Almost as quickly as ebay shot to the top of the web and became the worlds largest auction site, it has beheaded itself and begun emitting a death rattle. It was not that long ago that ebay was one of the best places a buyer and seller could get together and participate in free market exchange on equal ground. Now the playing field has become tilted, rocky, and filled with potholes. How on earth did this happen and why?

One of the best things about ebay that set it apart from every other site geared towards commerce was its internal feedback system. If a transaction went smoothly each party could leave good feedback for each other. If the transaction was conducted poorly or neither good nor bad, then negative or neutral feedback options were available. No matter what the buyer and seller feelings were, the system gave an immediate view for all of the reliability of the buyer and seller. It was a revolutionary system of checks and balances which helped keep everyone honest.

With new leadership came new ideas and in the spring of 2008 those ideas were implemented. The feedback system was overhauled taking the ability of the seller away to leave negative feedback. Buyers complained they feared negative feedback so much they simply stopped buying. While this is a great change for bad buyers, this also has a huge impact on good buyers sellers, literally cutting them off at the knees.

Why I say this is because if you think logically for a moment, the only people so worried about bad feedback that they would actually stop buying are people that have a history of, or intent to engage in bad transactions. Of course they worry about negative feedback, too much of it and they may find nobody wants to conduct business with them or they may even lose their account. As ebay allows for participants to be both buyers and sellers, a person may be great when it comes to selling and a lousy buyer, but with the new system how would you know? People that act on the best faith and play by the rules have no worries about bad feedback and can continue to use ebay as they always have, with the exception of sellers that is.

For sellers the outlook is worse. Now there is absolutely no implied pressure to get buyers to pay in a manner which is timely or in some instances at all. They can now feel free to change their mind about whether they want to complete auctions they have won with no fear of retribution. With this new system every buyer will appear equal, and only

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