After having been an ebay buyer and seller for the past 6 years I've drawn a few conclusions. Number one - Ebay lets both the buyer and seller both leave feedback. Amazon.com only lets the buyer leave feedback. Without fear of retaliation many Amazon.com buyers do leave negative feedback. But most of this negative feedback is valid. On Amazon.com the rip-off sellers are easily identified because of their numerous negative feedbacks. Conversely the good sellers are also just as easily identified on Amazon.com by their lack of negative feedbacks and their high percent of positive feedbacks.

So why does Ebay allow both seller and buyer feedbacks. The answer is simple. Profits for Ebay. Most (not all) buyers are afraid of retaliation feedback. In effect they are being forced into not leaving negative feedback by Ebay itself. So they try and work out the problems with the seller. For example, unbelievably late shipping, item not even shipped, non-working items, wrong items, broken items, sellers not returning emails and on and on. I personally have experienced all of the problems I just listed.

What would happen if Ebay did not allow sellers to leave feedback like Amazon.com. The amount of negative feedback from buyers would increase greatly (to put it mildly). The rip-off sellers would be quickly and easily identified by the numerous negative feedback they receive. Buyers would be able to really see how bad these sellers are. These bad sellers would no longer be able to operate on Ebay, because buyers would avoid them at all costs. Ebay profits would take a huge hit and Ebay would lose money.

As the wise sage once said "It's all about profits, my friend"