TVGuy, I’m a good eBay seller, so you know at least one.
So far my experience with sellers has been good all around, but I always check feedback before bidding, and sometimes to see if the seller left feedback for the bidder. (Some of the heavy-volume sellers don’t bother to leave feedback; to me that says they’re lacking in the response/service department). I have had a few deadbeat bidders on my own auctions, but I usually will cancel bids from anyone with recent negative feedback.
I have bought quite a number of pens over E-bay and have been pretty happy with most of the transactions thus far.
There is one pen seller that offers decent merchandise but inflates the shipping costs by about ten times of the actual shipping cost. This is a situation where the buyer just has to be well informed.
I’ve found most of the people I’ve dealt with to be friendly and very accomodating, this is only in their best interest if they want to continue doing business. Serious sellers will bend over backwards to prevent any negatives from being filed against them as this will only hurt their business.
I will soon be selling on E-bay so there should be at least two people there who can be trusted.