Horizon,

again, in theory I agree totally with you.

But the thing is, in practice, I an just not sure what damage is actually being done, and to whom.

You can argue that shoppers may get turned of Ebay altogether after few unfortunate Chinese purchases - and then all sellers miss out!

But, in the scheme of things, ratio of the unhappy buyers is still microscopic compared with the happy ones.

I normally don't shop here for those sort of items, but just had a look at several Chinese sellers.

Their overall feed back is, say over 100,000, with about 10-15,000 negs. And that is nothing overly amazing, given the turnover, and given the quality of stuff they sell. I am honestly surprised to not see many more negs! Only because I have read on the boards so many complaints about them.

Big deal, that is the same percentage if someone with 500 transactions had 1 neg.

Not even close to being significant  "unhappy atmosphere" for buyers in general, for Ebay to see the need to do anything about it.