Also feedback left for others, and look especially at how the
seller handles a problem transaction.
Here's a quick and easy way to find neutrals and negs for a seller
with lots of positive feedback, vs. paging through hundreds of
feedback comments:
http://toolhaus.org
If it was mistaken, then people can see in the comment that he
meant to be positive, and he can also leave a followup saying he meant
for it to be positive. There's also the possibility of mutual feedback
removal, usually done by those who want to remove the negatives they
may have hastily left for each other (the comments remain, but don't
count against feedback scores).
Which is IMHO a good thing. Most negative feedback comes from people
who are a pain in the ass anyway. Sellers having 500+ transactions
with no negative feedback at all are also a little bit suspious to me
as well. Nobody is perfect.
It's always wise to be cautious, and perhaps look at bidders to
check for shill bidding (if there's one or a few low-feedback bidders
that always bid only on one seller's auctions, that's a big flag
there's shilling going on - report it to eBay) as one poster suggested
might be happening, but no negs in itself isn't a major sign of fraud.
I've been on the discussion boards, there have been sellers who don't
get their first neg until after they have 1000 positives.
