The problem is that there are a great deal of fraudulent buyers on ebay and i have had numerous occasions where buyers have started paypal disputes within a day of paying.Also the fact that sellers now have no way of protecting themself against fraudsters means that anyone can now defraud paypal, all they need to do is know that the seller hasnt sent the item with a tracking number and they will win a paypal dispute.

Also there are a lot of rude buyers on ebay and now there is no way of protecting yourself against that either.It has opened up powersellers to numerous scams and fraudulent paypal claims and i’m disgusted about what ebay have done.

I’m currently going thru a paypal dispute with someone that claims that 2 parts of a model kit frame arrived broken, they started a paypal dispute without telling me there was a problem and without giving me a chance to fix it.They have told me numerous times that they are seeking a full refund and wont be sending the items back to me.I am totally defenceless as allthough the models were undamaged when i shipped them and i wrapped them well the buyer blaims me for this and as i see it believes it’s ok to defraud me because of this.I have offered to send replacement parts and to refund them once i have recieved the items back but they want me to pay them back first + they want the price of posting the items back.I believe they are being so unreasonable in this transaction as there is literally nothing i can do to defend myself.

The way i will defend myself in the short term is to stop accepting paypal as it leaves me open to fraudulent paypal claims and to up my prices to increase profit whilst decreasing the amount of buyers i deal with.

Listing fees alone were negligible anyway when you exclude the extras, but the increase in final value fees mean that eBay will make more money on every single item selling for more than, what, a pound or so?

As for not being able to leave feedback for buyers, I think this is unreasonable as well. I have over 500 feedback on my account, and the two negative feedbacks I have were left in revenge by non-payers both of whom were removed from eBay shortly after. Why should the feedback ratings of buyers who have been removed still remain?

Now we’ll be in a position where a buyer doesn’t have to pay for the item at the end of the auction and can still live a negative feedback rating safe in the knowledge that they cannot be touched. Perhaps it would have been more sensible to give sellers two different feedback ratings, so you can see their buyer rating when they’re buying from you, and you can see their seller rating when you’re looking at the items they have on sale.

eBay works on the principle that people are basically honest, and that will be its downfall, because the fact is that they aren’t and you have to be realistic and put safeguards in place to give people an incentive to be honest rather than opportunistic.

I’m in the process of setting up a reseller business along the lines of auctioning4u (it’s only thanks to your blog that I’ve learned that they’ve gone bust) and perhaps I too should look at alternatives to selling these items only on eBay?