The easiest way to encourage people to do something is to reward them for doing it, with something tangible.

When fees were on a sliding scale, meaning the higher the item price went, the lower the fee would be (as low as 2.6% on amounts over $1000, from memory, and the first drop came after the price hit $75), it at least didn't make it so bad when you sold higher priced items, and - IMO - kept more people from being tempted to inflate postage. Doing so of course still put sellers at a greater advantage than if they didn't, and putting FVF on postage removed that advantage, but now that eBay Plus has been introduced, they've come full circle and introduced a system that not only actively encourages postage piracy, but at their own expense, so it's getting harder and harder for me to have any hope that the board not only has some small sliver of an understanding of their market (both buyers and sellers), but that they have any idea what they are doing. 

I also think that if they genuinely wanted to encourage free postage from sellers and make it a level playing field for those who were paying lower fees by not having free postage (as they claimed), all they would have had to do was offer a reduced rate for items listed as free post. If free post is truly what buyers prefer (as they claim), and it would increase sales, then it would have been a win all 'round.

The best eBay could ever seem to offer was a boost in best match rankings, which is vague, unverifiable, fluctuating, and rarely seemed to translate into anything of substance for most sellers. A limp promise if ever there was one.