10 Ways eBay Sellers Can Avoid Negative Feedback - By John Thornhill

Your eBay feedback is your biggest eBay selling tool bar none. If you have bad eBay feedback you will struggle to make sales and your eBay business will suffer. Therefore you must protect your eBay feedback as much as possible. Here are 10 tips that will help you maintain an excellent feedback rating.

1. Always be polite in all correspondence. This goes without saying, always treat your customers with respect and give them a pleasant buying experience. By doing so you may gain a customer for life.

2. Avoid excessive shipping charges. If you charge $10 shipping for an item and the cost is only $3 you are leaving yourself open to negative feedback.

3. Mail your items as soon as possible. Don't wait till the end of the week. Taking too long to deliver your goods means you are risking your feedback. You should always aim to have items packaged and sent within 48 hours of payment.

4. Make sure your item description is accurate. Don't say your item is as good as new if it's not. This is probably the most common reason for negative feedback.

5. Answer emails promptly. Don't wait days and days to answer any queries. This only makes your customer frustrated and this can result in a negative comment.

6. List any flaws your item has. If the item you are selling has a scratch or mark say so or you could be left a negative comment for a poor item description.

7. Don't retaliate to awkward customers. Sometimes you may get an awkward or offensive customer, that's life. Don't retaliate, just deal with their query in a polite and professional manner. This usually ends in the customer apologising and excellent feedback follows.

8. Accept returns. If a customer is not happy with your product for whatever reason allow them to return the item and refund their purchase minus shipping fees. You can then cancel the transaction through eBay and you will get your fees returned and therefore wont be out of pocket. This leaves you free to relist the item with your feedback intact.

9. Package your items carefully. If you are selling delicate items make sure they are packaged carefully with plenty of protection, the last thing you want is your customer to receive damaged goods.

10. Don't leave feedback first. If you do you are leaving yourself open to negative comments. A happy customer will always leave feedback first, if you leave feedback first you will learn the hard way, trust me.

Remember! Your customer is a real living person. I think sometimes people forget this, try to make the whole buying experience as easy and pleasant as possible. Your customers are the lifeblood of your eBay business and your number one goal should be to make them happy. This can only result in excellent feedback and in turn success for your eBay business.

John Thornhill trades on eBay under the username planetsms and earns over $1000 per week on eBay on autopilot. To see how he does it visit his eBay store at http://stores.ebay.com/PlanetSMS