LOL. Based on your theory perhaps we ought to deliberately get a bad defect rating on the store that is performing badly and see what happens.

It's funny you should mention that Dylan...

On the store that has been declining we had a bad buyer experience a little while back where we were clearly scammed and reported the buyer. We got a couple of NEGs for arguing the toss with the buyer. But in the end both PayPal and ebay supported us even tho we only used regular mail. Ended up getting the NEGs and the defects removed to restore our good track history. PayPal did not take our money to refund the buyer either.

And ya know its since then that this store has been in steady decline. Almost looks like we are being punished for being so brash as to accuse a buyer of doing the wrong thing.

We have another clear case of a scamming buyer on the other store ID now who we argued with again and suffered some NEGs for it. Have just started negotiations with ebay and paypal again to get it all cleared and restored.

I think we will have to stop calling out buyers when there is clear evidence of a scammer. It just causes us too much hassle to fight with them. But I have this strong belief they cannot be allowed to simply get away with it. They will just keep doing it to other buyers. So I guess I'm a bit of a crusader but suffer injuries in doing so for the better good.