Does Ebay remove negative feedback for their most profitable sellers?

A particular seller has received feedback for hundreds of thousands of auctions over the last year. Not one comment is negative.
He sells a lot of very valuable items, and has to easily be one of Ebay's most profitable sellers.
I recently had a bad transaction with him that warrants negative feedback, in my opinion, but am expecting Ebay will remove it... The item isn't super valuable but bad is bad.

 

One way to find out...

 

Big sellers often know how to game the eBay system. Buyers often don't know the rules and make it easy to get the feedback removed.

If you want to write negative feedback that has the best chance to not get removed:

1) NEVER EVER mention the word feedback in any communication with the seller. If you do, it's game over. They will complain of "feedback extortion" and your feedback will be removed. If you already did this, then you're pretty much sunk. Just the use of the word "feedback" is enough.

2) In your feedback, remain 100% factual. No commentary.

E.g.

"Item received was not as described." OK
"Seller lied about condition." NO
"Seller misgraded item." NO (it might be true, but it leaves an opening for the seller to dispute).

 

I'm not even going to bother leaving feedback. There were four or five negatives that I saw, posted by different buyers over the last 24-48 hours. All have now been removed.

 

Haven't looked in a while but remember back in the past the Disney company had their whole feedback section locked. You couldn't leave them anything good or bad. It's definitely size dependent, though - my pal who has a 50,000 item stock on eBay couldn't get a completely unfair feedback (the buyer in Europe had to pay duties on his incoming item from the US and bitched about it on eBay) removed, and while he's not Disney he still brings them a lot of coin.

 

Yes, they and discogs remove negative feedback after about 2-4 weeks for high-volume sellers. They wait for the complainant to go away believing it is end of story.

However, eBay keeps a record of these internally, and if they go too low there, they are stripped of that "service".

 

The seller I had trouble with had their bad feedback removed within hours, not weeks.

 

As a rule I meant. Many of these sellers will get on the horn and call, and call, and call, and call, and call, until one of the representatives removes it. Or if the feedback violates guidelines of course.

 

Maybe they sent requests for feedback revision and came to an agreement (refund) with the buyers.

 

I don't know. I think you should leave feedback. Just follow the guidelines @kwadguy posted. If it does get removed, then you know that this seller is abusing the system. There's not anything you can do about it, because this seller has eBay under their thumb, but at the very least you'll have an answer to the question.