I agree with this. That way, you’re not leaving retaliatory feedback, just responding to the FB she left you.
I wouldn’t push for retraction. When I buy on ebay, I’m more wary of retracted feedback than I am of negs and neutrals that are left to stand - reason being that mutual withdrawals are a big thing right now and unscrupulous sellers are gaming the system with them.
Respond to the neutral feedback with a calm, factual statement that the item was as described and the buyer made no attempt to contact you to resolve the issue.
And I would leave a neutral or negative - again, keeping it calm and factual. The feedback you leave for your buyers is not just a response to them paying on time - it’s supposed to describe how the whole transaction went, in your opinion. Buyers don’t get positive feedback just for paying - after all, paying is just what they are absolutely obliged to do at the bare minimum.
Ah, but you also lose all you old FB that way. Sure, if you are a newb, then just dump that ID and start over, but once you have 500 or even 100FB, you don’t want to do that.
Indeed, in fact I can’t help wondering if Wee Bairn’s exposition of Gatopescado’s statement was in fact the right one.
Although I’m not sure what other process of feedback removal could be described as being as simple as a few clicks.
Unless it’s mutual withdrawal (but that isn’t so simple).
To expand a bit on what I said above, there are now a number of dodgy sellers on eBay who have a large number of mutual withdrawals under their belt - typically for one of two slightly different reasons:
-In the first case (and these tend to be high-volume sellers - often powersellers), a seller that gives quite poor service - maybe slow to deliver, poor communication, misdescribed goods, misdescribed item location, etc - gets a consistently high level of negs and neutrals and responds to every one with a retaliatory neg and an immediate request for mutual withdrawal.
In some cases, the comment left with the neg is purposely a positive one (it might say “Look forward to dealing with you again”) and the seller might pretend the neg was left by accident, having supposed to have been a positive.
And so the seller maintains what appears at first glance to be a good feedback score - and perhaps also his powerseller status - by a systematic program of mutual withdrawal.
-The other case is similar, but it’s where eBay imposes selling restrictions for poor performance/bad feedback - there may be a restriction imposed on the number of items a seller can list per week, until their feedback score percentage improves. In some cases, the seller may not actually be allowed to sell anything until it improves - leaving him the options of improving it by buying stuff, or improving it by leaning on his past dissatisfied customers for mutual withdrawal.
So that’s why I regard mutual withdrawals to be a warning sign - not usually if there are just a couple of them though, but still, they’re a louder ping on my radar than negs or neutrals.
All right, it’s been three days since I emailed her telling her I was disappointed that she hadn’t tried to resolve the issue before leaving neutral feedback. I haven’t heard back from her. So I left a response to her feedback saying that she didn’t contact me to resolve her issues. And I left her a neutral feedback, saying she paid promptly, but left me neutral feedback without giving me an opportunity to resolve problems.
This really may reflect worse on her than me, since I have over 370 feedbacks, and she only has 11 (and, like, four of them are from the same seller).
I agree with this comment. When I see a seller has a negative I look to look for their reaction to it to determine their character. If it seems retalitory, I pass on their product.
Usually if I see a note that replies to the feedback nicely over the misunderstanding, I ignore it.
Absolutely- I was just guessing that that’s what the other poster was referring to, because I know of no other way to elimiate negatives or neutrals- if you could do so, wouldn’t everybody do it?
And on second thought, I agree leaving a negative here would be petty and bad form- one neutral out of hundreds isn’t going to hurt your sales- you’re going to have customers like this is any type of business.
Since the OP seems to be resolved, hopefully norinew won’t mind if I hijack! 
Is there anything I can do about a buyer who hasn’t left feedback for me yet, even though it’s been two weeks since they received the item (verified via UPS)? I’ve been an eBay member for several years but have not had many transactions, so positive feedback is still very important to my reputation (I only have 8 feedbacks so far). I have no reason to believe that the buyer’s feedback would be negative, or even neutral, and I left them positive feedback right after I received payment. Is it acceptable for me to remind them that they owe me feedback? Or is that considered rude/pushy? Do I just have to accept that I might never get feedback from them?
Well, if you don’t ever get feedback from them, yeah, you pretty much just have to accept that. However, I don’t see anything wrong with sending them a politely worded message, to the effect that you enjoyed doing business with them, have left positive feedback, and hope they will leave positive feedback soon, unless of course, there was a problem, in which case you wish they would contact you about the problem.
But I can think of several scenarios (that have applied to me at one time or another) that delays a buyer leaving feedback for some period of weeks:
One, once my hubby bought something through my eBay account. It arrived while he was away on business, and even after he returned, it took him a while to get around to unpacking it and looking at it. It was tech/geek stuff, so I was not qualified in any way to assess it.
Once, I ordered a birthday gift for my hubby off of eBay. I ordered it several weeks in advance of his birthday, but didn’t give it to him until his birthday. I wanted to make sure he was satisfied with it before leaving good feedback.
Several times, my hubby used my eBay account to order Christmas gifts for a friend of his to give to his wife. Again, this was done weeks in advance. So the things were not opened until Christmas, thereby delaying feedback.
A couple of times, I’ve ordered things off eBay on behalf of a friend, and then it took a couple of weeks for friend to come pick it up and check it out.
I do a lot of business (both buying and selling) on eBay, and every once in a while, feedback just slips my mind (especially if I get sick or something and don’t log on eBay for a while).
Even if one of the above situations is applicable in this case, I don’t see anything wrong with a friendly reminder!
What frosted my shorts, though, was the case of one of the Christmas gifts for a friend’s wife. When she opened one of the boxes, one of the Lenox figurines was broken. I emailed the seller, advising him/her of the problem, and asking what they were willing to do about it. A week later, I got a very curt email that said, basically, the figurine was in perfect condition when I mailed it. If it wasn’t in perfect condition when you received it, it must be the Post Office’s fault. You should have bought insurance for it". Well, I re-read the listing, and sure enough, it did recommend purchasing insurance. So I had decided not to leave any feedback at all. But about a week after that, I got another email saying “We’ve left you positive feedback, please do the same for us”. I’ll be damned! I think it’s much more polite of me to not leave feedback at all. (Not implying this is what you’ve done, just saying it happened to me, and pissed me off a little).
Frequent eBay buyer here.
I’d like to point out that the eBay Community forums are very helpful when you have questions about feedback. I’ve had a few run-ins with sellers and wondered what kind of feedback to post, and got some excellent advice, along with a good discussion from the Community.
So you could ask them what to do about the buyer who hasn’t posted feedback yet.
I too look to see how the Seller responded to a Negative or Neutral, and when I see “Buyer did not contact me for resolution of problem”, I immediately discount the buyer’s Neg or Neutral.
Never get into a points war on ebay, you will always lose, because there are no winners in a points war on ebay.
Well, I understand that. I just meant that, on a whole, a Neutral feedback probably affects her ratings more than it does mine, because with hers, it’s a larger percentage of her total feedback score.
For me, if a seller has hundreds of positive feedbacks, and a couple of negs or neutrals, it doesn’t scare me away. I do agree that if there are a lot of “mutual retractions” it raises a red flag for me.
You may very acceptably send one question/reminder. IMHO. But no more than that, OK?
Thanks to those who answered my question. I’m not the nagging type, so I think I might let it go. I wonder what potential buyers will think, though, when they only see feedback from half of my recent sales. Hopefully 1 missing feedback won’t be much of a disincentive!
Are buyers really that anal about feedback? I only check a seller’s feedback page if their percentage is below 99.0% positive, if they are very new, or if they have a lot of nit-picky conditions for bidders listed on the item page. It would never occur to me to scrutinize them more closely than that.
I only have 8 total feedbacks, and just 1 as a seller (within the past year). As I mentioned upthread, I’ve been an eBay member for several years but haven’t been very active. So when someone looks at my user name and feedback, I look very new.
Isn’t that code for “I bought the size I’m used to buying and it didn’t fit?” For what it’s worth, if I saw a single complaint saying that, with a note that the buyer hadn’t contacted the seller, I’d assume that either the manufacturer’s sizing had shifted or that someone had gained a little weight since their last purchase. Neither of which is the seller’s fault.
Heh. That’s what I was wondering, too!