Why do some buyers or sellers hide their feedback? And why do others make their listings private?

There are several reasons.

Buying and selling feedback on eBay is against policy, but if you do a search for ebooks, or any auction valued at 5p or less, you will find thousands of listings. These listings are simply to get positive feedback. There is no real money changing hands, only positive feedback for both buyer & seller.

But they don't want you to see that. The traders just want you to see a "trustworthy" score. Many unscrupulous fraudsters will use these auctions to build up enough feedback so that they can start conning BIG TIME.

As private feedback is now restricted on eBay, the seller uses a private auction facility, so that on their feedback profile the item sold will not be displayed. It will simply say "private" at the end where the item code usually is. The comments will probably be very praising as the buyer has bought the item for the same reason-mutually positive feedback.

The other reason a seller will use the private listing facility is so that if he receives a negative comment, you will not realise that it is probably for the same item that you are going to bid for.

A far nastier reason, is to stop the ebay community from WARNING bidders that the auctioneer is a scammer, or that the item is fake.

But THERE IS A WAY to see what your seller sold, or what they have been buying. Try this out, and be amazed at what all those wonderful feedbacks actually refer to!

Using your mouse, copy the seller/buyers ebay ID. To the right of the SEARCH box on the top left, click on ADVANCED SEARCH.

In the next window, click on either "items by seller" or "items by bidder" on the right hand side.

Paste or enter the ebay ID, and tick the box below-Include completed listings (last 30 days). Hit search. If it is a seller, then click on the "view sellers items" at the end of his name on the right hand side. ALL his listings, past & present will be displayed.

We found that one seller for example has "sold" at least 75 Siroccos in the last 20 days, but most of his feedback states that he has refunded or item has not been received. The majority of his postive feedback relates to a 1p recipe book.Would you take the risk?

WHY DO PEOPLE HIDE THEIR FEEDBACK?

I personally wouldn't buy from someone who had something to hide.