I remember the very first negative feedback I got from an eBay bidder. I'm not going to call them a buyer because this person never paid for the item.

This was back before eBay had rules in place to protect a seller if a bidder never paid, at this time they were allowed to leave feedback. This person accused me of being a rip-off on something he never paid me for.

I placed a reply on the negative and responded to him with a negative. I then just forgot about it and chocked it up as part of doing business.

Things have changed for the better in todays eBay market, there are several ways you can protect yourself from these types of attacks.

The first step to take is prevention, did you know eBay has ways you can exclude a buyer from bidding?

Go to your "My eBay" page look in the left column under "My Account" for a link to "Preferences".

Then you're looking for "Buyer Requirements" under the selling preferences. Here you can set different requirements. The one I like the most is to block bidders in countries I do not ship to. This allows me to set shipping preferences on each auction and if a bidder tries to bid from a country I do not ship to, they will not be allowed to bid.

eBay also allows another form of protection, although it doesn't prevent a bidder from bidding. If you place buyer requirements in your auction listing and a bidder places a bid, eBay states you are not obligated to sell to that person. If a person bids anyway they can be reported to eBay as an unwanted bidder.

So now what do you do when a bidder leaves you negative feedback?

You have options when faced with negative feedback, and if you have fallen victim to a malicious bidder purposely trying to ruin your business, you can report them.

I have such a case I'm dealing with ... A bidder made a purchase from me, didn't pay, I turned them in for non paid item, and they got angry about the strike. This bidder made ten purchases of the same auction from a different eBay ID, then left me ten negative comments.

I quickly replied to the negative so any customer of mine would see this person as a malicious bidder.

I then contacted eBay to report the bidder (you have to click on the show example link to get to the page you need). I gave them the eBay ID of the negative feedback, as well as the other ID where the person was reported for non payment. I knew they were the same person because the location of each ID was the same.

Did you know you can place a follow-up to feedback you have left? Yep, eBay allows you to submit a follow up, this comes in handy if you have left a negative, and the person replies to your negative, you can follow up with a final rebuttal. Or you can use it to ad more comments to any feedback. Take a look at the feedback follow-up page.

Another option you can explore is the mutual feedback removal.

This can happen if both parties agree to withdraw the feedback. Keep in mind before initiating this, you will want to submit your feedback. The reason for this, eBay will remove the feedback score from the record but the comments will remain. If you initiate the mutual feedback removal process prior to leaving feedback yourself, you won't be able to submit feedback on that transaction. You will be left with a one sided comment and it will be against you.

Hope that helps you deal with deadbeats, and lets hope you don't ever have to.

Enjoy . . . Scott