Anyone who’s ever bought or sold anything on eBay knows about feedback scores. Essentially, both the seller and buyer have the ability to judge the other party’s behavior in the transaction. A 100% score means the individual received positive feedback in 100% of their transactions – 90% means that 90% of all transactions received positive feedback. Average scores at eBay seem to fall between 98% and 100% indicating that buyers were generally happy with their purchases and sellers were generally happy with their customer’s payment. My score is 100% on 170-some odd transactions.

Historically, the buyer usually is first to provide feedback. If it is positive, the seller will reciprocate. If the buyer gave negative feedback (perhaps the seller shipped defective product), the seller might take revenge on the buyer even though the buyer did everything right – Paid promptly and went through the correct conflict resolution steps – and give the buyer negative feedback. I don’t like this “revenge” methodology.

My philosophy is to provide feedback when the other party satisfied their part of the contract. So, when selling, I give feedback (positive) the minute the buyer’s payment comes in. After all, they’ve satisfied their part of the transaction agreement and now it’s up to me to ship their item safely and quickly.

However, when I’m the buyer as I was three times this week, I expect the buyer to behave similarly and not withhold feedback until I provide mine. That leads to a completely befuddled seller some time …

Seller: Did you get your product?
Me: Yes, thank you!
S: Could you provide feedback?
M: Sure, could you since I completed my obligations to you over a week ago, and you only satisfied your obligation to me yesterday?
S: Is there a problem?
M: No, I just expect the same that you expect from me – PROMPT feedback.
S: Huh?

… and so it goes. Sure, I don’t get feedback from this seller, but it’s not as important to a little shopper like me than it is to volume guys. Maybe someday he’ll figure it out …