers is to be polite at all times. Getting good ratings largely depend on how happy your customers are! Be prompt in answering customer queries and ideally queries through email should be addressed in less than 24 hours. Most sellers understand the importance of quick response and therefore set up an auto responder to let potential customers know that they will be attended to shortly. However, if you don't have such a system in place and have not been able to respond immediately, do craft a nice email to tell them how sorry you are for the delayed response.

When you communicate with the winning bidders before closing a sale, make sure that you first thank them for choosing you and your products over others. Also request them to leave a positive feedback if they are satisfied with the product. It can be mutually beneficial, as you can in turn promise to return their favor by posting a positive feedback about the bidder as well. However, if they are not, request them to inform you about the same before leaving a feedback. Also close on a positive note hoping to do more business with the bidder in future.

Starting your transaction on a friendly note goes a long way in developing healthy relations with your customers. Respect your customers' sentiments and if someone wants a refund don't question it – just do it! By asking him why they wants a refund is like opening a can of worms. In most cases, the customer is not too happy about your product and will tell you in detail why he didn't like it.. Being polite and sensitive to customer needs lead to more business and of course, plenty of positive feedback.

Finally, when you sell leave feedback only after you receive it! A happy customer is always the first to leave a feedback, so wait for it.