Please excuse my language, but it's really true. The p0wer is now in the hands of the buyer, not equally in the hands of both the buyer and the seller. I am both a buyer and a seller on Ebay and in all fairness, I don't see how Ebay is presenting a balance by prohibiting the seller to leave negative feedback for the buyer. Ebay's reasoning from what I can gather is that they don't want to lose any of their buyers. My reasoning? Without sellers, there are no buyers. Why pick on the sellers?
For example, I recently had a buyer whom I shipped a $15 product to. Ebay told me that they were investigating a complaint (mind you I had 100% positive feedback at the time and over 1500 positives). I provided Paypal with the tracking information and proof of delivery they requested. I have no idea what they told Ebay, but all I know is that it went into a dispute (automatically) through Paypal. I provided all of the documentation, ie. the fact that it was shipped the SAME day, proof through tracking that it was actually delivered, and proof of any of the correspondence sent to the customer. The end result? The customer won. I lost $40 due to fees, reversal charges, refunding not only the money for the product, but the money for the postage and I had to pay Paypal $10 for the privilege of my losing the case. In addition, I lost the $15 on the product. What could I do about it? Nothing. No recourse. No one to communicate with to find out why. It just happened. Paypal's decision was final and no explanation was given. They just took their $10 and went away.
So, if you have a buyer who decides randomly to cancel their order and who gives Ebay a good story, true or not, you will lose. You will not be able to complain. You will have to eat the costs through Paypal and you will start to get a bit miffed.
To top it off, I had another one last week. I work hard to build my Ebay business and as you can imagine, I almost blew a gasket! Another reversal, two in one month whereas before the changes, I hadn't had any, just 3 neutrals (two that were put in by mistake because the person thought neutral meant OK and I still cannot find the 3rd one although it is showing up in my feedback.
The one last week said it was under investigation and Paypal removed the $17.00 or so that had been paid to me while they investigated the chargeback. Surprisingly, the chargeback was made AFTER the buyer received their product AND left me POSITIVE feedback. . . oooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I wanted to scream! So, sorry, now I'm screaming!
Anyway, my point is, Ebay is the giant and I am just a number who is running a small business. My Ebay fees last month were a mere $380 on sales of just over $1700 . . .My little fee amount may not be that great but take the thousands of us who give Ebay $380 for fees and add that up and it may make a dent in what Ebay makes. If all of the little guys go away because we are put out of business by negative feedback or higher Ebay fees, then Ebay may have to rethink their decisions to make the sellers the fall guys.