I'm being dramatic, but I am really at the end of my rope here. I had 100% feedback for years. Years. Now of course eBay has changed things: your feedback percentage is only calculated for the last 12 months; you can only leave positive feedback for buyers, so they have no retaliation to fear. So what happens? I get a newbie eBayer, who finds a tiny flaw on a piece of my glassware. They paid under $20 for it, and I would pay 10x's that to have never had sold to them! They complained to me and even though the flaw is the same as it is pictured in the photos, it is true that I honestly didn't notice it the first time around and I apologized out the wazoo. When you sell hundreds of things, it happens!! I gave a full refund, including return S&H, which my terms state I will not do, but I wanted to resolve the matter amicably. I even sent the buyer another item, for free. The buyer then leaves me NEGATIVE feedback anyways--not even neutral, negative!--and my feedback score has therefore fallen significantly. I was near tears today and now I'm ready to give up eBay altogether over this. I feel like I won't get any buyers because of my lovely new score, and I am just distraught because I did everything I possibly could to resolve the situation, to no avail. I could have put a "block" on newbie buyers but I didn't because I try to be fair & equal opportunity. So over this transaction I lost money, time, my 100% feedback rating, and...I just can't believe it. That someone could be that cruel as to intentionally smear the name of a good seller, and believe me I go way out of my way to try and keep my positive status and keep buyers happy. I'm sorry, I needed to rant...I'm just sick over it. This new eBayer I'm sure has no idea that the majority of eBay sellers are not nearly as generous in resolving disputes, and isn't experienced enough to know a) how I didn't deserve that, given how hard I strive compared to most to describe every little single detail and coddle customers if something goes wrong and b) how terribly that affected my seller status.
I'm already annoyed with eBay over the relatively new feedback system, their outrageous fees (I just signed up for a store to try and lessen the fees, looks like I'll be cancelling that now), bad customer support, and more, but now I've really had it.