Why would anyone want to keep their E-Bay feedback private?

I recently ran across an E-bay member who has a private feedback rating. What this means is that instead of a number by their name, it says “private”. When you click on the rating, it gives you the regular chart breakdown (in this case positives in the 3-digits, no negs, and 1 neutral), but all the individual comments are sealed.

Now, on the surface, this seems a trustworthy person to buy from, but I have to wonder: why keep the comments a secret? Was it because someone revealed something personal in their comments? Wouldn’t the administrators be able to remove/alter that if such was the case? Why keep all the comments and transactions hidden?

Just wondering if any Dopers had theories on the matter.

Perhaps there were a lot of negatives at some time in the past the seller doesn’t want you to see. Also, sometimes people can leave negative feedback just because they are jerks.

I have one negative feedback as a buyer because I dared to complain to the seller when they sent me the wrong item.

I didn’t know that you could hid your feedback.

It’s very possible this person bids on things of a rather, er, risque nature. S/he may also be a collector of rare items and, consequently, doesn’t want his/her bidding history made public.

Or maybe they had no idea what they were doing when they filled out the app.

I have been looking and I can’t find anything on Ebay about making feedback private. Does anyone know how someone even does that?

I don’t know if I would buy anything from someone with a private rating. The regular brake down chart only shows the sales from the last six months. Older negatives wouldn’t show.

But there is still a cumulative feedback total (which I listed in the OP), so your theory that they’re hiding old, bad feedbacks doesn’t wash.

I was thinking along JuanitaTech’s line, but none of the other things that member is selling falls into that category either.

I may sit it out, but this is something I do want that I haven’t seen before, so…

I did it for a 3 month stretch until the “live” link to the auction in my feedback had just gone to an inactive auction number.

I bough a gift for my SO several months ahead of time and didn’t want any chance of her seeing and ruining the suprise before I gave it to her.

They may be trying to keep people from “stealing” their customers. Are their auctions also private?

On ebay, you can check someone’s feedback, see what they sold, then email their buyers to offer them similar items.

Also, some people on ebay are vicious. My brother had another seller email bidders and say his auctions were misleading and that he cheats people. He had to start having private auctions to avoid this. Maybe this seller had trouble with someone emailing buyers from his feedback list and doing the same thing.

The person who email my brother’s biders sells the same type of items, and she was trying to keep people from buying from him, so they would buy from her.

So that’s one reason things like this happen.