I googled "ebay feedback" to see if it was a well-known fact that the eBay feedback system really doesn't work, or if I was the only one who had noticed.

It really sucks, because I want very much to keep my 100%, so even if I encounter a horrible seller, and I really want to warn people against them, there's really nothing I can do. I haven't had a bad buyer yet, but I'd be scared to leave one of those negative feedback also, so I'd probably just endeavor to get my final value fee refunded and leave no feedback and hope they wouldn't either. I sure wish there was some way to make it better, because no matter how good a seller you are, someone who doesn't care as much about their feedback score as you do can rather easily ruin what you've work so hard to maintain.

Your ideas are good, but it seems to me that there would still be a problem because of the fact that some people care hugely about their feedback score and really want to keep a 100% or as close thereto as humanly possible, while others have less to lose, or think they do anyway, or for whatever reason simply don't care as much about it, and those people are therefore much less restrained, less judicious, and much more likely to leave negatives frivilously, callously, carelessly, out of spite, etc....because you didn't do what they wanted or give them what they wanted, or because you rightly objected to their improper behavior. It just feels so unfair that you can rather easily get stuck with a negative even if you haven't done anything wrong!

Many sellers are extremely conscientious and care very much about doing things right, but there are others that care most about making a buck and less about anything else, and these sellers figure as long as they keep their 98% by doing the minimum possible to keep most people reasonably happy, if a few brave customers do try to warn others by leaving a negative, they figure their negatives won't count for much in the long run, given an overwhelming number of positives. I'm dealing with one such seller right now, and it's just made me very upset and made me realize how much the system doesn't work, how there's no way I can warn others without risking a negative I don't deserve and want desperately to avoid.

I've had one idea which is that I could get a second account for buying purposes. I could still buy with my main account from people I already trust or who I can determine are nice people and good sellers, but if there's any doubt, I could just use the backup account and then whatever happens at least there'd be no threat to my reputation. Of course there's still the threat from careless, clueless, and/or unscrupulous buyers, but some people do manage to keep their 100%s even with thousands of sales, so I'm just going to keep hoping I will be able to also.

One thing I think eBay should definitely do is to not allow a buyer who has not paid to leave feedback, but they don't seem to take any action in that regard.

It does seem unfair, at least from one perspective, the way most sellers make buyers leave their feedback first. Sellers feel it's necessary to protect themselves at least somewhat from those few bad buyers I mentioned above (although it's not foolproof, because of course those buyers may just not care very much about their own feedback!). But on the other hand, buyers with legitimate complaints really are left with very little recourse.

I wonder if it wouldn't be better to simply allow people to leave comments with no ratings and no scores. Then you would just have to read and judge for yourself whether there were legitimate complaints against someone or not...