Keep your customers happy and protect your feedback.

To gain powerseller status your feedback must be over 98%. Follow the simple rules below and your feedback will always be excellent and you will have no problems.

Your feedback is your biggest selling tool bar none and you must protect this the best way you can.
I have found through experience being polite at all times and in all circumstances goes a very long way in achieving a good rating.
A happy customer is a good customer and you will find many eBayers come back for more if you are polite and efficient.

Always be polite in any emails with customers particularly before any sale.

Do your best to reply to any questions within 24 hours. If you have the time check your emails as often as you can as a potential customer will only look somewhere else if you don't respond quickly. If you do reply after 24 hours start your email by apologising for the delay. If you can set up an auto responder letting your potential customer know your email has been received.

When I send out my email to the winning bidder I always have it look something like:-

Dear eBay Member.
Thank you so much for choosing to buy from me.
I know you have a lot of choices and I appreciate your business.
First of all, if you are not completely satisfied with your purchase from me please let me know before leaving feedback.
As long as you are happy with your purchase please leave me positive feedback and I will do the same for you as soon as I can.
You can download your E-Book from the link below.
(insert your link here)
On some systems the link may not load, if this happens simply copy the link and paste it into the address bar in your web browser.
If you need any help at all or have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Once again thank you for your custom, I hope we can do business again in the near future.
If you have not checked out my eBay store why not take a look as I have many more quality E-Books for sale.
(enter the link to your eBay store here)
Regards.
John

Straight away the transaction is off to a friendly start.
I feel this politeness only encourages the customer to leave nothing but positive feedback as I have stated I will do the same for them. Also, they have been made aware to contact me first before leaving any feedback if there are any problems or concerns. Notice how I have thanked them twice for their custom and hope to do business again. This encourages them to consider further purchases. Perhaps even clicking on the link to my eBay store and buying more E-Books.

If someone asks for a refund don't ask why just refund them. You may get a rude or offensive email saying your product is rubbish, this will usually be from someone with little or no computer skills not knowing how to use your product. Simply apologise and process the refund. After all, it's only cost you about 40p-50p for the sale so why risk a negative for so little.

From time to time you will get awkward offensive customers but try to rise above any war of words and stay calm. If you have to reply always be polite. I know it can be hard but if you stay polite while someone else is losing it you will feel better. Plus if negative feedback is left it may pay off later. (see below)

There will always be one awkward eBayer who leaves a negative, this will happen no matter how good you are and my experience has found it's normally the newbies who are most likely to leave you a negative, this is also normally done without contacting you first and it can be very frustrating.
(see below for tips on how to get this removed)

One or two negatives per 500 or so sales won't hurt anyway and if you keep your percentage above 98-99% you will have no problems.

The best way to protect your feedback when you sell is to never leave feedback first. This stops lots of negatives. I learned this the hard way. When I was new to eBay I always left feedback as soon as I received payment. Believe me, this is not the way to do it. A happy customer will always leave feedback first.

One method I have used a few times is I have been left a negative off someone who has left the feedback without contacting me first. This has usually happened because their spam filter has caught my email and instead of enquiring about it they just decide to go and leave a negative comment. eBay states to try and resolve any disputes by contacting your trading partner before leaving feedback, this is stated clearly before they hit the 'proceed to leave feedback' button. So in return I have left them a negative saying something like 'unwarranted negative feedback, no communication prior to feedback' So now we both have a negative, I give it about a week and then contact them saying it would be in both our interests and if they would like to remove both feedbacks mutually through eBay. It's happened to me a few times and usually the feedback has been removed. It may sound unethical but it works.
This is why you must always be polite at all times as if you end up in a war of words it's highly unlikely that your trading partner will agree to mutual removal of feedback.

Did you know you can also get negatives removed through Squaretrade. I would recommend joining as you get the Squaretrade seal like mine below inserted into your listings which shows you are a trusted seller.
For more info visit www.squaretrade.com