Unfortunately, what Candoxx says is true. I joined eBay when it wsa fairly new and at first concentrated only on collectible interests. Of course, eventually I realized I was spending myself broke and got 'way more than I needed. But most of my sellers were ladies, polite, with excellent email communications, superb packing, and very prompt shipping.

After I quit chasing the increasingly pricey and obviously unnecessary collectibles, I branched out into other rather arcane areas of interest. I started running into men sellers who either were functional illiterates or saw no need for email at all. Packing was casual at best, shipping was whenever they got around to it and the experience was far less pleasant. I usually got what I'd won eventually, but it took forever and some items were damaged or ruined by careless packing.

About that time sniping (with professional software) became popular and I started losing more auctions because someone grabbed the item for 50¢ more in the last 5 seconds. I heard a lot of people left eBay then but I don't know if that was true or not. There was plenty of anger over it, and no question it hurt incremental bidding. I no longer bid on anything I wasn't fairly sure of getting and I didn't bid high for fear of being stuck with something I'd paid too much for. There was talk of eBay fixing the sniping problem by random ending times but nothing ever came of it. I just slowed down my bidding and buying.

After that came the next popular scam--the "handling" charge. While everyone knew that fuel costs had gone up, sellers who noticed bidding had dropped way off because of sniping began padding more of their expected take into the shipping & handling charge. UPS even made it easy for them by allowing them to add the handling to the actual UPS shipping charge while never disclosing the price breakdown to the buyer. So expensive shipping became even more expensive with the hidden handling charge.

I suppose neither sniping nor bloated shipping costs were deal-breakers because I continued to buy on eBay and still do occasionally. But I have become much more selective and both sniping and handling scams have left a real sour taste in my mouth for the whole eBay experience. I buy mostly what I cannot get locally or from other markets and only when I think the "total deal"--goods, price, shipping, handling make sense. A lot of auctions I would once have bid on, I simply pass over now because one or more of the numbers simply stink.

Added to that, eBay's cavalier "whatever goes wrong is not OUR fault" and you're really pretty much on your own. I did get refunds for some undelivered merchandise but since the refund doesn't come from any eBay or PayPal insurance, but is instead drawn directly from the seller's PayPal account, there is nothing to keep a seller from filing a non-paying bidder charge against you (and I had this happen) if you don't file until 45 days after the transaction. So even their "buyer protection" guarantee really isn't what it seems and settlements are always only at their discretion. If I didn't know that the top echelon at eBay had carted astonishing amounts of money out of the place I wouldn't be so bitter about their way of doing business. But we do know and the fact you're "on your own" really doesn't cut it since it's NOT a yard sale or a local auction where you can be assured of what you're getting and see it for what it is.

Between their poor treatment of sellers, high fees, and utter indifference to buyers, it's a wonder to me that anyone is left trying to trade on eBay. It really isn't what it used to be. Someone who ran a sharp and clean operation with reasonable fees could probably run them right out of business.

As for the individual who remarked about eBay's peculiar business model and critical procedural decisions being made purely in some sort of vacuum, I think it's like some religions--they haven't a clue, but they make it up to suit their purposes as they go along.