eBay feedback policy - Epic Fail

I buy and sell a few things on eBay, have done since before what I then used became eBay (it used to be sold.com.au, which was bought out by ebay more than a decade ago now).

Lately the whole eBay thing has been (in my view) circling the drain, with more and more unscrupulous buyers and sellers alike. To me the main thing which keeps things requiring the minimum of moderation is the feedback system and the strike system. Both are apparently broken now with recent policy changes.

The problem that first presents itself to me is that as a seller I can not leave negative feedback to wankers who buy and then just sit back laughing, never intending to pay. Its just a game to them.

Some cretin at eBay clearly decided that the policy to not allow negative feedback on customers was a good idea.

Well, in a world where everyone has good ethics and a decent moral outlook, perhaps this would work.

{looks left, looks right} ... nope I don't see that round my parts either.

Instead this process allows wankers like this guy to have "fun" at my expense and get away with it.

I'm not the only one with a problem like this it seems, as when I clicked on his (gosh all postive) feedback I see the most recent feeback item (not mine yet) is a "false positive" (meaning they wanted to pan him but the system stops that).

This seller is more 'discrete' than I'd be.

In fact this policy circumvents sellers being able to apply rules to their auctions to prevent wankers from making bids.

A quick search shows that its also a wide spread problem out there with Google giving 7 million hits on this question of why can't I leave negative feedback to non payers on eBay:

I think a worthwhile read on this topic can be had on eBay's own community page here.

This situation will clearly make eBay a place for high volume sellers of rubbish which of course if they don't get paid don't care, won't post it and move on.

One more knife in the back of the 'free market'.

Its interesting that in Japan eBay has not yet taken hold and instead Yahoo Auctions predominate. I used that system for 3 years when I was in Japan and really liked it. It operates under subtly different rules to eBay and it makes quite a difference too.