eBay, you're just wrong

I've been an eBay member since Jan 1999 and nearly 10 years later, I'm about through with them. I'm also a stock holder, having a fairly significant number of shares since 2000. Now I'm considering selling them, all of them. Why? In a nutshell, I no longer believe in the company. It's not the smartest thing to do to look at it that way, as opposed to looking at it as an investment, but I've always kept investments in companies I believe it, and I'd feel like a hypocrite otherwise.

They've done TOO many things in my opinion that are in their best interests, not the customer. And I mean the real customer, the customer that SELLS on eBay, not the one who buys. The seller pays the fees, the buyer doesn't. I'm a renter, I rent space. I pay my fees and I sell my stuff. eBay doesn't care about me anymore, they only care that the buyer has a warm and fuzzy experience, and keeps coming back. They've gotten so many sellers, who cares if they lose a few right? Here's the four points that have gotten under my skin:

1. Feedback: I've bitched about it before. Changed back in May, Sellers can only leave positives for Buyers, but Buyers can do what they want. Example: I listed a video game and sold it to a person in New York. Weeks of no or poor communication, excuses, and no payment, I stopped hearing from him. Can I give him a negative for non payment, wasting my time and making me eat the eBay listing fees? No. Can he leave me a Negative cause he wants to? You bet!
   
2. Net Neutrality: Buyers now also rate my shipping and handling costs and time. Costs are posted up front and they see that before bidding. I ship almost always same or next day, using tracking in most cases, and feel I'm very reasonable on costs and timeframe, better than many. Yet get this. Today I'm rated a 4.3 out of 5 stars in shipping, and since I'm below a mandated 4.6, my "Search Standing is Lowered", yeah, in RED. What this means is if someone searches for something I'm selling, they will see other Seller's items first, even if I'm a direct match, cause I didn't hand deliver, ship for free and kiss ass. This isn't in my best interest, and it's not even in the Buyer's best interest, to steer them towards someone with a better RATING than a better match? Wrong. Equate it to this: "Hey, where's a place to eat around here?" Answer? "Uh... Try Taco Fred's" Fred's brother says. It's 10 miles past 20 other good restaurants. I can't rate the buyer in any way, how quick he pays, IF he pays, how his communication is (doesn't matter does it?) or anything. Sellers need to be able to warn other Sellers about bad Buyers. Nope.
   
3. Guilty until proven guiltier. I've been tagged four times in the past coupla months for violating "Policy Compliance" and/or selling someone else's "Intellectual Property". There is no appeal. Get this, in the first two cases, eBay changed the rules for minimum prices on Buy It Now items. They changed it and I relisted some items (and they ALLOWED IT) and a few days later? BAM! "Policy Violation: Fee Circumvention". Yeah, for a 99 cent item, they think I'm ripping them off. On the 3rd and 4th cases, it was satellite receivers I was selling. They've given the power to companies to say, without question, "this guy can't sell this, it's mine". On one of the auctions, it had been sold and closed for 3-4 days. Yet, no warning given, I'm red flagged again and have two strikes. I don't know for a fact, but if I have one more, even on a closed auction, I'll be suspended.
   
4. Big Brother! This is just enough to bug me. Someone emailed me a week or more ago asking if I'd take $50 for something. People do it all the time, and it can be legit. I could have changed the auction to reflect his price, let him to the Buy It Now, and done deal. But, I just said no. I didn't know what the thing was worth, and as it was, sold it for $31. So last night I get a big long doom and gloom email from eBay, warning me about his email and offer. Yeah, they are monitoring email. Get this! If I DID sell it outside of eBay, they want me to fill out a long form. I would not be surprised if it's so they could get their commission. They go on to mention contacting law enforcement, your credit card company and the US Postal service about mail fraud if you got ripped off. On one hand maybe they are trying to be helpful, but on the other, they're accusing the person asking me a question of breaking the law, possibly. Guilty again.

So again, I sign this: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr