• What is the Feedback Mechanism?
• How does the Feedback Mechanism work?
• What is your rating scheme?
• How do I view a seller's/buyer's Feedback profile?

• How can I get a quick sense of a member's performance, without having to see their entire Feedback Profile?
• How do I leave Feedback on a user?
• What sort of comments should I leave when entering Feedback?
• Is Feedback permanent?

The Feedback Mechanism is VinylBid's way of keeping its community of sellers and buyers informed about the particular practices and reputations of its members. The Feedback Mechanism is a comprehensive profile of each registered VinylBid user, and contains information about each particular member's transaction history and feedback ratings, along with comments left by other members about their experience with the particular user.

Aside from the detailed Feedback Profile (as explained below), a member can get a quick snapshot of another member's feedback by looking beside their name within an auction listing. Here a member will find both the Composite Rating and Average Rating for the seller/buyer; check the Ratings & Feedback quick help section for more detail.

Every user has a Feedback Profile which contains several relevant pieces of information about their personal auction transactions (Note: an auction transaction counts as either a winning bid on an item, or as a sale of an item that was listed through our auction system); these are:

• The Feedback History: This is the user's feedback history file, which contains a detailed exposition of all of the user's past transactions, and in each case includes the name of the member the user dealt with, the rating received (using our 5 point star-scale, see below), the item number of the particular auction which lead to the feedback rating, comments, the date the feedback was left, and the overall rating (positive, neutral, negative) of the transaction. For more information, see What is your rating scheme? below.
• The Average Rating: This is an overall rating of a member's performance on the VinylBid website, and is a weighted average of all of the individual ratings which he/she received through various auction transactions on our site. The average rating serves as a good quick indicator of what a member's overall rating is like, and is also represented using our 5 point star-scale. The average rating can also be found easily as the 5-point star scale which appears next to each user's name within an auction listing.
• The Composite Rating: The composite rating serves as a very quick and easy way of determining what a user's feedback history is like, without having to access the feedback profile directly. The composite rating is represented in the form of three numbers, the total number of positive, neutral and negative transactions that a user has had with VinylBid's auctions, as rated by other users. It appears as the three numbers(positives, neutrals and negatives respectively) which are found next to a user's name on an auction page. For more details, consult What is your rating scheme?

VinylBid uses a unique 5-point rating system combined with the standard 3-point (positive, neutral, negative) system to give the most comprehensive feedback profile of its users imaginable. Once a transaction with a member has been completed, his/her performance is assessed by the other member using the following five point star-scale:

Star Scale	Rating	Composite Rating
	Excellent	Positive
	Good	Positive
	Average	Neutral
	Fair	Negative
	Poor	Negative

VinylBid's auction feedback mechanism keeps track of these individual ratings in the user Feedback Profile, while at the same time maintaining a "running total" of each user's history. The average rating which appears next to each user's name is simply an average of all of the feedback ratings for that particular user(using the 5-point star-scale) while the composite rating itemizes (using the 3-point scale) each user's total transaction history.

These three numbers represent, respectively, the total number of positive, neutral and negative transactions that other users have experienced with this particular member of the VinylBid community. A transaction counts as either a winning bid on an item, or as a sale of an item that was listed through our auction system. As well, the star-scale next to their name represents the average (or overall) rating of that user's performance.

Yes. All feedback, other than that which directly violates our Feedback Removal Policy, is permanent and stays with the user as part of their feedback profile. This is why we urge our members to review any feedback twice before submitting it through our feedback form.