Posted By:
David SeabornJudge,
Thanks for the kind words at the beginning of this thread. Glad to hear you finally got the card and like it.
My two cents on this topic;
As a buyer, I leave feedback after I have received and inspected the item.
As a seller, I leave feedback when payment is received. This means immediately for PayPal, but I wait until checks clear. I know this may leave a seller vulnerable (as Dan correctly pointed out), but this should be very rare. In fact, I've had close to 1,000 transactions and it has never happened to me (knock on wood).
My bigger concern has been leaving a negative when it was rightfully deserved, such as when a winning bidder refuses to pay or even email back. If you leave a negative, you risk a retaliatory negative even though you have done nothing wrong as a seller. I used to not leave them for this fear. Now, motivated by Lew Lipset's comment of "Patheic beyond words" for our old friend ,adamsdad, I have begun to leave them in such instances. The community needs to know about these bidders and I will risk my perfect feedback to get the word out.