The rule is not entirely bad and I see where your point of view comes from. I buy a lot more on eBay than I sell, and I've been in the game since almost the beginning, registered in 1998.

Where our attitude as sellers comes from is that eBay has constantly eroded "protection" or any "rights" for sellers making them responsible for everything that might go wrong in a transaction, leaving the sellers set up as sitting ducks for fraudulent buyers, with no say in how incidents are dealt with, and nothing that we can do about it. We can't even leave negative feedback for those buyers anymore to warn others to cancel bids from such people.

Earlier today I refunded a buyer in full for an item not received (Global Shipping Program...), AND sent a replacement of the same item with my compliments. This was done without eBay involvement, just communication between me and the buyer. I know how to deal with legitimate customer complaints to build my business and reputation. Does eBay reward me for that in any way? No, I get penalized with eBay micromanagement of my business at the level of lowest common denominator for all of the idiot sellers.

It is true that there are bad sellers out there, and you rightfully left negative feedback that the seller deserved, which used to get sellers suspended or NARU'd back in the day. There are sellers out there who have Hundreds if not Thousands of Negative feedbacks a year. Does eBay kick them off the site, even though they are creating Thousands of unhappy customers yearly? No, because they are generating too much money in sales. So eBay puts in rules that negatively affect the good sellers as well as the bad, so that all sellers pay for the sins of the bad apples. eBay just sucks the money out of the seller's bank accounts for the slightest perceived indiscretion. The result is that they don't have to try to kick the bad guys off the site anymore, because that would reduce sales and the all important PayPal commission that they collect.

eBay's philosophy is that anything that is good for buyers ultimately drives higher sales for eBay and thus benefits the sellers. Not untrue, "The Customer is always right". [ugh] It's just that eBay forgets that their customers, the folks buying their service and paying the bills are the Sellers. eBay seldom treats their customers the same way that they want us to treat our customers. They need to put effort into suspending the bad sellers, and eat the loss of income themselves, not pass the buck to all sellers. My opinion is that a majority of sellers are so disenchanted with eBay that they'd leave in 2 seconds if there were another viable game in town. We will be dancing 'round the fire when eBay finally goes too far and self destructs due to their seller be damned policies.

.