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not always be that reliable.

Yes, checking on a seller's feedback can be a good tool for deciding to buy, if you know how to read these numbers correctly.

Don't just go by the overall feedback percentage beside a seller's user I.D.. Those can look high at times, until you read the detailed ratings received over the last few months, depending on how much cumulative feedback a seller has.

See those feedback numbers in parentheses beside an eBay seller's user I.D.? Before you decide to buy, click on that number. That will break down averages for you into feedback received within one month, the last six months and the last year. Look especially at that last six months total. Then take into account the overall number of feedbacks received.

For example, recently I needed a new laptop keyboard. There were two eBay listings that netted my interest.

One seller had a used keyboard for sale for $15 with free shipping. However, her overall feedback rating was only 89% or so (I forget the exact numbers now). The second seller had listed a brand new keyboard for sale for $10 plus shipping costs. So it was about the same price from either seller and the second seller had around a 97.5% overall feedback rating.

So did I order from this second seller? No. Here's why.

Yes, he had a much higher overall feedback rating. However, he had also been selling on eBay for a very long time so several negative feedbacks wouldn't affect his ratings percentage as much, just given the enormous amount of feedback he had already.

In fact, within the last year he had received 62 negative feedbacks, with 18 of those having been earned within the last six months. The main complaint of buyers? He advertised items as new that obviously weren't new.

As to the first seller, the one who had the keyboard for sale for $15 with free shipping but had less than a 90% feedback rating, when I checked her details she had been on eBay for less than two months so had very few feedbacks. All the positive were rave reviews and then there was that one negative that just said the shipping took too long.

Slow shipping can often be the fault of the post office rather than the seller. In addition, I checked that particular buyer's information, the one who had left the negative feedback here. Turns out he had posted negative feedback of one sort or another about every single seller he had dealt with over the last three months (eBay will no longer allow sellers to respond to or leave negative feedback for buyers).

Because this

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