Negotiating is a lost art. People often go from casual conversation to law suites where only lawyers make money. Being a negotiator means you have to look at things from both sides fairly and evenly. With out those values you will not be a good negotiator. If you are too sucked in to winning even at the demise of your opponent then your negotiation will break down. That may be okay depending on what your BATNA is. Your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. You would offer the other party something you would want to be offered. I know that sounds radical the whole do unto others bit before you pick up the phone to call your attorney pick up this book from the old school way of thinking. Take things less personally and negotiate a better business deals, negotiate your way out of trouble or debts. Save thousands on wasted attorney fees. I once hired a lawyer to write eBay who had banned us for our affiliation to one of our clients who had gotten in trouble with too many complaints. The lawyer wrote letter after letter eBay never responded with anything that was helpful. For privacy reasons they could not tell me what exactly I was banned only it was related to our customer.

Our customer had to resolve their issue before we could be unbanned. However executive assistant to Rob Cobb would not tell them either exactly why they were banned. After failing to negotiate with the attorney I tried negotiating directly. Kristen Hale she was relentless in ignoring us and being as vague as possible. It was in February and I was at my wits end. I tried to think of a way to get the situation handled. I sent Kristen Hale flowers for valentines day with the card reading “please unban us we didn’t violate any polices..”. Low and behold it worked. I had filed complaints with every organization BBB, Consumer Affairs, State Justice department and achieved nothing. The act of sending a woman flowers and asking nicely actually worked. You can’t always send flowers in a negotiation. However Ms. Hale acknowledged we were getting a raw deal but that was just eBays policy. eBay has a C rating with the BBB and 1\100 order is fraud they must over police the system to stay under the radar. Even state senators have written eBay about the fraud issues. Now Meg Whitman is running for state governor in CA. If she had eBay treat it’s consumers so bad and created so much fraud I can’t wait to see what she does to California. In closing the negotiation might seem like you are compromising yourself but my attorney fees and time cost 1000’s but the flowers costs 40 dollars. I would argue we’re all doing the best we can for where we are at. Talk to people and look at things from their side. Be a true Negotiator. Oh and Kristen Hale executive assistant to the president of eBay said I was the more persistent eBay user she had ever come across. Persistence pays off but a good negotiation is priceless.