Buying and Selling of feedback

No PBB; I was not referring to you. You do bring up a great point. The Audiogon dispute resolution process is the next step after a reasoned and dispassionate discourse with the problem seller. Feedback, which can only be left once, is often left too quickly and sometimes in anger before the situation has had a chance to resolve itself. Many problems get out of hand simply by the way that the interchanges between seller and buyer escalate. Most of our trading partners are quite reasonable and often unaware of defects in the goods that they sell. Most are also all too eager to correct the wrong when they are made aware of it politely. In those cases where they are not Audiogon is the fall back. But here too, the facts should be presented without prejudice and personal attack.

Viridian, making such a personal & vitriolic attack upon me is uncalled for. You don't know the details; who are you to judge? You apparently have no concept that there are people out there, even on this site, who are difficult to expose because they have thought their deceptions through quite thoroughly to deter someone they have tried to scam from reporting them. Audiogon is not perfect; nothing is. The one dispute I initiated on this site was a bit more in the "grey" area, although I strongly feel my dispute was valid. However, a number of responders seemed almost to delight in cutting me down.

If you read the disputes section with discernment, you can decipher that in some cases, one party is being honest, but the other is not -- the problem is that sometimes you cannot tell which is the honest party. If anyone wants to email me personally regarding the unreported problem, I will be glad to carry on a dialogue with them.

I pay no attention to feedback. I find it totally unenlightening. Then again I won't buy any expensive items without actually meeting the seller. I once drove from Chicago to eastern Tennessee to buy a $3,000 amp. For me the time and effort were well worth the piece of mind from knowing that the transaction would go smoothly and to my liking.

I like Zaikesman's idea but forsee one design flaw- what if the other party does not leave feedback? Perhaps there could be a time limit, so that if only one feedback is posted, it would eventually be "published" after the other party has "waived" their right to submit feedback.

Good addendum, SW - this sort of provision had occurred to me when pondering the idea before, but I forgot to include something about it my post. Anyone perusing a member's feedback, who cared to crosscheck the feedback that member had left for others, would be able to infer from its absence that the member was not timely in posting theirs, or just didn't care. And a member posting negative feedback honestly would remain protected from arbitrary tit-for-tat reciprocation, since any lack of corresponding feedback would imply that the non-posting member had nothing critical to report (otherwise we could assume they would have felt motivated enough to do so), and that could be taken as a 'virtual positive'. I think 30 days from the submission of the initial feedback ought to be a more than sufficient 'quarantine' period.