I maintain that being able to neg buyers will do nothing to "fix" the problem of NPBs, or even buyers who exhibit what the majority of sellers would view as undesirable behaviour. I believe that because, while I was never a member of eBay until after the change to feedback, I am a member of sites where negative feedback can still be given to buyers, and the problem is just as common there as it is here. People who systematically do not pay for items do not fear negs - they do not fear consequences much, if at all, particularly ones of a cosmetic nature on a relatively anonymous internet profile, and where the alternative is doing something they have decided they can't / won't for whatever reason. That is, their reasons for not paying outweigh the possible consequences for not paying - almost always.
The problem on those sites where buyers can receive negs is two-fold, because the sellers there are often like the sellers here. They do not educate themselves about the systems the site has in place to deal with NPBs etc until it's too late, then they want the system changed rather than contribute to the current system that's in place. For any system to actually work, people need to understand and use it, so near as I can tell, it's not necessarily a different system we need, but a different way of making sure it's used properly (by members and by eBay).
No system is perfect, but if we all spent as much time advocating the system we do have, and educating others about it, rather than spending energy lamenting a system that is no longer in place (and likely never will be again) what we do have would work infinitely better than it does now. I'm not suggesting discussions that share ideas about different ways eBay could do things are useless, what I am saying is that rather than saying nothing but "the current system is useless", advocate it so that it has a chance of working properly.
I do think there are some changes eBay could implement that would be of great benefit - namely, the cross-referencing of all accounts so that if a member is blocked via one ID, either by a seller manually adding them to a BBL or due to strikes, all of their IDs are automatically blocked, and definitely not overturning strikes unless there's a good, provable, reason.
The cart that's slowly but surely rolling out to all accounts is a huge leap forward with this problem, though I recognise it doesn't help with auction listings. Aside from bringing eBay "up with the times" in so far as internet shopping goes, it makes it much more viable for many sellers to require immediate payment and completely eliminate NPBs, which is the only thing that will actually "fix" the problem - as long as an item can be purchased without being paid for, NPBs will be a problem whether they can get negs or not.
The cart automatically calculates postage discounts if they have been set up, the rate tables can make combined postage quotes a cinch for those that need to charge post by weight / volume, and there is an option from the cart to request an invoice from a seller for multiple items if automatic discounts haven't been set up - with that last one, I don't know if requesting an invoice will result in automatically purchasing the items as I haven't tested it yet, but I suspect it does because AFAIK a seller can currently only generate an invoice after items have been purchased - it would be neat if a "request quote" function was implemented that then applies to the items in a cart, though.
