The ebay managers would believe this is their goal, but as others have said, sometimes the ebay experience is not all it should be.

Evidence that ebay does see open communication as a goal is the very fact that they have community chat boards. Not every online buying site has that.

Ebay is (I believe) under siege to some extent & I believe a lot of the changes, even the bad changes, have come about in an effort to tighten up transactions, to make them safer, to cut out problems.

I've been on ebay now for about 15 years, I think it must be. When I first joined, there was 2 way feedback, yes, but money either got paid into a bank deposit or else maybe you could pick up an item. There was no paypal. 95% of transactions went well but there is absolutely no doubt that some sellers ripped off customers. I had a couple of bad experiences where a seller had good feedback, I paid but never received the goods & the seller didn't answer messages. Then you would see their bad feedback build up all of a sudden and they would be kicked off ebay. It didn't help though with the disappointment and the fact you were out of pocket.

It was basically a matter of trust on ebay. You paid and had to trust the seller would do the right thing-feedback was important in that respect but not infallible.

Ebay had to address that at some stage because the competition with other online websites has built up & customers expect to receive the goods if they pay.

I believe that is why paypal came into play and I think it is probably why they have this ebay money back guarantee etc, to reassure buyers.

Now that those things are in place though, I think the need for feedback comments is not as important as it once was.

Things are now weighted more towards buyers, so the seesaw isn't balanced.

I'm sure we will see other changes some time soon-automatic payment expected on buy it now, for instance, and a sale not completed till payment is made. That would cut out a lot of problem bidders who never pay and hold up transactions for days.

Nothing stays the same and ebay is changing a lot from what it used to be-a place where a lot of items were just from home sellers.