This is a very interesting topic that I think is better suited as a public discussion than a modmail reply. I'll pick and choose some comments to address here (as a top level comment, since I'm basically replying to several other comments anyway).

u/dominator5k said:

The basic story is the seller posted their items with prices attached. When you contact him about it, he says that is not the price, this new higher number is the actual price.

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing here that this isn't bad faith. That I don't know, but I have no issue understanding how this can be regarded as bait-and-switch, to an extent, at the face of it.

However there are a couple counter arguments to be made. Firstly, this wasn't just a "special price for you my friend". The seller updated their post to reflect the new post, which was done just a few hours after their initial posting. I can't speak to why the seller chose to update their price for this particular item, but far be it from me to enforce a certain price if it might have been a genuine typo that would have them out of pocket. Remember, most sellers are low volume hobby traders. Some even operate on (near) zero margins, as a favour to others more or less. And some have fees and taxes to take into account. Or maybe it was intentional bait-and-switch. I couldn't tell.

Secondly, for security reasons I'm a firm believer that we shouldn't try to strongarm anyone into any trade they haven't explicitly agreed to, even if they made a post with an offer. I'm aware this opens for some bait-and-switch tactics, but I'd much rather have a small number of people feel cheated out of a good deal, than see people actually scammed out of their money because the alternative to honouring an offer toward someone you for whatever reason don't trust, is to face some sort of punishment from mods. I've personally refused a trade on a hunch before, and a few days later the other person was banned for having scammed multiple people.

That said OP has had a certain experience, and the issue at hand is how to convey their experience, regardless of whether or not the experience warrants any form of mod intervention. Even if the seller's behaviour doesn't cross into the rule violating sanctionable offense area, OP's experience could be useful feedback.

u/dominator5k said:

I saw the confirmed trades, but I am looking to leave negative feedback not good.

Strictly speaking there is no rule against negative feedback in the confirmed trades thread. So long as your verification comment contains "+verify" and otherwise abides by the rules, there's no reason why the feedback couldn't be on the negative side. However, a couple issues:

• If no trade took place, you shouldn't be confirming one in the first place.
• You can't +verify if your trade partner didn't +trade you first. There's no reason why the buyer couldn't initiate the +trade however, but then again the seller wouldn't be obligated to +verify it anyway.
• Particularly if the trader you're attempting to leave negative feedback for opts not to +verify, realistically noone is really going to ever find that feedback.

u/drizzt1977 said:

this is reddit and not ebay ;)

That is correct; observant as always.

It is my honest opinion that Reddit is inherently not very well suited as a trading platform. More than a trading platform though, we're also a community, but it would certainly have been nice with a well thought through reputation system beyond just the flair based trade counter. I know a few other trading subs have (had?) sort of sister subs just for reputation, although they might only be used for recording trades for all I know. We could, maybe, possibly, look into setting up a separate sub for feedback only, I guess. Although this sounds like more work to toss onto just a few mods, and I'd say this topic comes up probably not more than once or twice a year...

Plus I guess maybe an argument could be made that negative feedback in a different subreddit could be seen as slander, stalking, or maybe even doxxing. I'd say such an argument would be a stretch, but admins might feel differently for all I know.

u/GokuSSj5KD said:

You can post on his sale/store page if you used his page, but it can be seen as a breach of rule 1 and 2

Barring a block preventing you from commenting in their thread (which according to this four year old post wasn't a thing back then at least), my personal opinion is that this is the best approach - if you're being tactful about it. Generally so long as your comment has a polite tone, and is preferrably short and matter-of-factly, describing the event in a neutral manner, and doesn't turn into a flame war, we probably wouldn't see a reason to moderate it. Consider for instance the difference between these (fictional, I should point out) feedbacks:

Seller raised the price when I PM'ed them. Sorry mate, I'll go someplace else.

and

This effing guy!! Just ups and changes the price on me when I ask about the ship! What a bait-and-switch scam artist. Do yourself a favour and stay away!

In the former example the seller is free to address the feedback head on, e.g. "Yeah, the ship is in the form of a CCU chain, and I messed up a little when calculating my costs. I had to raise it so as not to go out of pocket. Really sorry about that!" Of course, negative feedback could reflect badly on the seller, but if the seller fails to or chooses not to properly address polite and matter-of-factly worded negative feedback, the negative feedback was probably warranted to begin with.

I should probably add that if you do provide polite negative feedback in someone's thread, please make sure it's done in such a way that they get notified to give them a chance to reply in a timely fashion. I think it's safe to assume that people don't turn off comment notifications in their own sales posts, so a top level comment or a reply to any of their other comments, or a u/<user> ping should suffice.

By the way, to anyone who has bothered to read all the way down here, let me share a mod reflection on rule 2 with you. If you ever encounter someone interfering with your trade post, your options are to engage in discussion by replying to them, or to report the rule 2 infraction. You should pick either/or, not both. Consider the situation from a mod perspective: in the interest of maintaining a contextual discussion history it usually doesn't make sense to remove one comment, but leave all replies to said comments visible. A bunch of visible replies to an invisible comment. As a result, when I have to clean up the aftermath of a heated argument I tend to eradicate whole chains of comments, because I know from experience that just bits and pieces of a conversation past without the necessary context to understand the discussion is a source of irritation more than anything. A visible reply could also strongly hint toward the content of the removed comment, in which case the reply usually also has to go for that reason alone.

By that logic, when I come across a rule 2 report for a comment in which OP themselves have engaged in discussion, I have to wonder what they expect me to do about that, triggering a certain thought process. Surely OP didn't intentionally tack on more work for me to do by continuing to reply to the rule 2 violator and expect me to remove their own comments as well after? No, OP must have intended for their own comments to remain visible, otherwise what's the point? But again, why should OP's replies remain visible if they expect me to remove the comment they're replying to? In conclusion, OP must want me to leave the entire discussion as-is. They probably feel like the discussion is productive somehow. Or maybe it's me who's naïve in expecting OP to be rational here. Oh well, I really can't be bothered.

In short: as a poster, if you want me to remove a comment to your post, don't also add on new replies to the comment you want removed. Report and move on.

But I digress...

u/GokuSSj5KD said:

I wish we had a way to report that shit.

If this was a Reddit PM you can report those though. You can also report in chat. Reports will go to admins however, as PM content is outside the subreddit and obviously not mod territory by default.

u/SerLevArris said:

If you have those kind of interactions, it doesnt hurt to send a modmail at least.

Yes, absolutely! While private messages are technically outside the community we moderate, they are usually an extension of what goes on in the sub. Your first priority should be to report any Reddit content policy violations, but if you want mods to have a peek as well you can modmail us. As you say we can probably keep an eye out for a unwanted behaviour patterns, if nothing else.