I think eBay is doing the right thing by rejecting negative feedback from sellers. I was the victim of retaliatory negative seller feedback after a purchase that I made was never delivered. I paid the seller immediately but never received the goods, even after more than five weeks of waiting and many emails. I finally had to have PayPal settle the dispute (in my favor) to get my money back. This seller left negative feedback for everyone that left them negative feedback. This seller was later suspended from eBay, but the damege was already done. When a complaint was made to eBay about the unfair negative feedback, they said they were powerless to remove it unless very stringent conditions were met. My case didn't meet those conditions at the time. Consequently, I have been hesitant to make new purchases from eBay sellers I haven't dealt with before. This hurts their entire system and it's really too bad.

The downside of this move by eBay is that sellers -- especially small sellers like me who occasionally unload collectibles, books, etc. for what amounts to pocket change -- will have no way to judge the reliability of a prospective buyer. The frustration and time wasted on trying to extract legitimate payments from "deadbeats" is considerable. I always appreciate a heads-up via feedback that I may have trouble with a particular buyer.

But I agree that there are ridiculous sellers who hold you hostage via negative buyer feedback, too.

Andrew, almost exactly the same thing happened to me with a camera whose flash circuit was broken. I decided to take the bad feedback to get the word out about that seller. It took months, and jumping through hoops (faxing a professional estimate) but I got my money back, and he got booted.

Elizabeth, I don't know that this is a great solution, but I agree that driving customers away had to be stopped. If feedback was being used as a weapon by some, the weapon was disarmed.

I miss the old eBay -- friendly amateurs like yourself, very cheap and full of astonishing bargains if you knew how to spot them.

After one of my first e-bay purchases I left a negatvie feedback on a seller because the photo in the ad was clearly not the item sent to me.I thought that I was factual and professional.The seller left a highly personal and unprofessional retaliatory negative feedback on me. I was shocked.This was a good learning experiance which proves the old expression "believe none of what you hear and half of what you see" !!!