I would assume the change is due to the types of situations some have described where sellers did not fulfill their end of the bargain or misrepresented things and then retaliated against a buyer who followed through on their end but had real issues.
The down side is that there are buyers out their who do not read, look, understand, pay for, etc. who also deserve to be recognized for their stellar performances.
Maybe the way to handle it is to have negative feedback not show for a certain period of time to allow both parties to try to work things out. Both parties would be notified of the negative by a PM type of system. If the issues were not resolved then you could follow the established paths for handling disputes through ebay. Maybe this would take some of the knee jerk retaliation away.
I think Ebay looks at business like most auction people do they provide the venue and thats it. After that they want nothing to do with the transaction. Their sales must be going down due to lack of buyer confidence combined with the threat that one would be labeled a dead beat unfairly.
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