It's good to at least find that feedback was useful to you in this instance and helped you avoid a bad purchase.
One aspect that is interesting is something that I used to see mentioned a lot on here but haven't seen talk of for a while is what feedback is meant to be about.
There used to be a school of thought that feedback should only be about the transaction and nothing else. So, about the seller and their service. The quality of the item was not meant to come into it.
I think a little bit of both is relevant. It's mainly about the transaction but if the quality of an item is pretty poor (even if it is fit for purpose and as described), then that's helpful info too. Not that I would personally give a seller a neg because I didn't like the item, although receiving the wrong size, colour etc is a totally different matter.
That I would mark down for if the problem was not rectified.
And yes, you'd wonder how a big seller with half their feedback negative could still be allowed to operate on ebay. You can understand that any major seller is going to cop some negs, that is the nature of selling, you can't please everyone. But I would have thought if seller positive feedback falls below eg 70%, or if a seller has a lot of item not as described cases opened against them, that their account could be placed under tighter restrictions. Maybe that already happens, I don't know. For smaller sellers it probably does, as you say.
