Larry,

I guess we just have to agree to disagree on a couple of issues.

I don't agree that the seller should leave feedback based on just getting payment. To me, the transaction isn't over and this is premature. I both buy and sell on e-bay. When I buy, I usually leave feedback first so that the seller knows the transaction is complete. When I sell, I usually wait for confirmation from the buyer that everything is okay. In my first 50 to 70 e-bay transactions, this was the norm for all but 1 or 2 of them. I've since come to know some of the folks that I've bought and sold from. A lot of them are on this board and very honorable people to deal with. I wouldn't characterize them as waiting to blackmail me.

Also, while I agree in that I don't think E-bay's feedback mechanism is perfect, I have to disagree in that I do not find it worthless either. The sheer numbers of the negatives are nearly as useful as the comments and responses to those. No, it's not perfect, but nothing in life is. I'm convinced that I dodged a couple of bullets from having checked out feedback on a couple of sellers. Now, maybe those transactions would have went through, or maybe there would have been a small problem. Stuff happens sometimes even between honest people. People of good character can generally work out most things. What I saw in feedback on the couple that I chose not to bid on, was that the people involved didn't seem to be too willing to work to resolve problems based on the comments. That made me think that if I had problems with them, they might not be too responsive to resolution. So I skipped the auction and moved on. Again, to me, that was useful. I've also had cases where the seller had several negatives, but I chose to purchase anyway based on their number of positives and their responses to the negatives. I've also looked at auctions in question to see if negatives for "item misrepresentation" were valid. Some were, and some were not. I agreed in some cases with the seller having left negative feedback the other direction. Believe it or not, there are a lot of unethical buyers out there too.

Oh well, I'm starting to ramble now and again, this is probably a "tastes great, less filling" kind of debate. Variety is the spice of life.

Bryan