I am going to try to stay on target. There are a lot of aspects of Ebay buying/selling, and I see a few others in the other comments.

I have about 100 purchases and 100 sales on Ebay. I have one negative, as a buyer, that was completely undeserved. The seller sent me a damaged item, refused to admit it was damaged going into the box, and as they had done with other buyers, left a retalitory feedback after I left a negative. I saw it coming before I left the negative, given the seller's history, but I "took one on the chin" for other unsuspecting buyers. Eventually that seller stopped selling on Ebay, after enough buyers left negatives.

I understand what you mean about slow payments, not to mention NPB, but I pretty much support the "no negatives for buyers" switch after my experience. I think they must have decided to handle NPB more vigilantly, and you know 2-3 weeks isn't the end of the world. Yes, if you do hundreds of transactions a week, keeping track of slow bidders isn't fun, but since I used to only accept checks/MO, 1-2 weeks doesn't mean much to me.

It is interesting what Bill found below - they have begun limiting what you can write in the comment relative to the rating you leave. I admit leaving "slow to pay" would be a nice option, which appears to no longer be possible. I'm glad Bill posted that, because I didn't know about that or the other new changes in this area.

As far as feedback being mandatory, well, *not* leaving it is one way a trading partner has to let the other know they could do better next time. I have done that when I didn't want to leave a negative.

They must have looked at this carefully before making the changes, I think. Given the number of transactions they have on any given day, I'm sure they didn't do it lightly. I have to admit, all the changes that have taken place make it difficult for me to keep track, as my trading has slowed.

This is good letter. As I said, I think they thought pretty carefully about the change, but giving feedback will help them understand how it affects the user.